Your SEO contract is sitting in somebody’s inbox right now. It’s probably attached to an email from two years ago, called something like “FinalSEOAgreement2024”, and you signed it on a Friday afternoon after a lovely call where everyone got on brilliantly. You skimmed it (don’t worry, nearly everybody does) and filed it under sorted.
The person who wrote it didn’t skim it. They read every line very carefully indeed, and some of those lines are there to make leaving harder than it should be when the work isn’t working.
I’ve already done an episode on the red flags to look for before you hire an agency, and this one’s for everybody who already has.
Quick note first: I’m not a solicitor and this isn’t legal advice, so if there’s serious money involved, get a commercial solicitor to look it over. What I can tell you is what to look for, because I’ve read a lot of these.
If you’d rather go through your own setup with someone who isn’t trying to sell you a retainer, book an SEO 1:1 session with me.
How SEO contract notice periods and auto-renewal add up
Everybody looks at the term. Twelve months seems fair enough, because SEO takes time and nobody wants to do an audit and a technical clean-up for someone who’s off after four weeks.
Almost nobody looks at the notice period sitting next to it. Three months’ notice on a twelve month term could mean fifteen months. If there’s auto-renewal in there too, missing the notice deadline by a week can tie you in for another full year of something you’d already decided to stop.
It’s a bit like a gym membership. Nobody reads the cancellation terms in January when they’re full of good intentions, and by the time they go looking in October they’ve already paid for another year of not going.
A three to six month minimum is reasonable for SEO. Twelve months with auto-renewal and a long notice window has far more to do with keeping clients than with the work.
Who owns your SEO content when you leave your agency
I’d read this clause first. You’ve paid for blog posts, service page copy, an audit and keyword research, so you’d assume they’re yours. Some contracts say otherwise: the agency keeps the intellectual property and you get a licence to use it for as long as you’re a client. In plain English, somebody can ask you to take your own website content down when you leave.
The word you want to see is “assign”. Be very wary of “licence”, especially one that only lasts as long as the agreement does. And if your site is built on the agency’s own platform, leaving probably means a rebuild, whatever the contract says about content.
Other SEO contract clauses worth reading
While you’ve got it open, check how the work is described. Nobody can fail at “ongoing optimisation” or “monthly SEO activity”, which means nobody can be held to them either. If anyone’s been building links for you, check whether those links stay the agency’s property (I’ve covered why I don’t want you buying links at all but it’s worth knowing what happens if you have). Your business should own every account, with the agency given admin access, which I talked about in Episode 2 about account ownership.
Then look at what you’re not allowed to do. Some contracts stop you bringing in another SEO for a second opinion, which sounds sensible right up until you want to know why nothing’s happening. Some blame you for not implementing their recommendations. And most have no handover clause at all, so on the last day you’re relying on goodwill from somebody you’ve just sacked.
Why your SEO proposal and your SEO contract say different things
This is the bit I most wanted to talk about in the episode. Dig out the proposal and any emails from before you signed, and read them next to the contract.
The proposal talks about growth and first page rankings, probably with a case study showing somebody else’s traffic heading up and to the right. Near the back of the contract, there’ll be a section saying no results are guaranteed and they accept no liability for changes to your rankings or traffic.
That second part is fair. Nobody can guarantee rankings, and I’ve said so myself plenty of times. What bothers me is that everything they sold you sits in the document with no legal force, and everything protecting them sits in the one that has it.
So ask them which of the things in the proposal they’re willing to put in the contract. The good ones will write the deliverables and a proper handover into it. Others will explain at great length why nothing in SEO can ever be committed to in writing, while committing to it out loud in every meeting.
A 15 minute SEO contract check you can do today
Find the contract first, which for a fair few of you will be the hardest part. Write down the end date, the notice period, the date notice has to arrive by, and whether the work is assigned to you or licensed. Put that notice deadline in your calendar with a reminder 30 days before it, because missing a date you never knew existed is how most people end up paying for another year of nothing. Then email your agency asking them to confirm in writing what you keep and what you lose if you leave, and save the reply somewhere you’ll find it again.
None of this means everyone with a contract is a shyster or a hustlebro. Plenty of good people use them (obviously), and a contract with a proper handover clause usually means you’re dealing with grown-ups. If you want a second pair of eyes on where your SEO stands before that notice deadline comes round, book an SEO 1:1 call and we’ll go through it together.
