White label SEO: a guide for agencies, from the first client to the monthly report

White label SEO lets an agency sell SEO under its own name while a partner does the work. The agency keeps the client, the price and the conversation; the partner does the audits, fixes, pages, local work and reports, and never appears anywhere the client can see. If you want the definition and the vocabulary first, start with what white label SEO is.

To have this run for your clients under your own brand, see our white label SEO.

This guide is the practical half: what it takes to run white label SEO well, one client after another, from the first thing you resell to the day you part company with a partner. It is written for agency owners and account managers who sell to the client and will have to answer for the work.

Decide what you are going to sell first

Start with one thing your clients already ask for. Agencies that launch a full SEO menu on day one end up selling the parts they cannot explain. The right first service depends on who your clients are.

• Local businesses (trades, clinics, law firms, restaurants): local SEO. The Google Business Profile and reviews move faster than anything else for a business that sells in one town, and the client sees it on their own phone. White label local SEO services explains each piece.
• Clients whose new website you built: technical setup and on-page work. Indexing, redirects from the old site, titles and structured data. It protects the launch you were paid for.
• Online shops: technical SEO and category pages, where most of a shop's search traffic lands.
• A client asking why they do not rank: an audit. It answers the question, it is a fixed job, and it tells you whether there is ongoing work worth selling.

Whatever you choose, write down what a month of it includes before you sell it, in words you could read aloud to a client.

Choose the partner on a real job

Sales calls all sound the same. Work does not. Pick a real client with a real problem, buy one paid audit, and judge the partner on what comes back.

• Are the problems ranked by what they cost the client, or listed in the order a tool found them?
• Could your account manager walk the client through it without translating anything?
• Did the partner ask questions about the business before starting?
• Did it arrive when they said it would?
• Is there anything in the file that names them: a logo, a tool watermark, an author field?

Two companion pieces go further: how to vet a white label SEO company covers the questions to ask, and white label SEO programs compares the ways providers set up their offer.

Set up the accounts before any work starts

Every account the work touches belongs to the client, and the partner is added as a user. Get this right on day one and leaving a partner later is a matter of removing a few users.

• Google Search Console: the client is the owner. Add the partner as a full user, which lets them see everything and request indexing without being able to remove the client.
• Google Analytics: the client holds the administrator role. The partner needs the analyst or editor role, depending on whether they set up conversions.
• Google Business Profile: the client is the primary owner. Add the partner as a manager. A manager can edit the profile; only an owner can remove people or transfer it.
• The website: a separate login for each person who works on it, never a shared password, so access can be taken away one person at a time.
• The domain and hosting: the client keeps these. A partner rarely needs registrar access, and a request for it deserves a reason.

Put two agreements in writing

One agreement sits between you and the partner, and one between you and the client. They need to agree with each other.

With the partner: confidentiality about your clients; no direct contact with your clients and no soliciting them, during the arrangement and for a period after it; no subcontracting your clients' work without your consent; the deliverables belong to you or the client once paid for; a notice period; and what is handed over when the work ends. The clauses that protect a client in an SEO contract template are a good starting point, because most of them protect you here too.

With the client: the scope, what the report will show, that the accounts stay in their name, and the notice period. If your notice period to the client is longer than the partner's notice period to you, you carry the gap. The SEO proposal template lays out the sections a client expects to see.

Onboard each client with a proper brief

The partner knows SEO. You know the client. The brief is how one reaches the other, and a thin brief is the most common reason a first month goes badly.

A useful brief covers: what the business sells, in order of what makes them money; where they sell it; the competitors the client actually worries about; what has been promised to the client; any history, such as a previous SEO provider, a penalty, a migration or a suspended profile; the tone the client writes in; who approves changes on the client's side; and anything the client is sensitive about.

Run the monthly cycle

Once the first audit is done and agreed, every month has the same shape.

1. The partner works the plan, in the order the audit set, and logs every change with its date and the page it touched.
2. The partner drafts the report from the client's own accounts, unbranded, as an editable file.
3. You review it, rewrite the summary in your own voice, and add what you know about the client that the partner does not.
4. You send it and have the conversation. The client's questions come to you.
5. You pass anything that changes the plan back to the partner, and next month's work moves with it.

Agree the dates once: when the partner's draft reaches you and when the report reaches the client. Most agencies leave a few working days between the two so there is time to read it properly.

Report what the client can spend

The report is the only part of the work the client reads, so it decides whether the retainer survives a quiet month. Put enquiries, calls and sales on the first line, drawn from accounts the client can open. Rankings and traffic go underneath, as the explanation for the first line. Every change made that month goes in, with what is planned next.

White label SEO reports covers how the report travels from partner to agency to client and the small details that give a partner away. The SEO report template is built for exactly that handover.

Answer client questions without exposing the partner

Every question from the client comes to you, and every answer goes back from you, from your own email domain. Agree a turnaround with the partner for questions you forward; same working day is a fair standard for anything routine. Some partners will join a client call as members of your team if you ask, which is useful for a technical conversation, and it should only happen on your invitation.

Set your own price

You pay the partner's rate and charge the client yours. The gap has to cover more than profit: your account manager's time on reports and calls, the client questions you answer, and the risk that a month goes badly and you absorb it. Agencies that resell at a thin margin find out in the first difficult month that they have no room to fix anything.

Sell the outcome the client is buying, more calls and enquiries, and describe the month in plain words. Avoid passing on a partner's list of deliverables as your offer: a client who buys "ten citations a month" will eventually ask why it has to be ten.

Grow from one client to many

What works for one client breaks at ten if it lives in somebody's head. Standardise four things: the brief, the access checklist, the monthly dates and the report layout. Keep one named contact on each side. Talk to the partner about capacity before you sell, because a good partner would rather tell you it can take three more clients this month than take six and deliver them badly.

If you plan to resell at volume, how a white label SEO reseller program works covers the trade-offs of a standard menu against work scoped per client.

When to stop, and how to leave cleanly

Three signs say a partner is not working out: a quarter of reports with no change in enquiries and no explanation of why; links or work you are not shown when you ask; and questions that take days to answer. One of them is a conversation. All three is a notice period.

Leaving is simple when the accounts were the client's from the start. Give notice, collect the change log and any working files, remove the partner's user from each account, change any passwords the partner knew, and brief whoever takes over. The client should notice nothing.

Where to go next

• What white label SEO is, with the terms that get confused with it
• White label local SEO services, one at a time
• White label SEO reseller programs and what they include
• White label SEO programs compared
• Vetting a white label SEO company before your first client
• A beginner's guide to white label local SEO

If you would rather see how we work, white label SEO sets out the engagement and white label local SEO the local work. To start with one client, send us the site through the form.