Baseline SEO | What Professional SEO Actually Includes
Baseline SEO, Clearly Defined
Modern SEO, Clearly Defined
Most SEO is sold as a paragraph in a proposal.
“SEO management – monthly.”
No breakdown.
No clarity.
No way to tell what level of work you’re actually buying.
After working as a Fractional CMO inside dozens of marketing stacks, one pattern kept repeating: companies weren’t necessarily under-investing in SEO, they were buying it blind.
This page exists to change that.
SEO Has Levels (and That’s the Part No One Explains)
Professional SEO is not one thing. It’s a set of components that can be combined in different ways depending on maturity, goals, and constraints.
At the base level, you do not need everything.
As sophistication increases, additional components matter:
- deeper technical hygiene
- structured content systems
- authority and link strategy
- AI-era search readiness
- and decision-grade reporting
The problem is that most vendors never tell you:
- which level you’re buying
- what’s included vs omitted
- or what actually changes as you mature
So buyers compare prices without understanding scope.
We don’t do that.
What “Professional Baseline SEO” Actually Includes
This is the minimum complete foundation we believe modern SEO requires when it is being done seriously and responsibly, without hype or shortcuts.
Content & Visibility
- 1 high-quality blog post per week
- Research-backed topics and keywords
- On-page optimization (titles, headers, internal links, FAQs, schema)
Technical Hygiene
- Full technical audits
- Indexation, sitemaps, robots
- Core Web Vitals fixes
- Redirect and 404 hygiene
Authority & Trust
- Genuine backlink placement and tracking
- Link cleanup and disavow when required
Local & Discoverability (when applicable)
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Weekly reposting of site content
- Services, Q&A, and updates
AI-Era Search Readiness
- AI search indexing where available
- Monitoring of answer and snippet visibility
Analytics & Instrumentation
- GA4 and Search Console setup
- Rank tracking and backlink tracking
- Modern SEO software for audits, keywords, and insights
Publishing & Accountability
- Publishing handled for you
- Weekly “what shipped / what’s next”
- Monthly summary focused on decisions, not vanity metrics
This is not “advanced SEO.”
This is complete baseline SEO, clearly defined.
Where the Real Value Comes From
Tools and content alone don’t create results.
What actually makes this work is expertise being proven, not asserted.
Our clients all say the same thing at first:
“We’re the best at what we do.”
Our response is always the same:
“Good. Let’s prove it.”
That means:
- content is reviewed and sharpened
- claims are made specific
- examples, experience, and insight are surfaced
- and generic language is challenged
Google responds to that.
Customers respond to that.
SEO only compounds when real expertise shows up consistently.
How This Works With and Without Fractional CMO+ Oversight
As a standalone program
$1,250 / month
This includes full access to our SEO team for:
- audits
- content production
- technical execution
- reporting and tooling
You’ll also receive guidance on where personalization and proof will increase impact.
This is appropriate when:
- your marketing team could use and extra set of hands
- priorities are still fluid
- and execution needs broader coverage and guardrails
As part of Fractional CMO+
~$450 / month
When this work is paired directly with our solution to establish market credible growth
- positioning is already defined
- priorities are constrained
- claims are challenged in real time
- and waste is actively removed
Execution becomes sharper and more efficient.
That’s why the cost drops.
This isn’t a discount.
It’s a governance effect.
One Last Thing to Be Clear About
This is not a promise of rankings.
This is not a growth hack.
This is not a generic content engine.
This is what SEO looks like when:
- expectations are explicit
- scope is visible
- and expertise is required to show up
Use this page as a benchmark.
If you’re paying more, you should expect at least this.
If you’re paying less, you should know what’s missing.
Why SEO is difficult to procure and how this page fixes that
The problem
SEO is one of the least transparent marketing services to buy.
Most SEO proposals describe the work in a paragraph, bundle unrelated activities together, and leave buyers guessing what level of effort they’re actually paying for. Even experienced marketing leaders struggle to evaluate scope, pricing, and quality because there is no shared baseline.
As a result, companies either:
- underbuy and stall
- overbuy and waste spend
- or pay for activity without knowing what’s missing
Why it’s complicated
Professional SEO is not a single service. It’s a collection of components, technical hygiene, content systems, authority building, analytics, and publishing discipline, that become relevant at different stages of maturity.
The problem isn’t that every business needs “advanced SEO.”
The problem is that most vendors never explain what level you’re buying or how it compares to a professional baseline.
Without that clarity, procurement becomes guesswork.
The solution
This page defines what baseline, professionally executed SEO actually includes, clearly and transparently.
Not as a strategy.
Not as a promise of rankings.
But as a minimum complete foundation that experienced marketing leaders can use to:
- evaluate vendors
- sanity-check pricing
- and ensure nothing critical is missing
Whether you work with us or not, this establishes the floor.