Why nobody itemizes this
If you've paid for SEO before and couldn't say what you got, the problem wasn't you. Vagueness is a business model: "ongoing optimization" and "authority building" can mean forty hours of skilled work or a $50 tool run once, and the invoice looks identical either way.
So this post is the itemization. Everything below is work we actually ship inside retainers — it comes from our own delivery logs, not a services brochure. For each line item: what it is, why it matters, and how you'd verify it got done. If a proposal can't survive being compared against a list like this, that tells you something.
Line item 1: technical fixes — 404s, redirects, Core Web Vitals, sitemaps
What it is. Repairing the plumbing. Broken pages returning 404 errors get fixed or redirected. Old URLs that moved get 301 redirects so their history isn't thrown away. Core Web Vitals — Google's speed and stability measurements — get tuned: image compression, script cleanup, layout fixes. The sitemap gets rebuilt so Google has an accurate map of what exists.
Why it matters. Google can't rank what it can't reach, and it discounts what loads badly. Technical debt quietly caps everything else you pay for — you can publish brilliant content into a site that's leaking crawl budget through 404s and watch it go nowhere.
What "done" looks like. A before/after list: these URLs returned errors, here's where each one goes now. A PageSpeed score you can re-run yourself at pagespeed.web.dev. A sitemap you can open in a browser. This category is the most verifiable work in SEO — which is exactly why vague agencies avoid specifics here.
It's also often the fastest-moving work. One e-commerce client of ours had been online since 2014 with Googlebot literally blocked at the CDN — the crawler physically couldn't read the site. Unblocking it and fixing the foundation moved real numbers inside a month:
One caveat, because we publish those: that's a 28-day window, not a permanent trend line. Technical fixes buy a step change; holding it is what the rest of this list is for.
Line item 2: schema deployment — named types, not "structured data"
What it is. Schema is machine-readable labeling added to your pages so search engines and AI answer engines know exactly what they're looking at — this is a business, this is a service, this is a question and its answer, this is a product with a price. The types we deploy, by name: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, Product, and for medical clients, MedicalClinic. We name the types because we actually ship them.
Why it matters. Schema is how your content becomes eligible for rich results — review stars, FAQ dropdowns, business panels — and it's increasingly how AI engines decide what's citable. In 2026, an unlabeled page is a page volunteering to be paraphrased without credit.
What "done" looks like. You can check it yourself in about a minute: paste any page URL into Google's Rich Results Test. Valid schema shows up as named types with green checks. If an agency bills for "structured data" and that test comes back empty, you have your answer.
Line item 3: location and service page builds
What it is. Individual pages matching how people actually search — by area ("locksmith Mandarin FL"), by service ("garage door spring repair"), by specific product or vehicle. Not one generic page trying to rank for everything.
Why it matters. Search intent is specific and Google matches specific pages to it. The trap is templated junk — the same page duplicated with a city name swapped in — which is exactly what recent core updates punish. Every page has to say something true and particular about that area or service, or it doesn't ship.
What "done" looks like. A list of URLs that exist now and didn't before, each answering a real query, each with the schema from line item 2. For one local client, six ZIP-targeted location pages and six vehicle-specific pages were the backbone of a core-update recovery — the full story is in our recovery case study.
Line item 4: content production — with a human on every piece
What it is. Articles and guides, typically 1,100–2,400 words, on a steady cadence, targeting the keyword tiers you approved (more on that approval below). Yes, we use AI in production — we built our own pipeline and we say so openly. No, nothing publishes without a human editor and an E-E-A-T check.
Why it matters. Content is how you rank for the questions your customers ask before they know your name — and how AI engines learn you're the answer. But volume without review is how sites get flattened: Google's June 2026 spam update went after exactly that kind of scaled, unreviewed output. The human review step is the difference between a content system and a content spam operation.
What "done" looks like. Published URLs, on schedule, each with a real named author, full Article schema, and internal links into your service pages. Count them. They're either live or they're not.
Line item 5: Google Business Profile and reviews
What it is. For local businesses, active management of the Business Profile — categories, services, photos, posts, Q&A — plus a systematic review-request process: ask every customer, at the right moment, every time. No incentives, no gating, no purchased reviews.
Why it matters. For a local service business, the map pack often matters more than the blue links, and reviews are both a ranking input and the thing customers actually read. The fix is boring process, and boring process is what most businesses never set up.
