Ongoing SEO, done rather than documented

A monthly agreement covering ongoing search work rather than a one-off project — research, content, technical fixes and reporting, delivered continuously against a plan. The distinction that matters is that a retainer buys implementation, not advice: the pages get built and the fixes get made, rather than being written up for someone else to action.

The work that only pays off by being repeated: publishing against a keyword plan, updating pages as they age, catching technical drift, and building internal links between what you already have. One-off SEO fixes what is broken. Ongoing SEO compounds — each new page makes the ones around it stronger.

Across the UK freelance market, roughly £800 to £4,000 a month depending on scope and who is doing the work. Here it is £1,999 a month for part-time and £3,999 for full growth management, both scoped in writing before you commit. Anything advertised well under that is usually a junior working from a template, and anything well over is usually paying for an account management layer.

Ask for three things before money is discussed: a specific opinion about your site rather than a generic pitch, an example of a number they reported that went the wrong way, and what happens to the work if you leave. Anyone unwilling to answer the second one is not going to report honestly once you are paying them.

In my case: keyword research from your own search data, writing and building the pages that come out of it, fixing the technical problems stopping those pages ranking, and reporting what happened. Some consultants advise and hand over; I implement, which is why there is no separate development bill.

A full audit once, properly, then a lighter technical check every quarter. Sites break through change, not through time — a redesign, a plugin update or a migration will do more damage in one afternoon than six months of neglect. On a retainer the checking is continuous, which is largely the point.

No. Rolling monthly, cancel whenever. I would rather earn the next month than rely on a twelve-month agreement, and the reporting is built so you can tell whether it is working without taking my word for it.

You keep all of it. The pages are on your site, the technical fixes stay fixed, and I will hand over the keyword plan and the tracking. Rankings will not vanish when you stop paying — they will stop growing, which is a different thing and worth being clear about.

You get the person doing the work, at a lower rate, because there is no account management layer to fund. The trade-off is real: an agency has cover when someone is ill and can run paid, social and SEO at once. If you need breadth at pace, hire the agency. If you want depth on search from someone who will still be doing it in six months, hire a freelancer.