# What should my SEO retainer deliver?

Quote: "I'm paying for SEO. I don't know what I get."
Canonical: https://fortitudemedia.ai/sound-familiar/paying-for-seo-dont-know-what-i-get
No. 5 of 20 in "Sound familiar?" (https://fortitudemedia.ai/sound-familiar)
Service: Website That Sells (https://fortitudemedia.ai/website-that-sells)
Publisher: Fortitude Media Limited

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## How do I know if my SEO agency is doing anything?

Ask for a dated list of what was changed on the website last month, and why. Real search work leaves evidence: pages rewritten, faults fixed, coverage earned on other sites. An agency that can show only rankings and traffic charts is reporting on the weather. The test that matters is whether enquiries from people who did not already know the firm are rising.

The direct debit goes out every month. A report arrives with green arrows and a rising graph. You could not name one thing that changed on your website last quarter.

## Why you cannot see what you are buying

### The report measures what is easy to push up

Rankings for phrases nobody buys from, impressions, a visibility score invented by the agency's own software. All can rise for a year while enquiries stay flat.

### You are paying for a retainer, not for work

Many SEO contracts name a monthly fee and no deliverables. The hours go to whichever client complains loudest. If you never ask what was done, the true answer some months is not much.

### The target moved and the contract did not

Your retainer was probably scoped for a list of ten links on Google. Buyers now also ask an AI assistant and get two or three names. Work aimed only at the old results page misses part of how you are found.

## What it is costing you

Multiply the monthly fee by the months you have paid it. For example, £1,500 a month for three years is £54,000. Now count the clients you can trace to a search by someone who had never heard of you. Divide the first number by the second for your cost per client. If you cannot count them at all, that is the finding.

## Check it yourself in ten minutes

You need last month's report, your contract and a Google Search Console login.

1. Email the agency for a dated list of every change made to your site in the past three months.
2. Read the contract for deliverables. If it lists only a fee and a notice period, you have your explanation.
3. Open Search Console yourself, not the agency's dashboard. Compare clicks from searches without your company name against the same months last year.
4. Pick the three keywords the report is proudest of. Ask your sales lead whether a buyer has ever used those words.

## What we would do in the first 90 days

Whoever does the work, you should be able to see it.

- **Week 1:** We agree the 40 to 150 questions your buyers ask and record, every week, who ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google name for each. That replaces the keyword list.
- **Weeks 2 to 8:** Pages are written for those questions, answer first, with prices, timelines, locations and credentials marked up so machines can read them.
- **Weeks 9 to 13:** At least one improvement a week, dated and logged with the reason. On the first Monday of each month, a one-page report.

This is Website That Sells: build £5,000 to £10,000, run from £999 a month, live in 4 to 8 weeks, all excluding VAT.

## Questions founders ask

### Should I sack my SEO agency?

Not on the strength of this page. Run the check first. Some agencies do solid work and report it badly. A dated change list will show that. If the list is thin or never arrives, give notice. A month's pause while you decide is unlikely to undo work that was real.

### Is SEO dead now that people ask AI assistants?

No. Google still sends buyers to websites, and AI assistants read many of the same pages. The prize has changed: being named in the answer, rather than sitting third in a list. The work overlaps: clear pages that answer real questions.

### What would it cost to do this in-house?

The 2026 UK median for a content and search manager is £42,055, before employer National Insurance, pension, software and recruiter fees. Website That Sells runs from £999 a month after a build of £5,000 to £10,000, plus VAT. Either route can work.

## Related

- "We rebuilt it two years ago and nothing changed." · https://fortitudemedia.ai/sound-familiar/we-rebuilt-the-website-and-nothing-changed
- "I can't tell what marketing made us." · https://fortitudemedia.ai/sound-familiar/cannot-tell-what-marketing-made-us

Next step: a free 30-minute Growth Review with a founder, ending with three fixes in writing. https://fortitudemedia.ai/growth-review