Clear terms up front make for better working relationships. Here's exactly how engagements, payment, and expectations around Google, rankings, and link building are structured.
Freelance and independent engagements are structured as ongoing, month-to-month retainers rather than one-off tasks. This keeps SEO treated as a continuous system rather than a single project with a hard finish line, which better reflects how organic search actually behaves.
For freelance clients, billing runs month-to-month. Each month's invoice is issued in advance and covers that upcoming month of work — not the month that just passed.
Billing: Monthly, in advancePayment for each month is due upfront, before that month's work begins. This applies to every billing cycle for the duration of the engagement, not just the first month.
Payment: 100% upfront per cycleA complete SEO project — covering technical foundation, on-page work, content, and off-page authority building — requires a minimum six-month contract. SEO results compound over time, and shorter engagements rarely allow enough runway to see meaningful ranking or revenue movement.
Minimum term: 6 monthsEvery engagement begins with a written scope covering the specific services included — for example on-page, technical, off-page, programmatic, semantic, or copywriting work. Work outside the agreed scope is quoted and approved separately before it begins.
Google rolls out core algorithm updates multiple times a year, and these can shift rankings — up or down — for reasons outside any consultant's direct control. Part of an ongoing engagement includes monitoring for these updates, diagnosing their impact on your site, and adjusting strategy accordingly.
No SEO consultant — including Ahmad — can guarantee a specific ranking position or a guaranteed timeline for reaching it, and any claim otherwise should be treated with suspicion. What is guaranteed is a disciplined, transparent process applied consistently, with the goal of sustainable improvement in visibility and traffic over time.
Meaningful movement on competitive commercial keywords typically takes four to twelve months, depending on your site's current authority, technical health, and the competitiveness of your industry. Long-tail and lower-competition terms often move faster.
Keyword targets are chosen jointly, balancing search volume, ranking difficulty, and commercial intent, rather than chasing vanity terms that look impressive but drive little revenue. Positioning strategy is revisited regularly as rankings shift and new opportunities appear.
If a client independently purchases guest posts or paid backlinks from third-party vendors, this is done entirely at the client's own discretion and risk. Ahmad can review and advise on the quality and safety of any proposed link before it's purchased, but is not responsible for ranking penalties or manual actions resulting from paid links the client sourced or approved outside of an agreed off-page strategy.
Client-sourced links: advisory only, client riskClients receive a monthly report covering keyword rankings, organic traffic, technical health, and — where trackable — revenue or lead impact, written in plain language rather than raw exported data.
Day-to-day communication happens asynchronously over email, with a recurring call scheduled at a cadence agreed at the start of the engagement — typically bi-weekly or monthly depending on project size.
Either party may end an ongoing month-to-month engagement with 30 days' written notice. Fixed six-month project contracts are expected to run their full term barring exceptional circumstances, since SEO work compounds and early termination undermines the results both parties are working toward.
All content, technical documentation, and strategy assets created during the engagement become the client's property once the corresponding invoice has been paid in full.
Because upfront payment covers work scheduled for that billing cycle, fees for work already completed or in progress are non-refundable. Any unused portion of a cycle following an agreed early termination is handled on a case-by-case basis.
Happy to walk through any of these terms on a call before you sign anything.
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