SEO contract template: the six clauses that protect the client

Every SEO contract template on the first page of Google today is written for the agency: how to get paid, how to limit liability, how to keep the client for twelve months. Nobody has written one for the person paying. This one is. It is an agreement a business owner can put in front of any SEO provider, ours included, with the six clauses that decide whether the arrangement can be checked, owned and left.

It pairs with the proposal template and with our SEO services.

Download the SEO contract template (Word, opens in Google Docs)

Everything in square brackets is yours to replace. It is free and it is not gated. It is also a starting point from an SEO company and it says so on its first page: have a lawyer in your own country read it before anyone signs, because contract law, consumer law and data law differ from place to place and a template cannot know where you are.

Why the usual template is the wrong way round

A contract is read most carefully when something has gone wrong, and what goes wrong in SEO is nearly always one of four things. The work cannot be seen, because the scope says "ongoing optimisation". The accounts sit in the agency's name, so the business cannot leave without losing its Business Profile, its analytics history or its own pages. The report is a ranking export nobody can check. Or the shortcut that earned a quick result earns a manual action six months later, and the contract never said the shortcut was out of bounds. An agency-side template protects the agency from the client in each of those cases. This one protects the client, and an honest provider loses nothing by signing it.

The six clauses that do the protecting

The work, month by month

Clause 2 is a table: what is delivered each month, in plain words, and where the client can see it. Two service pages written for named searches, the profile kept correct, the fix list worked through, one report by the fifth working day. "SEO services" can be met by activity; a table can be checked against the site on the last day of the month. It also says what is not included, so the first invoice for something extra is not the first anyone hears of it.

Accounts, content and ownership

Clause 6, and the one most often missing. Every account used for the work is created in the client's name and stays the client's property, every page and image belongs to the client on payment for that month, and nothing is hosted where the client cannot take it away. A business whose profile sits in a former agency's account has no clause to point to; with this one, changing provider is a handover with a date on it.

Reporting from accounts you own

Clause 5 fixes the order of the monthly report: enquiries traced to search first, then calls from the profile, clicks and impressions from Search Console, pages indexed, what was done and what is next. Every figure comes from an account the client owns, so it can be checked without the provider in the room. Rankings may appear as context and are never the first line, because a ranking cannot be invoiced and an enquiry can.

How the work is done

Clause 7 writes down what a good provider does anyway: no party guarantees a position in search results, no links are bought, nothing is cloaked or written for the crawler, and any change to the site's structure or URLs is announced in writing first with a record of redirects kept. The point of writing it down is that a shortcut becomes a breach rather than a judgement call, and the client may end the agreement the day it happens.

Leaving

Clause 9 keeps the minimum term short and the notice short, and makes the handover a deliverable: within fourteen days of the end, at no charge, every login, a list of every account touched, every page and file, the redirect record and the last report. A contract that can be left is the one that keeps a provider attentive, and a provider who intends to do the work is happy to sign it.

Law, liability and the lawyer

Clause 11 is a set of bracketed prompts: which country's law, how a dispute is raised before anyone goes to court, and what liability is limited to. Those are the lines a lawyer where you are must set, and the signature block has a line for who read it and when. Leaving the brackets in place is the honest version of a template; filling them with another country's clauses is how a template does harm.

What it never says

There is no line in it promising a position for a search, because nobody can promise one, and a provider who will sign such a promise is telling you something. There is no fee of ours in it; the payment table is blank and the guidance says only what a fee line has to state. And there is no clause that keeps the client for a year, because a client who is getting enquiries stays without one.

Before it is signed

• Read clause 2 against the proposal you were sent. If the proposal promised something the table does not list, one of them is wrong.
• Check that every account in clause 4 already exists in your name before access is granted. Creating them yourself takes an hour.
• Put the first review date in the calendar on the day of signing.
• Have a lawyer in your country read clauses 10 and 11 and set the liability line. The template says so on its first page.
• Keep the signed copy where the person who pays the invoices can find it.

If you are the provider

Agencies use this template too, and it works from that side because nothing in it depends on who does the work. It pairs with the proposal template, whose section three becomes clause 2 here and whose section seven becomes clauses 6 and 9. If the work is delivered by a partner under your brand, clause 7 binds the subcontractor by name, which is the arrangement the white label SEO page describes. A client who has read the SEO audit checklist will ask for clause 5 whether or not you offer it.