Start with the work you need
Choose the SEO audit when the site needs a documented issue list, priorities, and an implementation sequence. Choose the monthly SEO retainer when the owner, scope, baseline, and first work queue are already clear and the business needs the work executed and measured.
A retainer can include diagnosis as its first phase. A fixed project can include the fixes. Confirm the actual deliverables: an advisory agreement may leave implementation with your team.
If you are choosing the type of specialist first, compare an AI visibility consultant with an SEO agency before deciding how to structure the engagement.
What each SEO engagement includes
Our recommendation: buy the missing work and name who will carry it out. The billing schedule does not tell you whether a developer will publish the changes, who writes the pages, or how the work will be accepted.
An audit supplies findings and priorities
Its scope might cover indexing, site structure, search queries, page intent, content, and internal links. A useful finding identifies the affected URLs, dated evidence, business relevance, recommended change, dependencies, and a test for completion.
Agree the depth first. A migration review or second opinion can answer a narrower question. A crawl export alone leaves someone else to establish priority and decide what should change.
Main risk: paying for findings that are generic, become stale, or have no funded implementer. Ask whether fixes, developer handoff, and a follow-up check are included.
A retainer supplies agreed recurring work
That may include technical corrections, new or refreshed pages, internal links, relevant authority work, monitoring, and review. Some retainers provide advice; others include writing, development, and publishing.
List what sits inside the fee: CMS changes, copy approval, design, local profiles, measurement, and any AI visibility checks. A retainer can repair foundations when that work is explicitly included.
Main risk: paying for a schedule that exceeds your team’s approval capacity, omits necessary work, or keeps producing output after priorities change.
Google recommends understanding the work and reasoning behind an SEO’s recommendations, and warns against guaranteed first-place claims. See Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO.
Audit, project, retainer, or neither yet?
| Your situation | Scope to consider | Condition to settle |
|---|---|---|
| The cause is unclear; your team can implement | A focused audit | Which question must it answer, and who will act on the findings? |
| The correction is known and finite | An implementation project | Affected pages, acceptance tests, access, and release responsibility |
| Priorities recur; execution capacity is missing | An ongoing retainer | What ships, who approves it, and when priorities are reviewed |
| Both diagnosis and recurring delivery are needed | A named diagnosis phase followed by agreed work | The decision point before committing to the next phase |
| Access, approval, or implementation funding is missing | Resolve the dependency first | Who can remove the block? Another report may simply join the queue. |
| Relevant search demand is unproven | Channel and buyer research | Whether search can reach the customers and buying decisions you need |
An outage or accidental indexing block calls for prompt technical triage. It does not, by itself, justify a broad monthly engagement.
Compare the complete cost
Use the same work package and period for both proposals. Enter your quotes in one currency. Put each cost in one place: enter zero when it is already included elsewhere. Leave an unknown cost blank; a blank is not a free task.
Page templates, languages, technical access, source material, production, and review affect scope. A higher fee may cover more work. It does not establish better quality or a better ranking.
Completed example · Illustrative figures
Two proposals for the same three months
Assume both providers agree to investigate one indexing issue, implement its correction, revise three service pages, verify inquiry measurement, review the work monthly for three months and hand over the change record. The amounts below are invented USD figures to demonstrate the calculation, not market rates or a Stan Consulting quote.
| Cost for the full period | Audit + implementation | Retainer |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnosis or setup | $1,500 | $500 |
| Implementation outside recurring fee | $2,500 | $0 |
| Content and production outside recurring fee | $1,200 | $0 |
| Review and testing outside recurring fee | $300 | $0 |
| Recurring fees for all three months | $0 | $6,000 |
| Total cash | $5,500 | $6,500 |
| Buyer hours, separate from cash | 12 hours | 8 hours |
The retainer costs $1,000 more in cash and needs four fewer buyer hours in this example. Those hours are not automatically worth $1,000. Check whether the team can supply them and whether the acceptance tests, exclusions and follow-up really match.
If one proposal also includes new monthly pages or ongoing support after month three, the scopes differ. Price those additions separately before treating the totals as comparable.
Download the completed comparison · CSVNow compare your own quotes
Audit plus implementation:
Retainer proposal:
Totals need complete inputs and a scope check before they are comparable.
The worksheet runs in this page and does not submit or save your entries. Totals are in your chosen currency; your team’s hours remain separate from cash. Without JavaScript, add each column manually.
Check whether your team can support the schedule
For each proposed month, name the person supplying expertise, approving copy, and publishing changes. Compare the required hours with their available time. If the plan does not fit, reduce the volume or include the missing capacity before work starts.
A substantial redesign belongs in the website scope; storefront and checkout work may need ecommerce support. Make those boundaries explicit rather than assuming the SEO fee covers them.
Keep the proposal comparison
Use the blank worksheet to record the shared scope, all five cost categories, buyer hours, exclusions, acceptance checks and open questions. Ask each provider to confirm their entries before deciding.
Download the blank worksheet · CSVOpens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. No email required. The online calculator does not save entries; record them in your own sheet.
What counts as completed SEO work?
An audit should give an implementer enough evidence to act. A fix needs an agreed test on the public page. Monitoring then shows whether Google has processed the change and whether search performance changes.
Illustrative example: a service page intended to appear in Google has an accidental noindex tag. The audit finds the problem; the proposal needs to say who will correct it.
