A monthly SEO package for a small local business should buy a list of named tasks done each month, and a report that ties that work to what customers searched, how often they called and how many enquiries arrived. It should not buy a promise about rankings. Google’s own page on hiring an SEO says so plainly: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
What SEO work for a local business actually is
Google’s page Do you need an SEO? lists what an SEO can do for you: review your site’s content and structure, give technical advice, write content, research the words people search, train you, and bring knowledge of your market and area. It also lists “optimizing for generative AI”.
For a plumber, a café or a clinic, most of that comes down to a short set of jobs: a page for each service that says what you do and where, a Google Business Profile that is complete and current, a steady flow of reviews, a few genuine local links, and a site that loads quickly and that Google can read. Local SEO explained goes through each one.
The same Google page is candid about who needs help: “If you’re a small, local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself.” That is worth knowing before you sign anything. It does not mean an SEO is a waste of money. It means the work is ordinary enough that you should be able to understand every line of what you are paying for.
What a monthly package should include
Most of the work is front-loaded. The first month or two fix what is wrong: missing service pages, a profile in the wrong category, pages Google has not indexed. After that the monthly work is smaller, and a package that charges the same every month for ever should be able to say what it does in month seven.
A package worth paying for names its tasks. A reasonable month for a local business looks something like this:
- A check of Search Console for indexing problems, security issues and manual actions, with anything found fixed or reported to you.
- One page improved or written: a service page, an area page with something true to say about the area, or an answer to a question customers keep asking.
- Google Business Profile upkeep: hours, services, photos, and replies to new reviews if you have asked them to reply.
- One or two genuine local links pursued, named in the report whether or not they came off.
- A written report, and a short call or email if you want one.
If a proposal lists “on-page optimisation”, “technical SEO” and “link building” without saying what happens under each heading this month, ask. Google’s page has a line for this: “Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.”
What the monthly report should show
The report should use your figures, not theirs. Two free Google tools and your own records hold almost everything a local business needs to know:
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Search Console
Search Console shows the searches that put your site in front of people, how many times it appeared, and how many clicked, page by page.
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Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile shows the calls, direction requests and website clicks that came from your listing on Maps and in search.
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Your own enquiries
Your own enquiries are the figure that matters most and the one only you can count: calls, forms, WhatsApp messages and bookings, and roughly where each came from.
A useful report joins those up. It says what was done, what moved, what did not, and what happens next. An invented example of the difference:
- Right “We rewrote the boiler servicing page and added the five towns you cover. Search Console shows clicks for searches containing ‘boiler service’ up from 14 to 31 over three months. Next month: the landlord safety certificate page.”
- Not a forty-page PDF of rankings for two hundred phrases, a “domain authority” score, and a graph of “visibility” with no link to a single enquiry.
Rankings tables are not useless, but they flatter. A local business can rank first for a phrase nobody searches, and results vary by where the searcher is standing. Clicks and calls are harder to dress up.
The questions Google says to ask
Google’s page gives a list of questions to put to any SEO before hiring them. These are the ones that matter most for a small local business, in Google’s words, with what to listen for:
- “Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?” Ask for local businesses like yours, and ask whether you may call one of them.
- “Do you follow the Google Search Essentials (previously known as Webmaster Guidelines)?” The answer should be yes without a pause. Search Essentials is Google’s rulebook, and its spam policies are part of it.
- “What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?” Get the answer in writing, so you can hold them to it at the review.
- “How do you measure your success?” If the answer is rankings alone, ask about calls and enquiries.
- “What’s your experience in my country/city?” For a local business this is the question. Someone who has never worked in your area will not know which towns your customers search by.
- “How can I expect to communicate with you?” And how often, and who with.
Red flags
Some things on a proposal should end the conversation. Google’s spam policies and its SEO page between them cover most of them.
Guaranteed rankings. Google: “If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.” Nobody controls Google’s results, and the map results for a local search change with where the searcher is.
A number of links a month. “Fifty backlinks a month” is a promise to buy or manufacture links, and Google’s spam policies define link spam as creating links “primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings”, including “exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links”. Sites that break the policies “may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all”.
Submissions and directories by the thousand. Google calls submitting your site to “thousands of search engines” one of several “typically useless exercises”. A handful of directories that matter in your trade is a different thing from a package of hundreds.
Pages for every town, made from a template. Google’s spam policies name “doorway abuse”: pages “created to rank for specific, similar search queries”, including regional pages that all funnel to one place. An area page needs something true to say about the area, or it should not exist.
Cold emails. “Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue,” Google says. Google’s page even reproduces one of these emails as an example of what to ignore.
You carry the consequences of what your SEO does. Google’s page is plain about it: “Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire.” If an agency buys links or builds doorway pages and your site loses its place in the results, it is your site that has to recover, after the agency has gone. Ask in writing what they will and will not do, and keep the answer.
Keep the accounts in your name
Your Google Business Profile, your Search Console property and your analytics should all be owned by you, with the SEO added as a user. If they set them up in their own name, you find out what that means on the day you stop paying.
Search Console has a setting for it. As the owner, you add a user under Settings, then Users and permissions, and choose a level: a full user can see all the data and take some actions; a restricted user has “simple view rights on most data”. Google’s SEO page advises read access while someone is only auditing your site: “at this stage, don’t grant them write access.” Give more when you have agreed the work, and remove them when it ends.
Google Business Profile works the same way: you stay the owner and add them as a manager.
When to do it yourself instead
If the monthly fee would buy a task list you could work through in an hour a week, that is a reasonable choice. Most of what a local SEO package does is the routine in local SEO explained: keep the profile current, ask every happy customer for a review, improve one page a month, and look at Search Console once a month.
Pay someone when you want the hour back, when something is broken that you cannot find, or when the site itself is the problem. A good SEO will tell you which of those it is, and will tell you if it is none of them.
Paying for SEO and not sure what it is buying? Send us your site. The free review looks at it the way a customer and Google both see it, and tells you in writing the three things we would change first.
