An SEO retainer should list four kinds of work: technical fixes, page and content work, links, and reporting. Beside each it should give a quantity, who does the work and what you’ll be shown. A proposal written that way can be checked every month. One that promises ongoing optimisation can’t, and anything it doesn’t name is either billed on top or not done.
The four lines of the scope
Ask for the scope as a table like this one, with a number or a name in every cell.
| Work | What it covers | Get in writing |
|---|---|---|
| Technical fixes | Pages search engines can’t reach, redirects, slow pages | Who makes each change on the site |
| Pages and content | Edits to existing pages, new pages and articles | How many a month, and who writes them |
| Links | Mentions and links from other websites | How many, and how each is earned |
| Reporting | What was done and what moved | How often, in what form, and which figures |
Three of the agency sites read fold work on AI assistants’ answers into their SEO service. If you want it, ask for it as a fifth line.
The unit your fee buys
Agencies sell a retainer in different units, so two quotes at one price can buy different amounts of work. Of the 40 agency websites read for this directory in October 2026, 33 have an SEO page and five set out named plans. Two of the five count keywords: up to five in one plan, six in another. One counts territories, one or two in its first tier. One counts target pages, from five. The fifth names no unit.
A sixth site describes a retainer as a monthly sum for an agreed number of hours. No page read prints how many hours a plan holds.
Ask what the fee is a function of, and what one more unit costs. One plan charges $50 to swap a keyword. Seven of the 33 print a monthly price, and what digital marketing agencies publish about price sets those out.
What the lowest plan leaves out
Three of the five list each plan’s contents, and the lines that change between tiers are content and links. One site’s lowest plan has two links a month, no articles and no access to an adviser. Its highest has ten links and four articles. On another site, links appear only in the dearer of two plans. A third compares three packages line by line, and one line is a guaranteed number of links.
A number of links is easy to count and hard to judge. Google’s spam policies for web search list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam. Ask where each link will come from.
Who makes the changes on your site?
Most SEO fixes are edits to your website, so the scope has to say who makes them. One agency’s onboarding form asks for your website login so it can make the changes itself. One set of published terms says the agency’s guarantee lapses where the client hasn’t carried out a recommendation within seven working days. Under a clause like that, a slow developer queue is your risk.
Google’s guide to hiring an SEO suggests asking whether the agency will share every change it makes to your site, with its reasoning. Ask for that as a dated list each month. The same guide says no one can guarantee first place on Google.
What you’re shown each month
Nine of the 33 sites say how often a report arrives: monthly on eight and weekly on one. Others offer a live dashboard, and two list a quarterly review among a plan’s contents. Ask which figures the report holds and whether it lists the changes made.
One site puts a detailed website audit in the first month of a campaign. What an audit should hand over is in the article on a real SEO audit.
Check the proposal before you sign
Find three things in the proposal: the unit, the quantity for each line of the table, and the shortest term. One site states a 12-month minimum for SEO. Another lets you cancel at any time, with up to 15 days to take effect. The guide to agency contracts, ownership and handover covers notice periods.
If a line is missing, ask whether it’s excluded or charged separately. Then compare the answers across the SEO agencies listed here or the SEO agencies in the United Kingdom.