Contract terms

You buy on the pitch. You live in the contract.

Every competent vendor pitches well. The document is where the differences are, and it gets written before anybody is unhappy.

Ownership

The clause that costs the most when it's missing, and the one that never looks urgent at signing.

Get it in writing that you own: all content produced, all structured data, the analytics property, the Search Console property, the business profile, any account set up on your behalf, and all the data collected. Require that accounts are created under your organization with the vendor granted access — not the other way round.

Then check it during the engagement, not at the end. Log in and look at who the owner actually is.

KPIs

Tie fees to things you care about. Qualified leads, consultations, signed work, revenue.

Never keyword positions. They're gameable and frequently irrelevant to whether you made any money.

If there's a performance component, pin down exactly who measures it, from which system, how often, and what happens in a dispute. A performance fee on a number the vendor calculates and reports to itself is not a performance fee.

How they get links

Require written disclosure of every link-acquisition method, a warranty that nothing prohibited is used, and the right to a full list of placements on request.

The disclosure matters more than the warranty. A warranty is a remedy after your domain has already taken the hit, and remedies rarely cover a lost channel.

Ask for the list quarterly. Then actually look at it.

Termination

Month-to-month, or short notice. If they insist on a longer term, get a break clause tied to defined milestones.

Long lock-ins get sold as commitment for strategic work. Search work does compound over quarters — that's a reason to stay when it's working, not a reason to be trapped when it isn't.

On the way out, require: all accounts transferred, all data exported, all content yours, and nothing they did removed on their way out the door.

People and process

Name the individuals. Require notice if they change.

A lot of this work is judgment, and judgment belongs to a person, not to a logo on an invoice.

Define the reporting: what, how often, and with access to the raw data behind it. Then define what happens when results lag — a review meeting, a written reassessment, an agreed decision point. Without that, month seven is an awkward email instead of a process.

One question for every clause

Does this protect me when things go badly?

Most contracts are written for the case where everything works. That's the case that doesn't need a contract.