You are paying for the wrong four things.
We've taken on agencies' SEO retainers for six years running. Four habits keep coming up. None of them are your fault, they're how SEO is sold. All of them are fixable in the first 90 days.
Reports built to dazzle.
Twenty-page PDFs. Eight scoring rings. Zero answers to "what should I do on Monday?".
Keywords you'll never rank for.
"Best CRM software". Bidding against Salesforce on a £400/mo retainer. Set up to fail on day one.
Backlinks from anywhere.
Directories. Comment spam. Foreign press releases. The links Google now actively punishes you for.
Content that doesn't convert.
"Top 10 tips" blog posts written for nobody, ranking for nothing, generating no leads. Wallpaper, monthly.
Seven pillars. One after the other.
Order matters. Audit before action. Plumbing before authority. Authority before keywords. Keywords before content. Content before competition. Competition before local. Do it backwards and you are burning cash.
A 40-point baseline. Technical health, indexability, backlink profile, ranking realities, content gaps, competitor positioning, local presence. Done in the first ten days. Free if you ask.
- , Live audit dashboard
- , 40 ranked findings
- , Priority list (Mon/Q1/Q2)
- , No-jargon summary
Core Web Vitals, indexation, schema, internal linking, crawl budget, rendering. The unsexy work that makes everything else above the line possible. Half our retainers double traffic on this alone.
- , CWV remediation
- , Schema deployment
- , Site architecture review
- , Render audit (JS sites)
Earned PR, digital outreach, broken-link reclamation, and unlinked mentions. We don't buy. We don't guest-post. We don't do PBNs. Slower. Safer. Lasts.
- , Backlink audit + disavow
- , Quarterly PR slot
- , 5–10 earned links/mo
- , Mention reclamation
We pick the fights you can win. Not "best CRM software" against Salesforce. We map intent, difficulty, and revenue value, then build a six-month plan around the keywords that pay you.
- , Full keyword map
- , Intent + difficulty tiers
- , SERP feature targets
- , Quarterly refresh
Pages that rank because they're better, not because they're longer. We brief on outcome, not word count. Every piece has a job, rank, convert, or both and a number to hit.
- , Editorial calendar
- , Brief-led content
- , On-page optimisation
- , Pillar + cluster builds
Three direct competitors, tracked weekly. Their wins, their gaps, their new content, their new links. We don't copy, we counter. Knowing where they're soft is half the strategy.
- , 3-competitor watchlist
- , Weekly delta report
- , Content gap maps
- , Counter-positioning plan
Google Business, local schema, citation cleanup, review velocity, location pages that rank. The bit most national SEO agencies skip. The bit that pays Loughborough plumbers a salary.
- , GBP optimisation
- , Citation cleanup
- , Location page set
- , Review velocity plan
Whiteboards. Post-its. Coffee.
SEO strategy doesn't happen in a PowerPoint. It happens in a room with a whiteboard, a stack of orange post-its, and the founder who knows the business best.
One page. Four rhythms.
Position deltas
Top-50 keywords, with movement, intent and SERP feature. Friday mornings, every week.
Board pack
One page. Clicks, sessions, conversions, revenue from organic. The line your FD will read.
Competitor delta
Where they've gained, where they've lost, what they've published, what they've linked.
Live dashboard
Looker Studio, your account, your data. Open it any time. No email required.
Six tools. One dashboard.
We pay the licences. You get the access. Every login, every dashboard, your name. If we ever part company, you keep the data not just a screenshot of it.
From buried on page two to category #1.
200-year-old brand. Indexation issues, broken schema, a backlink profile dragged down by old SEO contractors, and content written for nobody. Eighteen months in, we'd rebuilt all seven pillars.
Got any freebies? Yes.
We’re not scared of sharing what we know. Take our advice and implement it yourself, brilliant. Watch these and think “I need someone to do this for me,” even better. Either way you’re winning, and the tools are free.
5 days of local SEO
A five-film crash course in ranking in your town. Google Business, citations, location pages, reviews, the lot.
30 days of CEO marketing tips
A short film a day for thirty days, aimed at directors who need to understand what their marketing team is actually doing.
