Slide 05 of 39
What Services Should a Professional SEO Company Provide?
A professional SEO company should cover eight services: a prioritized technical audit, keyword research mapped to specific pages, on-page and content work, link building you can inspect, local SEO if you serve a defined area, monthly reporting tied to leads, ongoing competitor tracking, and strategy support for migrations and business changes. Use the checklist below to test any proposal before you sign.
The Checklist
| Service | Proof to ask for | Minimum cadence (our recommendation) |
|---|---|---|
| Technical audit and fix log | A prioritized issue list and a log of fixes shipped | Full audit at kickoff, monitoring monthly |
| Keyword research and mapping | The keyword map: one row per URL with its target query and intent | Refreshed each quarter or before major content work |
| On-page and content work | A list of pages changed, what changed and why; new content counted separately | Monthly, tied to a content calendar |
| Link building | Live URLs of recent placements, the tactic behind each, and whether any were paid | Monthly placements reported |
| Local SEO (if you serve an area) | Business Profile changes, listing corrections, review responses | Monthly; listing audit each quarter |
| Reporting | A sample report with leads or revenue next to rankings and traffic | Monthly, with a live dashboard |
| Competitor tracking | Visibility and link gains of named competitors agreed at the start | Reviewed monthly in reporting |
| Strategy and migration support | A written scope before any redesign, migration or relaunch | As needed, agreed in writing in advance |
These cadences are our recommendation, not an industry standard. What matters is that a proposal states a cadence for every row that applies to you, so you can check it was kept. If any applicable row is missing without a written reason, ask what is excluded, who will do that work instead, and what it will cost.
Technical Audit
A technical audit is the diagnostic starting point: a full crawl of the site checked against Search Console’s Page indexing report (older guides call it the Index Coverage report) and its Core Web Vitals report. The Mobile Usability report and the Mobile-Friendly Test were retired by Google on December 1, 2023, so a proposal that promises to monitor them is working from old notes. The audit should arrive as a prioritized list, separating what is costing rankings now from minor cleanup, not as a raw export of every warning a crawler produced. How the audit is run and scored is set out in how an SEO company conducts a technical SEO audit.
Keyword Research and Mapping
Every page should be mapped to a target keyword or keyword cluster before content work begins, which helps stop two pages on the same site from competing for the same query. The map should record intent as well as volume, so the page type (guide, comparison, service page, product page) matches what the searcher wants. What to ask for: the keyword map itself.
On-Page and Content Work
This covers title tags, meta descriptions, headings, internal links and the substance of the copy compared with what already ranks. The agency should rewrite or restructure underperforming pages so they answer the query better than the current top results, and list what changed on each page and why.
New content is a separate line item with its own cost. The proposal should say who writes it (the agency, your team or a freelancer), how many pieces a month, and who approves them. If it lists “content” without a number, ask.
Link Building You Can Inspect
A full engagement should include some form of link acquisition, whether digital PR, editorial guest posts or reclaiming unlinked mentions. Ask for the last ten placements with live URLs, the tactic behind each and whether any were paid. Links bought to pass ranking credit fall under Google’s link spam policies, so a vendor that will not show its placements leaves you unable to check that risk. Compare the tactics in what link building strategies an SEO company uses.
Local SEO and Google Business Profile
For a business with a physical location or a defined service area, the scope should include Google Business Profile work, consistent business listings across directories, a review request and response process, and local links. For the role and its limits, read what role an SEO company plays in local SEO.
Reporting
Google Analytics and Search Console should be set up correctly at the start of the engagement, with a monthly report that connects rankings and traffic to leads and revenue. Check any sample report against the contents and warning signs in what reporting to expect from a professional SEO company.
Competitor Tracking
Competitors’ visibility, content output and link gains should be tracked on an ongoing basis, not only in a one-time audit during the sales process. A competitor that launches a new content cluster or wins a batch of links is a signal that should appear in your report and shape next month’s priorities.
Strategy and Migration Support
This service can end up as a single sentence in a sales deck. It covers adapting the plan after major Google updates, advising when the business changes (a new product line, a new service area), and, above all, migrations. A redesign or rebrand done without SEO input can lose rankings the site spent years earning. Before any migration, the agency should build a URL-by-URL redirect map, monitor crawling and indexing in the weeks after launch, and have a rollback plan for launch defects such as missing redirects, a sitewide noindex or broken templates. Google’s site move guide says to expect temporary fluctuation in rankings while it recrawls and reindexes a moved site, so a dip on its own calls for checking redirects and indexing, not for rolling back. Because a migration is project work, it should be scoped and priced in writing before it starts.
Not Every Business Needs All Eight at Once
A small site in a low-competition local market may get more from a one-time technical audit plus local SEO than from a full retainer. The full set makes sense when you compete for non-local terms, run a large site, or are planning a migration. To turn that scope into a budget, use the typical pricing model of an SEO company.
Whatever the scope, your Google Analytics, Search Console and Business Profile accounts should stay in your name, with the agency added as a user.
How to Check the Services Work Together
Before signing, ask the agency for one month of an anonymized client work log that connects the rows: which audit fix, which keyword-map change and which content update came out of the previous month’s report. If it cannot show that link, the services may be running as separate line items rather than as one program.