A written diagnosis
Every engagement, regardless of size, opens with an audit and a prioritized list of what is capping performance. You keep this document whether or not you continue.
SEO / Packages
Three program shapes, scoped after diagnosis shaped by scope
Foundation, growth, and enterprise describe how much of the site and the topic gets covered. We name the shapes here. We name the number after we see the site.
We are not going to publish dollar figures on this page, and we want to be direct about why. A twelve-page service site with clean architecture and a fifteen-hundred-page e-commerce catalog with a legacy platform migration behind it are not the same job, even if both technically fit the word growth. Any number we printed here would either be wrong for your site or vague enough to be meaningless. What we can tell you honestly is the shape of the three program tiers, what each one assumes going in, and the specific factors that move a project from one tier to another.
The three shapes below are Foundation, Growth, and Enterprise. They differ in scope of coverage, not in quality of work. A Foundation engagement gets the same rigor as an Enterprise one. It simply covers a smaller topical footprint and a smaller site, because that is what the business needs at that stage.
Every engagement, regardless of shape, starts with a diagnosis before a number gets attached to anything. We audit the site, look at what is actually capping organic performance, and size the real work required to move it. Selling a fixed package before that diagnosis exists means guessing, and guessing produces either an underscoped project that stalls or an overscoped one that bills for work the site never needed.
If you came here looking for a rate card, we understand the instinct. But an honest answer requires seeing your site first, and everything below is written to help you understand which shape you likely fall into before that conversation happens.
What it is
The three program shapes
Coverage, cadence, and technical depth scale up from Foundation to Enterprise.
Foundation programs fit businesses with a single service area or a narrow product line, a site under roughly fifty pages, and a technical footprint simple enough that architecture fixes can ship quickly. The topical map is tight because the business itself is focused. Cadence is typically monthly, and the program leans on a smaller set of programs from the pillar, most often an audit, on-page work, and a defined content cluster or two.
Growth programs fit businesses with multiple service lines, multiple locations, or a broader product catalog where the topical map genuinely needs dozens of clusters to cover the ground. Technical work tends to be more involved because the site has accumulated more history, more templates, and more edge cases. Content publication runs at a steadier pace because there is simply more territory to cover, and link building typically enters the program at this stage because there is now enough content worth pitching.
Enterprise programs fit organizations with large catalogs, multiple brands or subdomains, complex platform constraints, or a need to coordinate SEO with engineering, legal, or brand teams that have their own review cycles. The technical work often involves platform-level architecture decisions, sometimes including a server-rendering migration under application frontends. Reporting and stakeholder communication scale up accordingly, since more people need to see and approve the same roadmap.
None of these tiers is fixed in stone once assigned. A Foundation client that expands into a second market can move into Growth scope within a quarter. An Enterprise client consolidating brands can shrink. We revisit the shape at every scoping conversation rather than locking a business into a tier that no longer matches its actual footprint.
Fit
Who this is for, and who it is not for
We would rather say no early than sell a program that cannot work.
This page is useful when
- You want to understand program scope before a scoping call, not just a price.
- You are trying to figure out which tier roughly matches your site's size and complexity.
- You want to know what you are expected to bring to the table before committing.
This page will not help if
- You need a fixed number today with no site review, which no honest agency can give you.
- You expect the tier names to map to a rigid, unchangeable menu of deliverables.
- You have not yet decided whether SEO is the right channel at all, in which case start at the SEO hub.
Deliverables
What every tier includes at minimum
The floor is the same across all three shapes. Scope above the floor scales with the tier.
A defined topical map
The scope of clusters, pillars, and pages the program will cover, sized to match the tier and revisited if the business footprint changes.
A named set of pillar programs
Each tier draws from the twelve programs across the pillar. Foundation pulls a small set. Enterprise typically draws on most of them concurrently.
A publication and technical cadence
A realistic schedule for shipping technical fixes and content, matched to what the tier's scope and your internal capacity can actually sustain.
Monthly reporting and review
Every tier gets a monthly read on what changed and what happens next, scaled in depth to match how many stakeholders need visibility into it.
A stated set of client-side assumptions
Every tier assumes something from you, whether that is a single point of contact or a cross-functional approval process. We state the assumption up front.
How we run it
How we decide which shape fits
Diagnosis first, then scope, in that order every time.
Step 1: Site and business review
We look at site size, technical platform, number of service lines or product categories, and current organic performance before naming a tier.
Step 2: Topical footprint estimate
We roughly size how many clusters and pages the topic actually requires to be covered completely, which is the single biggest driver of tier.
Step 3: Technical complexity check
We flag anything that adds real engineering time, legacy platform constraints, multi-brand architecture, or rendering issues that need a deeper fix.
Step 4: Stakeholder and approval mapping
We ask who needs to approve technical changes and content, since more approval layers change the cadence a program can realistically sustain.
Step 5: Scope proposal and quote
Only after the four steps above do we propose a tier and attach a number to it. The diagnosis always comes before the quote, never after.
What determines whether a business needs a Foundation, Growth, or Enterprise SEO program?
Four factors: topical footprint, technical complexity, current site size, and number of stakeholders who must approve changes. Larger topics, deeper technical work, bigger sites, and more approval layers all push a program toward a larger tier and a longer cadence.
Where this connects
Package scope draws on the rest of the pillar
Every tier is assembled from the same set of underlying programs.
Every tier starts from the same SEO audit which produces the diagnosis a real scope gets built on.
Growth and Enterprise tiers typically add link building once there is enough published content worth pitching to journalists.
Enterprise scopes often surface deeper platform issues that route into a foundational SEO build rather than a lighter fix.
See the full set of twelve programs a package can draw from back on the SEO hub before narrowing to a specific tier.
When the technical review surfaces a rendering ceiling, the fix usually lives in application frontends since a server-rendering migration is engineering work, not a content addition.
Questions
SEO packages questions we get asked
Find out which program shape actually fits your site
The diagnosis comes first. The scope and quote follow it.