SEO Retainer

An SEO retainer for when scope shifts month to month.

Senior hours by the block. No package tiers, no scope arguments. Some months are technical work, some are content strategy, some are mostly review calls. The retainer flexes.

Get a free consultation See hour blocks
15+Years in search
100%Senior hours
1 mo.Hour rollover
Retainer · October Tracking
14.5 / 20 hours used
  • Technical audit work 4.0 hrs
  • Content strategy 3.0 hrs
  • Link earning outreach 4.0 hrs
  • Strategy calls 2.0 hrs
  • Reporting 1.5 hrs
5.5 hrs Remaining this month
+2.5 hrs Rolling over to Nov
100%Of retainer hours billed at senior rates, by the senior
1 dayAverage turnaround on retainer requests
1 mo.Hour rollover window for unused time
0Junior staff, account managers, or sales handoffs
Hour blocks

Pick the block that matches your scope.

Three monthly retainer sizes. Unused hours roll over for one billing cycle. Scale up or down with 30 days notice.

Starter Retainer
10 hours per month
For in-house teams needing a senior to review work, answer questions, and direct strategy.
$2,000 / month
$200/hr. 1-month rollover.
  • 10 senior SEO hours per month
  • Use for any SEO adjacent work
  • Direct Slack or email access
  • Monthly check-in call (30 min)
  • Unused hours roll to next month
  • Overflow billed at $200/hr
  • Month to month, 30 days notice
Start with Starter →
Most Popular
Growth Retainer
20 hours per month
For growing companies with variable monthly scope. Heavy months and light months balance out.
$3,800 / month
$190/hr. 1-month rollover.
  • 20 senior SEO hours per month
  • Use for any SEO adjacent work
  • Direct Slack access
  • Bi-weekly check-in calls
  • Quarterly strategy reviews
  • Unused hours roll to next month
  • Overflow billed at $190/hr
  • Month to month, 30 days notice
Start with Growth →
Strategic Retainer
40 hours per month
For agencies needing white label SEO, enterprise sites in active optimization, or multi-domain operations.
$7,200 / month
$180/hr. 1-month rollover.
  • 40 senior SEO hours per month
  • Use for any SEO adjacent work
  • Direct phone, Slack, email access
  • Weekly check-in calls
  • Monthly strategy reviews
  • Custom Python tooling available
  • Unused hours roll to next month
  • Overflow billed at $180/hr
  • Month to month, 30 days notice
Talk about Strategic →

Not sure between a retainer and a fixed scope? Monthly SEO packages have set deliverables instead of flexible hours. Or pair either with a one-time technical SEO audit for a faster start.

What hours cover

Anything SEO adjacent.

The work that gets done each month is decided at the start of the month based on what's actually pressing. Here's the menu.

Technical audits & reviews

Spot checks on indexation, crawlability, schema, internal links, Core Web Vitals, or whatever your in-house team flagged. Findings written up in plain language with specific recommendations.

Content strategy & briefs

Topic clusters, keyword targeting, content briefs with search intent and outline, editorial direction for your in-house team or agency. The strategic layer above the writing.

Link earning outreach

Outreach lists, target site research, pitch templates, and the actual sending. Real placements from sites that already rank in your vertical, not link schemes or Fiverr packs.

Technical implementations

Schema markup deployment, redirect mapping, robots.txt and sitemap configuration, canonical tag fixes, internal link restructuring. The kind of work most senior consultants stop doing.

Migration planning

Domain migrations, platform migrations, site restructures. The pre-migration planning, redirect mapping, and post-migration recovery work that prevents the traffic crash most migrations cause.

Penalty diagnosis

Manual action review, algorithmic penalty analysis, disavow file work, recovery roadmap. The diagnostic work that needs done before the recovery starts.

Competitor analysis

Deep dives on the sites ranking above you. Content gap analysis, backlink profile comparison, technical health benchmarking. The intel that makes your roadmap an actual roadmap.

Team training & reviews

One on one training for your in-house SEO or marketing team. Review of work in progress, written feedback on roadmaps, walkthrough of audit reports they've commissioned elsewhere.