What "done" looks like. The count and the stars, on a date. One client of ours went from 45 Google reviews to 165 — every one at 5.0 stars — in a single quarter, from process alone (Diamond Locksmith, Google Business Profile, May 2026). You can watch that number move month to month without trusting anyone's report.
Line item 6: E-E-A-T fixes — real people behind the content
What it is. E-E-A-T is Google's shorthand for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. The fixes are concrete: real named authors with real bios replacing ghost bylines, author schema, credentials shown where they exist, contact information a human can actually use.
Why it matters. Google keeps tightening the screws on anonymous, unaccountable content — and AI engines prefer citing sources with identifiable people behind them. It sounds soft; it isn't.
What "done" looks like. Look at any article on the site and see who wrote it. For a 39-year-old industrial furnace manufacturer in Spain, we replaced a fake author byline with the client's actual engineer and produced genuinely technical content under his name — and the commercial keyword "aluminum consulting" moved from position 9.5 to 6.7, onto page 1 (Google Search Console, May–June 2026). Rankings followed the real person.
Line item 7: the monthly report — GSC data or it didn't happen
What it is. A monthly document listing work completed line by line, keyword movement, Google Search Console data attached, and next month's priorities. Not "rankings improved." Which rankings. By how much. Since when.
Why it matters. The report is the whole relationship. It's how you know whether the previous six line items happened, and it's the mechanism that keeps an agency honest — including when the news is bad. We've told a client their clicks dropped 23% on purpose, because we'd deliberately removed pages attracting the wrong visitors while impressions for the right queries hit their highest level ever (a Canadian consumer lender, Google Search Console, month 1: impressions 55,882 → 74,921, +34%). A report that can say "this number went down, and here's why that's correct" is worth more than twelve months of green arrows.
What "done" looks like. You should be able to open your own Search Console — you have access, because it's your property — and see the same numbers the report shows. If those two things can't be compared, the report is marketing, not reporting.
Questions to ask any agency — including ours
Take this list into any sales call. The answers separate delivery shops from invoice generators:
- "Show me last month's report for a current client, redacted." If it's a traffic chart and three adjectives, that's what you'll get too.
- "Which schema types will you deploy on my site, by name?" "Structured data best practices" is not an answer. LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage is.
- "Who approves the keyword strategy before work starts?" The correct answer is: you do.
- "What happens to the work if I cancel?" Anything other than "it all stays, and you keep every credential" is a hostage arrangement.
- "Do you use AI in production, and what reviews it?" "We never use AI" in 2026 is either false or inefficient. The real question is whether a human gates every publish.
- "Will you guarantee rankings?" The trick question. If they say yes, leave — they're guaranteeing something they don't control.
The terms that protect you
Deliverables are half the retainer. The other half is the terms, and this is where burned buyers should read slowest. Ours, in writing:
- You approve the keyword strategy before we execute. Nothing gets built against targets you haven't signed off on.
- You keep everything. Content, technical work, schema — it's your site. On cancellation you keep Search Console, analytics, and every credential. Nothing gets removed on termination.
- Month-to-month is normal here. SEO compounds over months, but that's an argument for earning the renewal — not for a 12-month contract that removes the reason to.
An agency confident in its deliverables doesn't need a long contract to keep you. The lock-in is doing the work well.
Questions we get about retainers
Do you guarantee rankings?
No — and nobody honestly can, because Google isn't ours to promise. What we commit to is named deliverables on a schedule and reporting that shows exactly what moved. Anyone guaranteeing "page one in 30 days" is guaranteeing something they don't control.
How long until I see results?
Technical fixes can move things in weeks — one e-commerce client saw clicks up 27.9% in 28 days after crawl and schema fixes. Content and authority compound over months. In the audit we tell you which bucket your situation is in, honestly, before you commit to anything.
What's in the monthly report?
Work completed line by line, keyword movement, Google Search Console data attached, and a preview of next month's priorities. You will never receive a vague summary. If a number went down, the report says so and explains why.
Andres Marin
Founder & Strategy at AM Consulting Marketing. Sets the strategy behind every retainer on this list and answers the email on the contact page personally.
This list is our actual retainer — the full version, with proof, lives at SEO & AI Search services. If you'd rather start by finding out what your site is invisible for, the free 20-point audit covers technical SEO, schema, and AI-search visibility — no call required.