SEO Retainer
from €990 / month
monthly, three months minimum
- All five pillars
- One or two pieces of content per month
- Monthly strategy call
- Plain-language reporting
SEO consulting and retainer for SMBs SEO as a system, not a trick.
Ongoing optimisation for companies that want enquiries from search: technical work, content by search intent, internal linking, schema and reporting you can actually read.
Takeover 25 Jul 2026
Rucker Elektro, clicks per day as a 7-day average, 4 Jun 2025 to 31 Aug 2026. Takeover on 25 Jul 2026. Source: Google Search Console.
Five pillars we work on every month.
No tricks, no bought links. The order follows the impact.
Strategy and search intent
Which search terms bring enquiries, which only traffic. Keyword clusters, intent map, prioritisation by revenue relevance.
Technical foundation
Indexing, crawling, Core Web Vitals, canonicals, structured data, clean sitemaps. What Google has to read before content can rank at all.
On-page and content
Service pages and articles that answer a search question completely. Titles, headings, copy that sounds like your company.
Architecture and internal links
Hub pages, topic clusters, linking with intent. That is how authority flows to where enquiries are made.
Measurement and reporting
Search Console, positions, clicks, enquiries. Monthly in plain language, including what got worse, not just what went up.
What the retainer includes.
The scope is fixed, the priorities are set fresh every month.
Every month
- Technical check and fixes
- One or two new pieces of intent-driven content
- Optimisation of existing pages
- Internal linking and schema
- Reporting with Search Console data
- Strategy call
When needed
- Reaction to current topics and law changes
- Google Business Profile
- Redirects and indexing after changes
- Coordination with your web developer
Not included
- Paid ads and social media
- Buying links
- Word count without search intent
Built around searches with buying intent.
For service businesses in DACH and internationally, ranking for transactional and navigational queries beats vague top-of-funnel reach. The commercial backbone comes first, topical depth after.
Service intent
Searches for what you sell, such as wallbox installation, tax advice for doctors or a beauty salon with online booking. Each of these searches gets its own page that answers it completely, instead of one catch-all page.
Location intent
Searches with a place attached, from the city to the wider catchment area. Google Business Profile, location pages and local schema are a discipline of their own: local SEO.
Brand-adjacent terms
People who already know your name search for it together with a service, a place or a price. These searches sit close to the enquiry and should end on your site, not in a directory.
Topical depth around the backbone
Articles and FAQ on the questions people ask before buying, each linked to the service page that solves the problem. Not a flat blog archive, but clusters with a clear direction.
Regulated industries
For insurance brokers and financial services, mandatory disclosures, a careful tone and a search logic of their own come on top. We build that out deliberately, see SEO for financial services.
Specific tools, specific methods.
These are the tools and methods we work with, named rather than paraphrased.
Crawl and log analysis
Screaming Frog for structure, Search Console crawl stats for how Googlebot behaves. We review server logs when the crawl budget looks suspect.
Performance
Field data from PageSpeed Insights plus WebPageTest to trace LCP, INP and CLS to their root cause. Lab scores alone never count as evidence.
Indexing hygiene
Page indexing report and URL Inspection for every priority template. Canonical, robots and hreflang are checked against each other, not in isolation.
Schema
JSON-LD per content type, validated in the Rich Results Test before every deploy. Structured data describes what is on the page, nothing more.
Reporting
Search Console, analytics and our own rank tracking, joined to one question: what changed, and why?
Continuous priorities
A live backlog ranked by impact and effort. No waiting for the quarterly report and no black box: every step appears in the monthly report with its reasoning.
Retainer or project, matching the work.
Three months minimum, then cancel monthly.
SEO Audit
€690
one-off
- Technical, on-page, content, architecture
- Prioritised action list
- Effort and impact per item
Website plus SEO foundation
from €3,900
fixed price, eight to twelve weeks
- Structure by search intent
- Technical foundation from day one
- Transition into the retainer possible
Three signals that it does not fit.
Better to say so up front than three months later.
- You need results in four weeks. SEO builds up, three months is the minimum in which we can show movement.
- Your offer has no search demand. Then paid or referral is the better channel, and we say so in the strategy call.
- You want guaranteed rankings. Nobody can do that seriously, and neither can we.
Further reading.
- SEO for AI Search 2026: What Business Websites NeedSEO for AI search is not a trick layer. Business websites need clear architecture, technical access, proof, internal links and measurable inquiry paths.
- Switching SEO agency without losing rankings or dataSwitching SEO agencies is trickier than starting with one. Switch wrong and you lose access, data and rankings at once. Switch right and your rankings never notice. Here is the order that makes the difference.
- SEO Audit Cost: What a Reliable Analysis Costs and What It Must IncludeAn SEO audit costs as much as the work that goes into it. How the price is made up, which questions make quotes comparable and what a finding looks like that is worth the money.
Patrick SosathFounder of seosath, responsible for strategy, code and SEO
From the first call to the reporting you deal with the same person. No hand-off to a junior team, no account management in between.
Common questions about the SEO retainer.
How fast will I see results?
Technical fixes take effect within weeks, intent-driven content needs two to four months to rank stably. That is why there is a three-month minimum.
Do I need a new website for this?
Not necessarily. If the technical foundation holds, we work on the existing site. If it does not, we say so in the strategy call, with reasons.
Who writes the content?
We do. You provide expertise in a short conversation, we turn it into copy that answers a search question completely and sounds like your company.
What do I see in the reporting?
Clicks, impressions and positions from Google Search Console in equal comparison windows. Enquiries are counted separately, via the website form and sales attribution, not from Search Console. And explicitly what got worse as well.
Do you guarantee top rankings?
No. Google ranks results, not promises, and nobody can seriously commit to positions. What we commit to is the work that compounds: architecture, intent-driven content, technical work and reporting that also shows what is not moving.
Is local SEO something different?
Yes. Local SEO covers Google Business Profile, location pages, consistent business data, reviews and local signals. For businesses with a catchment area it is a service of its own. Individual items such as the Google Business Profile can be handled within the retainer.
Do you do multilingual SEO in German and English?
Yes. We plan multilingual sites with a proper URL structure, hreflang, content per market and the search intent of each country. Half-translated pages do more harm than good.
What does my team need to contribute?
Expertise in short conversations, sign-off on content and access to Search Console and the website. We make technical changes ourselves or coordinate them with your web developer. Nothing moves without sign-offs, so we agree the routes before the start.
What does an SEO retainer cost?
The SEO retainer starts at €990 per month, with a three-month minimum and monthly cancellation after that. Every month includes a technical check and fixes, one or two new pieces of intent-driven content, optimisation of existing pages, internal linking and schema, reporting with Search Console data and a strategy call. If you first want to know where the website stands, start with the SEO audit at €690.
Can I cancel monthly?
Yes, after the first three months. You keep all content, access and documents.
First check whether SEO is the right lever for you.
In the strategy call we look at your Search Console live and tell you what needs attention first.
Reply within one working day. 60 to 75 minutes, €190, credited against your project fee.