Put two SEO proposals side by side and they often look interchangeable. Both promise keyword research, on-page optimisation, content and link building, and a monthly report. The difference between them is almost never in that list. It is in whether the work is tied to specific pages, specific problems and a measure that a business owner would recognise as a result.
Activity is not a deliverable
The easiest proposal to sell is one priced in units: four blog posts, twenty backlinks, one report. Units are comfortable because they are countable. They are also the reason so many retainers run for a year without anyone being able to say what changed, because every unit was delivered and none of them was attached to an outcome.
| Workstream | What a good proposal says | What a weak one says |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | The specific crawl, indexing and speed problems found on your site, and the order they will be fixed in | "Technical optimisation" |
| Keywords | Search terms mapped to the pages that should rank for them, and which of those pages produce enquiries | A spreadsheet of keywords with no pages attached |
| Content | Which existing pages get rewritten, and which new pages are needed to answer searches you currently miss | "Four blog posts a month" |
| Links | How the site will earn references from relevant sources, and what will not be done | "Twenty high-authority backlinks a month" |
| Reporting | Enquiries and revenue from organic search, with rankings as supporting evidence | Rankings and impressions only |
A proposal that cannot be specific usually has not looked at your site yet. That is a reasonable state for a first conversation, and an unreasonable one for a document you are being asked to sign.
Red flags worth walking away from
- A guaranteed ranking. Google's own guidance for site owners says plainly that nobody can guarantee a number one position. A proposal that promises one is either misinformed or planning to define "ranking" for a term nobody searches.
- Links sold by the dozen. Buying links, or paying for placements designed to pass ranking value, is a link scheme under Google's spam policies. A monthly link quota with no explanation of where the links come from is a liability placed on your domain, not an asset.
- Your accounts in their name. Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Business Profile and your tag manager should be registered to you, with the agency added as a user. If you cannot see the data without asking them, you are renting your own history.
- Content volume with no plan for the pages that sell. A blog that grows every month while the service pages stay thin is producing traffic to the wrong place.
- Long lock-in with no exit terms. SEO takes months to show results, so a minimum term can be reasonable. A term with no right to the work, the content and the accounts at the end of it is not.
The parts that are specific to the UAE
Most SEO advice is written for a single-language market where enquiries arrive through a form. Neither assumption holds here, and a proposal written for the UAE should show it understands that.
- English and Arabic are separate searches. People searching in Arabic use different terms and see different results, so Arabic visibility needs its own keyword research and properly translated pages, not machine-translated copies of the English site. A bilingual site also needs its language versions marked up correctly so search engines show the right one.
- Local search is per emirate. A business serving Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi has three local markets, not one. Google Business Profile, location pages and consistent business details across the web matter more than they would for a business selling online only.
- Enquiries arrive by WhatsApp and phone. If the site's WhatsApp button and phone number are not tracked as conversions, organic search will look less valuable than it is, because the leads it produces are counted nowhere. Measurement setup belongs in the first month of any retainer.
- Search results now carry AI answers above the links. Pages that state facts clearly, answer real questions directly and carry structured data are the ones those answers draw from. That is an argument for clear, specific pages, not for a separate product.
What you should see every month
A monthly report is useful when it answers the questions an owner would ask, in this order:
- 01How many enquiries came from organic search, and which pages produced them?
- 02What work was delivered this month against what was planned, and what slipped?
- 03Which technical problems were fixed, and which remain open?
- 04How did the pages we are working on move, in rankings and in clicks?
- 05What is planned for next month, and why those items first?
Rankings belong in the report. They do not belong at the top of it, because a ranking for a term that never produces an enquiry is a number, not a result.
When SEO is the wrong first spend
Sometimes the honest reading of a proposal is that it is fine and premature. If the site cannot be edited without a developer, the content plan will stall in month two. If enquiries already arriving are answered slowly or not logged, more traffic produces more lost leads. If the site is slow or broken on a phone, rankings will not survive the visit. Each of those is cheaper to fix first, and an agency worth hiring will tell you so before selling you a retainer.
Questions that make two proposals comparable
- 01Which pages on our site will you change first, and what is wrong with them now?
- 02Which search terms are you targeting, and which page is meant to rank for each?
- 03Where will any links come from, and what will you not do?
- 04Are Search Console, Analytics and Business Profile in our name, with you as a user?
- 05How will you count WhatsApp and phone enquiries from organic search?
- 06What do we keep, and what access do we have, if we end the retainer?
Where these figures come from
- Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?", on ranking guarantees, and Google's spam policies for web search, on link schemes, as published at the time of writing.
- No market prices or ranking statistics appear in this piece. The recommendations reflect how we scope SEO work ourselves, not a market survey.