What Should Ongoing SEO Include?
If you’re considering monthly SEO for your business, you should be able to answer a straightforward question: What work will happen, and how will I know whether it’s helping?
A proposal might mention keywords, content, technical improvements and reporting. Those are useful categories, but they don’t tell you what your business needs first or who will carry out the work.
A good SEO engagement connects your business goals to specific priorities, implements agreed improvements and reviews what happens next. Here’s what to look for before committing.
Initial setup: understand the business and establish a starting point
Before choosing keywords or writing articles, your SEO provider should understand which services you want to grow, who your ideal customers are and where you serve them.
An established business may need better visibility for a particular service rather than more visitors interested in everything it offers. That distinction should shape the plan.
The initial review may include:
- Your website’s foundations: whether important pages can be found and indexed, whether links work, and whether visitors can use the site on a phone.
- Your service content: whether pages clearly explain what you offer and answer the questions buyers ask.
- Your search presence: the searches and pages already generating visibility, plus relevant competitors.
- Your local information: business details and Google Business Profile information, where applicable.
- Your inquiry paths: whether someone can find the right next step and successfully contact you.
- Your measurement setup: what can be tracked reliably and what remains unknown.
The outcome should be a prioritized plan. You should know what needs attention first, why it matters and which work belongs in the initial setup versus the ongoing engagement.
Some websites need substantial repairs before additional content makes sense. Others have sound foundations but weak service descriptions or inconsistent follow-through.
Monthly work: implement, check and adjust
Once the initial work is complete, ongoing SEO should have a clear purpose.
Depending on the agreed scope, monthly work might include improving an existing service page, answering a useful customer question, correcting a newly discovered technical issue, strengthening internal links or updating relevant business information.
It should also include reviewing the evidence and deciding what deserves attention next.
That doesn’t mean every task happens every month. A useful plan responds to your business and the condition of your website. Publishing an article simply to meet a quota may be less valuable than improving a page that already attracts relevant searches.
Ask your provider to make deliverables specific. “Content optimization” is vague. “Revise the service page to explain who it helps, answer common buying questions and make the inquiry step clearer” gives you something you can review.
My SEO and search visibility service explains how I approach that recurring work, including priorities, implementation and reporting.
Approvals: know what needs your input
Your SEO provider can research and recommend, but you know your business.
Agree on an approval process for new content, descriptions of your services, claims about your experience, offers and substantial website changes. Routine technical work can follow an agreed authorization process, so you don’t have to approve every small correction individually.
The agreement should identify:
- Who reviews drafts and proposed changes.
- What the provider can implement within the approved scope.
- What must wait for your approval.
- How revisions and additional work are handled.
- Which tasks depend on access or information from you.
Paid advertising, social media management and larger website projects should be clearly scoped if they are part of the relationship. They shouldn’t be assumed to come with every SEO engagement.
Reporting: show the work and what happened afterward
A monthly report should help you make decisions.
You should be able to see what was completed, what the available evidence shows, what remains uncertain and what is planned next. If something was delayed because it needed approval or access, the report should say so.
Search visibility and business results belong in the same conversation, but they are different measures.
| Measure | What it tells you | What it doesn’t establish |
|---|---|---|
| Search impressions | Your pages appeared in search results | Someone visited or contacted you |
| Search position | Where your pages appeared for measured searches | A fixed position for every searcher |
| Clicks and website visits | People reached your website | Those visitors became prospects |
| Received inquiries | Someone contacted you about your services | Every inquiry is qualified or came from SEO |
| Qualified opportunities and new clients | Inquiries progressed toward business | SEO deserves all the credit |
Clicking a telephone link is not the same as a received call. Opening a form is not the same as submitting it. A test submission should never become a reported lead.
Repeated emails about one opportunity should also remain one inquiry. If the source is unknown, it should stay unknown rather than being assigned to SEO.
What this looks like in actual work
My existing business-law firm case study documents several connected types of work: repairing broken links and redirect chains, correcting metadata and missing headings, creating a Construction Litigation service page, improving the blog and establishing a content approval workflow.
Those examples show why SEO work often crosses technical repairs, writing and website usability. They also make the work more concrete than a list of broad service labels.
They don’t establish that every task caused a particular inquiry, and they aren’t a promise of the same outcome for another business.
On Web Pro’s own website, I’ve also documented content changes and kept genuine inquiries separate from test submissions and referrals. That demonstrates a measurement process. It is not yet evidence of SEO-driven lead growth.
Questions to ask before hiring an SEO provider
You don’t need to become an SEO specialist to evaluate a proposal. Start with these questions:
- What would you investigate first on my website, and why?
- What is included in the initial setup, and what continues monthly?
- Will you implement the recommendations or give me a list to handle?
- What deliverables will I receive, and how will priorities change?
- Which changes require my approval?
- Can you show me relevant work and explain exactly what you did?
- How will you distinguish rankings and traffic from actual inquiries?
- What access and information will you need, and will I retain ownership of my accounts and content?
- What falls outside the scope, and what happens if we stop working together?
Be cautious about guaranteed rankings. Google’s own guidance on hiring an SEO provider warns against promises of a number-one position and encourages business owners to ask for explanations of the proposed work.
You should expect clear commitments about the work, communication and reporting. Search positions and future inquiry volume remain uncertain.
Start with your website’s actual needs
Before deciding on an ongoing SEO engagement, it helps to understand where your website stands and which improvements deserve attention first.
If you’d like a focused starting point, request your Search Visibility Snapshot. Share your website, service area and the services you want to grow so we have something specific to discuss.
From there, we can decide whether initial improvements, ongoing SEO or another marketing priority makes the most sense for your business.
Let’s take a look
at your website.
Tell me what you want your website to do for your business. We’ll talk through the priorities.
Talk with Alan ↗
