Monthly SEO packages: how to read a tier and turn it into a deliverable list

A monthly SEO package is a fixed fee retainer in exchange for a stated amount of work each month, usually sold in three tiers that differ by how many pages get written, how many technical fixes get made and how senior the people doing it are. The useful way to buy one is to ignore the tier names and convert every package into a list of named deliverables with quantities, then compare three proposals on that list. A package that cannot be written as a deliverable list is selling hours, and you will not be able to tell at the end of the quarter what you received.

Packages exist because SEO work is continuous and because agencies need predictable revenue. Both are reasonable. The problem is that "SEO package" describes a price point rather than a scope, so two packages at a similar price can contain completely different amounts of work.

What the three tiers usually contain

	Entry tier	Mid tier	Top tier
Typical buyer	Single location local business, small site	Multi location or multi service business, growing ecommerce	Ecommerce at scale, business to business with a long cycle, multi site or multi market
Content	One or two pages a month	Several pages a month plus improvements to existing ones	A content programme with a writer assigned, original research, and editorial review
Technical	Initial audit, then fixes as needed	Monthly crawl, a fix list, and implementation support	Ongoing technical ownership, template work, structured data, log file analysis, developer liaison
Local	Business Profile management, citations, review prompts	Location pages and per location profile management	Multi market or multi language handling
Links and mentions	Little or none	Outreach and digital public relations, described by method	A dedicated earned coverage programme
Reporting	A monthly dashboard	Dashboard plus a call	Dashboard, call, and a quarterly strategy review with your leadership
Seniority	A coordinator running a process	A specialist with a strategist overseeing	A senior strategist leading, with specialists per discipline

The difference that matters most across tiers is the last row. Seniority is what you are really buying, because the diagnosis is the part of SEO that creates or destroys the value of everything else.

Convert the package into a deliverable list

Ask every agency to restate its package as this list, with numbers. Any firm doing good work can do this in an afternoon.

• Pages written and published per month, with a word range, who writes them and who reviews them.
• Existing pages improved per month.
• Technical fixes delivered per month, and whether the agency deploys them or hands them to your developers.
• Crawls and audits per quarter, and what happens to the findings.
• Location or service pages built, if local work is in scope.
• Link and mention work, described as the outreach method and the type of target rather than a count of links.
• Meetings included, and who attends from their side.
• Reporting cadence and the exact metrics in the report.
• Response time for urgent issues.
• Hours of the senior strategist's time per month, named.

What drives the price

• Seniority and location of the team. The largest single factor. A senior strategist's time costs what it costs.
• Content volume and difficulty. Technical, medical, legal or financial writing costs more because the writer has to understand the subject and the work needs review.
• Site size and complexity. A ten page site and a fifty thousand page catalogue are different jobs entirely.
• Competition in the category. Contested commercial categories need more and better work to move.
• Whether the agency implements. Handing you a fix list is cheaper than deploying the fixes. Decide which you need, because an unimplemented list costs you the whole month.
• Markets and languages. Each additional market multiplies the content and the technical work.

Terms to settle before signing

• Account ownership. Search Console, analytics, tag manager, Business Profile and any tracking must be in your accounts with the agency given access, never the reverse.
• Content ownership. Everything written for you is yours and stays on your site if the relationship ends.
• Notice period. Thirty days after an initial term is normal and reasonable. A long lock in with no notice is worth negotiating.
• Rollover of unused deliverables, and what happens when a month is light because you were slow to approve.
• Named team, and what happens if the named people leave the account.
• Link disclosure. Ask in writing whether any links are paid for, because paid links that pass ranking signals are against Google's published guidelines and the risk lands on your domain, not theirs.

The promises to walk away from

Be direct here, because this is where buyers lose money. Google's own documentation states that no one can promise a number one ranking. So treat these as decisive:

• A specific ranking position offered before anyone has looked at your site or your competitors.
• A fixed number of links per month at a fixed price, which is the shape of a paid link programme.
• An inside relationship with Google, or priority submission. Neither exists.
• Rankings reported for queries nobody searches, which is the oldest way to make a flat quarter look successful. Insist that the tracked query list is agreed by you and stays fixed.
• Traffic growth quoted with no baseline and no mention of which pages or queries it came from.

A credible proposal commits to the diagnosis, the output and the cadence, names the query set, and reports against it honestly every month.

This page covers how to read and buy a monthly SEO package. For one off projects such as a migration, an audit or a site build, buy those as fixed scope projects with acceptance criteria rather than folding them into a retainer.

Questions buyers ask about Monthly SEO packages

How much should a monthly SEO package cost?

Price follows the deliverable list and the seniority of the team, not the tier name. The reliable way to find your number is to write your own deliverable list and send it to three agencies of different sizes. Three quotes for the same list tell you the market rate for your scope; three tier prices tell you nothing comparable.

Is a monthly retainer better than a project?

Retainers suit continuous work: content, technical maintenance, local management and reporting. Projects suit bounded work: a migration, a deep audit, a site restructure, a content build out. Many businesses run a project first to fix what is broken, then a smaller retainer to keep it moving.

How long should we commit for?

Ask for a three month initial term with a defined ninety day review, then month to month with thirty days notice. Three months is long enough for technical fixes to show in indexing and impressions, and short enough that a poor fit is cheap to leave.

What should we see in the first month?

A written diagnosis naming the main constraint with evidence, a prioritised fix list with effort and expected effect against each item, a tracked query set agreed with you, and the first work shipped. A first month that produces only an onboarding call and a tool report is a warning.

Can we start with the cheapest tier and move up?

Yes, and it is often sensible, provided the entry tier includes a real diagnosis rather than an automated audit. The risk with the cheapest tier is that it funds activity without enough senior thinking to aim it, so check the seniority line specifically before you buy it.

One deliverable worth asking to add

Ask whether the package includes a monthly check of what buyers see when they put your category questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews: whether you are named, and which sources the answer cited.

It belongs next to the rank report because it answers the same question for a surface the rank report does not cover. Those five answer differently, name different companies and cite different sources, and they share no common ranking, so each one needs checking separately and on a schedule. Few packages include it yet, which makes it a quick read on which agencies are keeping up. AI Knows Us measures those answers and the sources behind them.