SEO Packages for Small Businesses: What to Check Before You Sign
Quick answer: A buyer's checklist for Irish SMEs comparing SEO proposals — the eight things that must be in writing, the six red flags that should end the conversation, and the questions that expose a thin package fast.
Answer Summary
An SEO package for a small Irish business should state exactly what is produced each month, who owns the work and accounts, what is reported and how, and how the contract ends. A useful package names deliverables — pages written, technical fixes made, listings corrected — rather than vague hours of optimisation, and reports enquiries alongside rankings.
Use this page as a checklist
- The eight things that must be in writing(#eight)
- Six red flags(#flags)
- Questions that expose a thin package(#questions)
- What a fair small-business scope looks like(#fair)
- How to compare two proposals side by side(#compare)
- FAQs(#faqs)
<a id="eight"></a>The eight things that must be in writing
Print this. Tick it against every proposal on your desk. 1. Named deliverables per month. Not "ongoing optimisation". Something countable: two service pages rewritten, one technical fix set, twelve listings corrected. If you cannot count it, you cannot tell whether it happened. 2. Who writes the content, and where it is approved. Someone has to produce words about your business. Find out who, whether you review before publication, and how corrections are handled. 3. Ownership of everything. Your domain, your hosting, your analytics, your Google Business Profile, your content. Registered to your email. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong. 4. The reporting format, with a sample attached. Ask for last month's report for another client, redacted. If none exists, that tells you something. 5. Enquiry tracking, not just rankings. Calls, forms, messages. A ranking that produces no enquiry is a vanity metric. 6. The exit. Notice period, what you keep, and whether anything stops working when you leave. Answers to that last one should be "nothing". 7. Who you actually speak to. Name and role. Is the person who sold it the person doing it? 8. What is explicitly not included. Good proposals have an exclusions list. Its absence is a warning, not a reassurance. !Vertical checklist diagram of eight glowing tick markers with two highlighted warning diamonds among them
<a id="flags"></a>Six red flags
Guaranteed number-one rankings. Nobody controls the results page. A guarantee is either meaningless or attached to a phrase nobody searches for. A fixed monthly fee with no defined output. You are buying availability, not work. Accounts created under the agency's email. Leaving becomes a rebuild. Hundreds of pages appearing in week one. Bulk-generated location pages are the fastest route to being ignored by search engines. Link packages measured by quantity. Two hundred links from nowhere is a liability. No mention of your Google Business Profile. For most local Irish businesses it is the highest-return asset on the list. Skipping it signals a template.
<a id="questions"></a>Questions that expose a thin package
Ask these on the call. Watch what happens. 1. "Which three pages would you work on first, and why those?" — A real answer references your site. A weak one describes a process. 2. "What will be different about my website in 30 days?" — Should produce a list, not a philosophy. 3. "How will I know an enquiry came from search?" — Should produce a tracking method. 4. "What do you need from me each month?" — Every honest programme needs something: photos, answers, sign-off. "Nothing" means nothing specific to your business is being made. 5. "What would make you tell me to stop spending?" — The best answer we ever heard from a competitor was "if your service pages still don't exist in month three". Honest people have a stop condition.
<a id="fair"></a>What a fair small-business scope looks like
For a typical Irish SME serving a county or two, a sensible first six months contains: Notice how much of that is one-off foundation work. That is normal and correct. A package that is all monthly recurring activity with no foundation phase is usually selling the maintenance of something that was never built.
- A technical fix pass: speed, mobile, indexing, broken links, titles and descriptions
- One genuine page per service actually sold
- One genuine page per area actually served, each saying something true and specific
- Google Business Profile claimed, completed, categorised and posted to
- Directory and trade-body listings corrected so name, address and phone match everywhere
- Two to four question-answering articles tied to real buying questions
- Monthly reporting that leads with enquiries
- A review routine: how you ask, when you ask, who responds
<a id="compare"></a>How to compare two proposals side by side
Strip both back to this table and fill it in yourself: Question Proposal A Proposal B --- --- --- Countable deliverables per month Who writes the content Who owns accounts and content Enquiries reported? Google Business Profile included? Notice period Named person doing the work Exclusions stated Whichever column has more blanks is the riskier one, regardless of price. In our experience the proposals that look most impressive on slide three are the ones with the most blanks in that table. The plainest document usually wins on delivery.
<a id="faqs"></a>FAQs
Is a cheap package always bad? No. A small, honest scope done properly beats a large vague one. What matters is whether the output is defined. Should I sign a twelve-month contract? Only with a defined break clause and full ownership. Search work genuinely takes months, so some commitment is reasonable — being locked in is not. What should I do before getting quotes? Claim your Google Business Profile, make sure you can log into your own domain and hosting, and write down the three services you most want enquiries for. That alone improves every quote you receive.
Ask the Digital Bridge Agent before you ask anyone for a quote
The Digital Bridge Agent is the assistant built into this site. It is there to answer the awkward questions you would rather not ask a salesperson — what a piece of work involves, what order to do things in, and whether it is worth doing at all for a business your size. Digital Bridge is an Irish studio in Gorey, Co. Wexford. Every engagement is fixed scope, fixed price and owned by you at the end.
- 💬 Open "Ask the Digital Bridge Agent" in the corner of this page and describe your situation in your own words. The Digital Bridge Agent will tell you what Digital Bridge would actually do about it.
- 📞 Call 085 224 1848 — you get a 30-minute call with Joey, not a sales desk.
- 🎁 Check which Irish grants might fit(https://digitalbridge.ie/ai-grants-ireland) — the funding body always makes the final call.
What should be included in an SEO package for a small business?
Countable monthly deliverables, named content authorship, full ownership of accounts and content, a reporting format with a sample, enquiry tracking rather than rankings alone, a clear exit, a named person doing the work, and a written list of exclusions.
What are the warning signs in an SEO proposal?
Guaranteed number-one rankings, a monthly fee with no defined output, accounts created under the agency's email, hundreds of pages appearing in the first week, link packages sold by quantity, and no mention of your Google Business Profile.
Should a small business sign a twelve-month SEO contract?
Only with a defined break clause and full ownership of everything produced. Search work genuinely takes months, so some commitment is reasonable, but you should never be unable to leave with your own domain, content and accounts intact.
How do I compare two SEO proposals fairly?
Strip both to the same table: countable deliverables, who writes content, who owns accounts, whether enquiries are reported, whether Google Business Profile is included, notice period, named delivery person, and stated exclusions. The proposal with more blanks is riskier regardless of price.
What should I do before requesting SEO quotes?
Claim your Google Business Profile, confirm you can log into your own domain and hosting, and write down the three services you most want enquiries for. Arriving with those three things improves every quote you receive.
What happens next
You get a reply from Joey Bray the same working day. You get a fixed written quote within 48 hours — one price, one delivery date. Work starts only when you have signed the scope, with 50% up front and 50% at launch. Starting prices: Brochure from €1,200, Growth from €2,500, Authority from €4,250, Custom from €5,000, E-commerce from €6,000, AI integration from €2,500, SEO from €650 a month. All prices are ex-VAT starting points.
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- Get my fixed quote: https://digitalbridge.ie/contact