- What the audit delivers
- The affected URL, the blocking tag, the date checked, and the recommended correction. Confirm that the owner wants this page available in search.
- Who implements the fix
- Name the person who will edit, test, and publish the change. Implementation must be included in the audit fee, priced as a separate project, or assigned within the retainer.
- What passes acceptance
- The public page loads successfully, permits crawling, and no longer sends a noindex rule in its HTML or response headers. Check the affected page after publication.
- What stays outside the change
- Pages intentionally excluded from search stay excluded. Record the affected URL and exact change so a wider site setting is not altered by mistake.
- What needs follow-up
- Use Search Console to check when Google next crawls the page and whether it is indexed. Removing the tag does not guarantee inclusion or a ranking.
- When ongoing work makes sense
- A retainer can cover monitoring and a continuing queue of agreed improvements. One corrected tag alone does not establish a need for a monthly commitment.
Put this in the proposal: the finding, affected URL, implementer, included fee, acceptance test, and follow-up owner. That makes the audit and retainer quotes easier to compare.
Technical reference: Google’s guidance on noindex and checking indexing rules.
A ranking, a click, and an enquiry are different results
Illustrative situation: a rank tracker shows a prominent position, but Search Console shows no clicks for the period. That does not identify the cause. The tracker may represent a different date, device, location, or search appearance.
- Match the observation. Record the exact query, page, search type, country, device, dates, and data source. Keep a single snapshot separate from average position.
- Check exposure. If relevant impressions are scarce, inspect indexing, demand, page intent, and competing URLs before ordering more of the same content.
- Check the search result. If exposure is present but clicks are weak, inspect the displayed title, snippet, competing answers, and buyer intent. A small sample cannot identify a stable cause.
- Check the visit and response. When visitors arrive but enquiries do not, test the offer, page, and form. When enquiries arrive but stall, inspect qualification and lead follow-up.
- Choose the next work from the finding. Record a hypothesis, the intended change, an owner, and a comparable review window. Keep shipped work, search visibility, and qualified enquiries in separate columns.
A measurement record you can adapt
This filled example shows what remains unresolved in the illustrative situation above. Copy the fields into your review document and replace them with your evidence.
- Rank observation
- A prominent position is reported by a tracking tool. The exact query, URL, date, device, and location still need to be recorded.
- Search Console observation
- No clicks in the example period. Impressions, exact period, search type, query/page pairing, country, and device are unknown until the report is checked.
- Qualified enquiries
- Unknown. Define the accepted service, market, and project criteria; record the source and who classifies each enquiry.
- What this establishes
- The two observations are not yet comparable. The cause of the missing clicks remains unresolved.
- Next investigation
- Align the query, URL, dates, and available filters. Then choose the relevant exposure, search-result, or visit check above.
- Owner and next review
- Assign the person who can access both reports. Set the review date after the missing evidence can be collected, before approving more production.
Search Console reports clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position with selectable filters. These are not identical to visits or sales records. See Google’s Performance report documentation.
For AI visibility, keep the exact question, platform, date, cited URL, and answer context. A citation observation does not establish a visit or an enquiry. Google says its existing SEO practices apply to its AI search features; there is no separate technical shortcut. See Google’s AI features guidance.
Agree ownership, review, and handoff
Before work begins
Identify the account and file owners, the decision maker, the implementer, and the access each needs. Agree what requires approval, how scope changes are accepted, and what happens when input is late.
Separate a technical recommendation from permission to change production. Name the testing, publishing, and rollback responsibility.
At review or exit
Review planned, shipped, and blocked work alongside search and business results. Decide what continues, changes, or stops. New output is not automatically the next priority.
Agree account access, source files, unfinished work, ongoing dependencies, notice, and handoff. Read the actual payment and commitment terms rather than inferring them from “monthly.”
Questions before you choose SEO support
Does an SEO audit include fixes?
Only when implementation is included in the scope. A report, a developer handoff, and a tested live correction are different deliverables. Ask which one you are buying and who is responsible for the next step.
Can a retainer start without a separate SEO audit?
Yes. Diagnosis can be the first named phase of an ongoing engagement. Agree its questions, outputs, implementation responsibilities, and approval point before the recurring work starts.
Is one-time SEO enough?
A finite project can resolve a finite problem. Whether more work is needed depends on what changes afterward: the website, products, competition, search demand, and business priorities. Monthly billing alone does not establish a need for monthly work.
Who implements technical changes?
The proposal should name the provider, your developer, or another responsible person. Confirm repository or CMS access, review, publishing, rollback, and live testing. An advisory retainer may leave these tasks with your team.
How do I compare SEO prices fairly?
Use the same work package and period. Add diagnosis, implementation, production, quality checks, recurring fees, and agreed extras once each. Keep your own team’s time separate and mark every excluded task and missing estimate.
What should I receive when ongoing work ends?
Agree the handoff before work begins: account access, source files, completed changes, unfinished work, measurement definitions, and responsibility for anything still running. Check the actual notice and cancellation terms in the proposal.
Need the SEO work carried out?
Stan Consulting scopes SEO and AI visibility around your website, priorities and available team. Share the pages, the work you need and any proposal questions. We agree scope, price and timing before work starts.
Review an existing relationship with our agency performance worksheet. If you are changing providers, use the agency handoff guide.