Lifetime-value calculator
Work out what a customer is worth across every year they buy from you and the spend ceiling you can hit to win one.
What are we thinking?
The real stuff. Not “10 tips to boost engagement” clickbait. We call out the BS in our industry and share what twenty years of doing this has taught us. Here’s the last few.
Why AI Tools Shouldn’t Have Paid Adverts, but they are going to…
Google’s testing ads in AI Overview results. Perplexity’s considering sponsored answers. ChatGPT’s exploring “promoted content.” We’re about to ruin AI the same way we ruined everything else. We’ve Seen This Film Before There’s a brilliant video from The Naked Brand where B. Bonin Bough – PepsiCo’s head of digital – talks about the early internet: […]
SEO is NOT dead
Ladies and Gentlemen, SEO Is Still Alive I’m writing this today because, quite frankly, I’ve seen blogs and threads sent out today that are already out of date. I’ve seen one particularly about the history of Google – how it went from 10 blue links to position zero, then moved to AI overview, and how […]
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to… flip flop marketing
What on earth is Corbett on about now. Well unfortunately people I’m seeing this happen so much at the moment because everyone is looking for their silver bullet. Something has happened to society, personally I blame Amazon, but in reality it’s the internet and social media. We can get our groceries delivered, we can buy […]
Three retainers.
Audit on its own. Foundation for steady growth. Growth for full-tilt organic. The number on the box is where it starts, the final scope is signed both sides after the audit.
Audit Only
The 7-point audit, the priority list, the no-jargon summary and if it sounds like jargon, we explain it through.
- , Full 7-point audit
- , Live audit dashboard
- , Priority list (Mon / Q1 / Q2)
- , One 60-min walkthrough call
- , No commitment after
Foundation
All seven pillars on a steady drumbeat. The retainer most clients land on.
- , All 7 pillars, continuous
- , 2–3 content pieces / month
- , Quarterly competitor delta
- , Looker Studio dashboard
- , Weekly position report
- , Monthly board pack
- , 6-month minimum
Growth
For sites where organic is the channel. PR, links, content, technical — full tilt.
- , All 7 pillars, accelerated
- , 6–8 content pieces / month
- , Quarterly earned PR slot
- , Monthly link outreach (10+)
- , A/B testing on top pages
- , Quarterly strategy day in person
- , 12-month minimum
The curve turns at month three.
40-point baseline. Live dashboard built. No work happens until this is signed off.
CWV remediation, schema, redirects, internal linking. The plumbing fix.
Full keyword map. First three pillar pages briefed and shipped.
First earned link slot. Mention reclamation. Disavow filed.
GBP, citations, location pages. Weekly competitor delta starts.
First quarterly board pack. Curve usually turns here.
The bits everyone asks.
Eight questions we get on every discovery call. If yours isn't here, ring it in.
Technical wins land in weeks. Content wins land in months. The board pack at month three is usually the first "ohhhh" moment. Twelve months in, you should be category-leading on commercial-intent keywords.
No. Anyone who does is lying. We guarantee the work, the rigour, and the reporting and we share every login so you can check us in real time.
No. We won't buy links, we won't guest-post on PBNs, we won't do anything we couldn't put in writing to Google. Slower. Safer. Lasts.
We do, with you. Briefs from us, expertise from you, edits both ways. We don't farm it to a Manila content mill. We don't use raw AI output. The voice is yours.
Yes. We work alongside paid teams every day. We'll share keyword learnings both ways. The board pack is honest about which channel did what.
It happens to everyone eventually. The first hour is forensics, the first day is triage, the first week is the plan. Foundation and Growth clients get this as part of the retainer, no extra invoice.
30% off the published bands. We've worked with Rainbows, LOROS, and a handful more. Quote your charity number on the first call.
Yes. Ten days, 40 points, live dashboard, walkthrough call. No retainer required after, take the Trello baord and fix it yourself, fix it with us, or sit on it. Your call.
Start with the audit. It's free.
Ten days. Forty points. A live dashboard. A walkthrough call with Spike. Then you decide if we work together, or you take the doc and run.
Book your FREE audit →