407-233-3387A monthly SEO package should contain four categories of work: technical, on-page, off-page, and local. If a proposal cannot show you specific deliverables in all four, you are looking at a reporting subscription rather than an SEO service.
Here is what belongs in each, with the quantities you should expect to see written down rather than implied.
Thinking of doing SEO?
We can help. Drop your info below and we’ll take a free look at your Google Business Profile and website, then tell you straight what’s holding your rankings back.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (407) 233-3387 or send us a message.
1. Technical SEO
This is the plumbing. It rarely produces a dramatic ranking jump on its own, but nothing else works reliably until it is right.
- Crawl and index management — sitemap, robots, canonicals, no accidental noindex tags
- Core Web Vitals — load speed, layout stability, mobile responsiveness
- Broken link and redirect cleanup
- Schema markup: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, and Organization
- HTTPS, and no mixed content warnings
- Search Console monitoring with someone actually reading the errors
Expect this to be heavy in month one and light maintenance afterwards. An agency billing you full technical hours every month for two years is padding.
2. On-page SEO and content
This is where most of the monthly hours should go after the first quarter, and it is the line item most commonly left vague.
- A stated number of new pages or posts per month — get the number in writing
- Title tags and meta descriptions written for click-through, not just keywords
- One clear H1 per page and a logical heading structure
- Original copy written by a human who understands your trade
- Image compression, descriptive file names, and alt text
- Internal linking that connects new pages to your money pages
Ask directly: how many pieces, how many words, and who writes them. “Content optimization” with no quantity attached usually means someone touching a title tag.
3. Off-page SEO and backlinks
The most expensive part to do properly and the easiest to fake.
- A specific number of link placements per month
- A report listing every live URL — not a count, the actual links
- Local citations built and cleaned, with duplicates merged
- Industry directories relevant to your trade
- Digital PR or community sponsorships where they fit
- A natural anchor text mix, weighted toward branded
If an agency will not show you links they built for other clients, assume there are none to show.
4. Local SEO
For any business with a physical location or a service area, this is often the fastest-returning category in the whole package.
- Google Business Profile management — categories, services, products, attributes
- Weekly posts and monthly fresh photos
- Review generation running off your customer list, and responses to every review
- Q&A seeding and monitoring
- Geo-grid rank tracking so you can see coverage, not just one position
- Name, address, and phone consistency across the web
5. Reporting and communication
Not the work, but the proof of it.
- A monthly report in plain language, not a 40-page automated PDF
- Rankings, traffic, calls, form fills, and direction requests
- What was done last month and what is planned next month
- A human you can call
What is usually missing
- Conversion tracking. Plenty of agencies report traffic and have no idea how many calls it produced.
- Quantities. Vague verbs instead of counted deliverables.
- Ownership. Who owns the site, the domain, the Analytics property, and the content if you leave?
- The first-90-days plan. A real agency can tell you exactly what happens in month one.
A fair way to compare two proposals
Ignore the branding and build a table. Rows: pages per month, links per month, posts per month, reviews requested, technical hours, reporting cadence, contract length, and who owns what. Fill in both columns. The cheaper proposal is often cheaper because half the rows are empty, and that becomes obvious in about four minutes.
Keep reading
- Compare against real numbers in our Orlando pricing guide.
- See the technical half in detail on our technical SEO page.
- Browse what we do on our SEO and web design services page.
- See recent builds in our project gallery.
- Ready to talk? Get in touch with Mamba Media.
Thinking of doing SEO?
We can help. Drop your info below and we’ll take a free look at your Google Business Profile and website, then tell you straight what’s holding your rankings back.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (407) 233-3387 or send us a message.