Is it possible to have a website SEO contract that has no restrictions on the number of keywords, the frequency of their exchange, their duration, or the notice period? Is such a no-limits SEO contract model achievable, or, to quote the classic, "such things only happen in Era"?
Website positioning without limits
It's worth taking a closer look at the elements of the SEO contract that most often arise in the context of questions about the lack of limits. We fully understand that different agencies and individuals providing SEO services may have different assumptions and observations than ours.
Therefore, we want to emphasize from the outset that this text represents our perspective and the practices employed at Verseo. The topic itself is also a natural continuation of our blog post , which explained one of the most important issues related to the concluded contract.
Therefore, we will not address the issue of the duration of the contract again, focusing on issues related to phrases.
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How many phrases can fit in a SEO contract?
We are very flexible in this regard – depending on the selected contract package, we can position from 15 to… 1300 phrases for a given website.
When we talk about positioning a specific number of phrases, we're referring to positioned phrases for which position monitoring is conducted daily, with results appearing in the client panel. This number of daily monitored phrases is stipulated in the contract. There are no limits to SEO per se – Google determines how many phrases link to a given website. Therefore, we check how many keywords for a given website appear overall in the top 10 and top 50.
Our account managers advise on selecting the optimal set of keywords – both quantitatively and qualitatively. We know from experience that the days of small (in terms of keyword count) SEO contracts are becoming a thing of the past. Clients who started with a modest five-keyword contract often expand their SEO contract by adding additional keywords.
It wouldn't be a breach of confidentiality or confidentiality to mention that one of our clients started SEO with five keywords and now has over ten times that number in their contract. This decision (made in stages) to expand the keyword set stemmed from the belief that the current number of keywords was too small to represent the full scope of their offering. Therefore, the client concluded that the contract should simply be expanded.
Our clients' decisions to extend their contracts are driven by the belief that a small set of keywords brings fewer benefits because it only represents a fraction of their offering.
The specification in the SEO contract of the number of phrases checked daily for position and the number of subpages optimized and monitored for security is the result of daily contact with our clients, for whom such a solution is a significant facilitation in assessing the results of the SEO specialist's work.
Why did 15 phrases become such a minimum for SEO? Observations and daily contact with our clients were the deciding factors. A set of 15 phrases allows for a diverse presentation of our offerings, including both more and less general phrases, and even long-tail phrases can fit in.
Simply put, 15 keywords demonstrate that SEO is working and delivering tangible benefits for the company that has chosen this form of promotion. Of course, not every company will consider a set of 15 keywords for SEO as a "reasonable minimum to see SEO benefits." For online stores, this threshold will be significantly higher.
Website positioning – how many phrases can fit on a website?
In the case of a website positioning agreement, the selection of keywords must be correlated with the content of the website we wish to promote. On the one hand, this means that only content that has its own representation (accessible to Google's web crawlers) on the website can be effectively positioned.
This means that in practice, there's no way to position "in advance"—something that's yet to be offered, and yet isn't even mentioned on the website. Google simply won't display a website unrelated to the query in its results. The second factor is the sheer size of the website. It's well known that Google favors large websites (in terms of the number of tabs).
A large number of subpages is considered a sign of a content-rich website. For this reason, single-page websites aren't a good starting point for SEO. Fortunately, the solution to this problem is quite simple and readily available: expanding the site by adding new subpages and content. The number of keywords and subpages must be balanced.
For example, directing all contract keywords to the home page isn't beneficial for SEO effectiveness. If the SEO specialist in charge of the website notices that the site is struggling to accommodate all the selected keywords, they will recommend website expansion. At Verseo , if our specialists propose website expansion with SEO effectiveness in mind, there are no additional costs for the client.
To change or not to change?
SEO is a test of patience. Results rarely appear overnight; the results of keyword research often come gradually. Working on specific keywords is a phased process, measured in months.
Changing keywords means stopping the current process and starting over. Changing keywords frequently means the wait time for SEO results can be significantly longer.
Therefore, you should only change your keyword set in justified circumstances, such as changes to your offer or website content. It's also worth discussing such keyword change plans with your account manager and the SEO specialist responsible for your website.
There is also no benefit in a strategy where keywords that have already been positioned are replaced with new ones – in the hope that those that are already in the top 10 will stay there permanently and they will no longer need an SEO specialist – so why overpay… Such temptations sometimes appear in the case of a performance contract and are supposed to be a “smart” way to reduce the costs of the SEO service.
Without limits or… with limits?
Let's be honest, the slogan "SEO without limits" sounds very appealing. If there are no limits, then the competition can't offer more. But what does this look like in practice? The natural limit in SEO is the relationship between the number of keywords and the size of the website and its offerings.
A small website with a limited offering (not everyone needs to run a large business) offers only a limited number of keywords for which a given website will appear. It's impossible to optimize a single page for an unlimited number of keywords – the limit here is the size of the meta title.
That's why we make this clear in our contracts and inform our clients about the limitations of our SEO services. We believe that such a realistic approach offers more than the slogan "no limits." Purposeful optimization of a website consisting of 10 tabs for 1000 phrases is simply not possible.
In the offer and contract, we specify how many phrases we monitor daily and how many subpages we perform specific keyword optimization for. In parallel, we strengthen the entire website, which is reflected in statistics – the total number of phrases in the top 10 and top 50 related to a given website.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Although an SEO contract without keyword limits and a notice period seems unrealistic, the Verseo agency is analyzing the possibility of implementing a flexible SEO model based on the absence of keyword selection restrictions.
- In SEO contracts, the number of phrases monitored daily ranges from 15 to 1300, which allows for flexible adjustment of the strategy to the scale of the business and full presentation of the offer on Google.
- Effective SEO requires correlating the number of phrases with the extensive structure of the website, which is why the Verseo agency offers free support in creating new subpages and content necessary to achieve high results in Google.
- Due to the long-term nature of the SEO process, frequent changes of keywords are not recommended, as they interrupt the progress made and significantly delay the achievement of lasting results in search results.
- The concept of "SEO without limits" is in practice limited by the size of the website, which is why Verseo focuses on transparently defining the number of monitored phrases and optimized subpages to truly enhance the visibility of the entire website.
