Most retainer pages look like a menu: eight bullet points, a price, a button. They don't say what happens on the second Tuesday of month two.
That's the question a buyer has. So here's the calendar I work to, then the list of what a retainer should never contain, then the price.
1. Month 1: audit, fixes ranked, baseline
Nothing gets written in the first week. The first week is measurement.
I run a technical audit of the site: what Google can and can't read, speed on mobile, broken pages, duplicate titles, structured data that's missing or wrong, and whether AI crawlers are allowed in at all (a surprising number of sites block them in robots.txt without knowing). The output is a ranked list of fixes, with the ones that block indexing at the top.
Then the baseline. I record where the site stands today: its position on the ten searches that matter to the business, and whether it appears in the answers of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini on five questions a client would ask. Without this, month three has nothing to compare against, and a retainer without a baseline is a retainer you can't evaluate.
Month 1 also ships the plumbing: robots.txt and llms.txt set up, the basic structured data (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage) in place, and the first two articles chosen from what the baseline shows.
2. Month 2: corrections shipped, first articles live
The ranked fixes from month 1 go live, most important first. On a small site that's the bulk of the month's technical time.
The two articles (four on the larger plan) are written to answer searches the site can win, not searches the client likes. The difference matters. "Best law firm in Paris" is a search the site won't win this year. "How much does a lawyer's website cost" is one it can, and it brings the same reader one step earlier.
Each article carries a FAQ with short answers and structured data, because those are the parts AI answers quote. And each links to the page that sells.
3. Month 3: the first comparison
Month 3 is the first month where the report says something. Positions on the ten searches, before and after. The five AI questions, before and after. What moved, what didn't, and my reading of why.
At this point the honest picture is mixed, most of the time: informational searches move first, commercial ones later. That's why my retainers have a three-month minimum. Fewer than three months and you're paying for a baseline and a first round of fixes with no way to judge them.
4. Months 4 to 12: the rhythm, and the slow part
From month 4 the calendar repeats: audit, fixes, articles, report. On the larger plan, two more things come in. Entity work: making sure the business exists as one consistent entity in the places AI models read, from Wikidata to directories to the profiles that mention it. And citation engineering: writing the pages so that a quotable sentence with a source sits where an answer engine looks for one.
The slow part is Google. Its own guidance to businesses hiring an SEO said, until its 2026 rewrite, that it takes "four months to a year" from the first changes to the first benefits. Since 22 July 2026, Google also shows AI Overviews in France, which changes what a position means: being cited in the overview can matter more than sitting at number four under it.
5. What a retainer should never include
- Guaranteed rankings. Google tells businesses to avoid anyone who guarantees a ranking or claims a special relationship with Google. A guarantee is either a lie or a trick with the search chosen after the fact.
- Bought links. Link schemes break Google's spam policies. If links are in the retainer, they should be earned with content you can read, from sites you can name.
- "AI visibility" you can't check. If a report says your business "appears in AI answers", it should name the questions, the engines and the date, so you can open ChatGPT and try them yourself.
- Content nobody reviewed. Two good articles beat eight generated ones. If a retainer promises volume the price can't support, the articles are being generated and published unread.
- A first month with no baseline. See month 1.
6. What it costs, in the market and with me
The French market gives two public reference points. La Fabrique du Net's barometer (January 2026 version) puts the average monthly SEO budget of a national SME or a mid-sized e-commerce site at 2,500 to 5,000 € excl. VAT with an agency. Studio à Table's survey of twelve local SEO engagements for very small and small businesses lands at a median of 980 € excl. VAT a month.
My two retainers sit between those.
Essentials costs €1,200 a month and includes:
- Monthly technical audit
- Priority-fixed corrections
- 2 optimised articles per month
- Basic structured data (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage)
- robots.txt + llms.txt configuration
- Google position tracking (top 10 keywords)
- Basic AI monitoring (top 5 queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini)
- Monthly synthetic report
Growth costs €2,400 a month and includes:
- Everything in Essentials
- 4 SEO + GEO optimized articles per month
- Citation engineering in your content
- Entity optimization (Wikidata, directories, profiles)
- Advanced AI monitoring (30+ monthly queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini)
- Advanced schemas (Person, Article, BreadcrumbList)
- Sector-specific GEO strategy
Both run three months minimum, prices excluding VAT.
If you'd rather know where you stand before committing to a month, the SEO and GEO audit is €1,500 excl. VAT, delivered within two weeks, and month 1 of a retainer builds on it.
The plans are detailed on my SEO and GEO services page, and all prices are on the pricing page. If you're comparing providers, I wrote a guide on how to choose a GEO consultant and one on what a monthly SEO and GEO retainer costs.
Sources
- Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?" (avoid guarantees and claims of a special relationship with Google).
- Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?", version of 10 December 2025 (four months to a year; the 2026 rewrite dropped the figure).
- La Fabrique du Net, "Tarif agence SEO 2026 : combien ça coûte", January 2026 version.
- Studio à Table, "Combien coûte une prestation SEO en agence ?", 15 March 2026, updated 1 July 2026.
- Google, launch of AI Overviews in France, 22 July 2026.
Want to know where your site stands before month 1? Describe your situation and I reply within 24 hours with a first opinion. Tell me about your project or see the SEO and GEO plans.