Reporting & analysis

Monthly reports with the rank movement, traffic shift, conversion data, and what shipped. Plus the analysis layer that makes the numbers actually mean something.

Retainer vs. package

When a retainer beats a fixed package.

Three situations where the hours model produces better outcomes than tier-based pricing.

01

Scope flexes with your priorities

Some months are a website migration that needs every available hour on technical work. Some months are a content sprint that pulls hours toward briefs and editorial direction. Some months are quiet and the hours roll over. A package can't bend that way without scope arguments. A retainer doesn't need to.

02

No tier upgrade conversations

With packaged tiers, every additional need triggers an "you'll need to move up to the next tier" conversation. With a retainer, you either have the hours or you pay overflow at the same rate. There's no incentive to push you upward, which means the conversation stays about the work.

03

Built for agencies and in-house teams

If you run an agency that needs SEO firepower without hiring a senior in-house, a retainer is the cleanest model. Same logic for in-house marketing teams who do most of the work but need a senior on call. The retainer is the relationship structure that fits the work pattern.

How a retainer runs

From signed contract to first hours used.

Most retainer engagements look like this. Larger or multi-domain retainers run longer in the kickoff phase.

01

Kickoff & access

Search Console, GA4, and crawl tool access shared. Goals and priorities documented. Communication channel agreed (Slack, email, weekly call).

02

First month plan

The first month's hours get allocated against the most immediate needs. Sometimes that's an audit, sometimes content work, sometimes implementing what was already audited.

03

Monthly cadence

Each month opens with a 15 minute call to set priorities. Hours get logged transparently against tasks. Monthly report at the end with what was done, what's queued, and hour balance.

04

Quarterly review

Every three months, a longer review to look at progress against goals, reassess priorities, and adjust the tier if usage patterns suggest a different block size makes sense.

Who's on the retainer

Every hour billed is the senior's hour.

Tye Odom, founder of Whitewater Digital Marketing
Tye Odom
Founder & Lead SEO

Working in search since 2010. The reason Whitewater caps the active roster at 7 clients is so every retainer hour gets the senior's attention. No junior assigned to "your account." No project manager forwarding tickets. The hours are billed and worked by the same person, every month, every account.

15 Years in Search 100+ Sites Worked 7 Active Client Cap Navarre, FL
Common questions

Things people ask before they sign a retainer.

What's the difference between a retainer and a monthly SEO package?
A monthly SEO package has a fixed scope. Set number of content briefs, set number of technical hours, set deliverables in a set order. A retainer is a block of senior hours that get used however the work needs them that month. Some months are heavy on technical work. Some months are heavy on content strategy. Some months are mostly review calls with an in-house team. The retainer flexes. The package doesn't. Both work, but for different situations.
How do unused hours work?
Unused hours roll over for one billing cycle. So if you use 15 of 20 hours in March, you have 25 hours available in April. Hours don't accumulate indefinitely because that defeats the purpose of paying for monthly attention. The rollover catches the months where business is slow, without letting balances become bargaining chips.
What can retainer hours be used for?
Anything SEO adjacent. Technical audits, on-page optimization, content strategy, content briefs, link earning outreach, schema implementation, migration planning, penalty diagnosis, competitor analysis, strategic consulting calls, GBP optimization, reporting, training your in-house team. The work that gets done is decided at the start of each month based on what's actually pressing.
How is this different from hourly consulting?
Hourly consulting is reactive. You email when something breaks, the consultant logs hours, you get a bill. A retainer is proactive. The hours are pre-committed both ways. Whitewater commits to availability, the client commits to using the block. That two way commitment is what makes the work compound instead of staying transactional.
Can I scale hours up or down between months?
Yes, with 30 days notice. Most clients land on one tier and stay there. Some shift seasonally, scaling up during competitive quarters or product launches and back down in maintenance periods. Tier changes are a conversation, not a renegotiation.
What if I need more hours than my retainer covers?
Overflow hours bill at the same hourly rate as the tier. So a Starter retainer client who needs 12 hours in a month with no rollover available pays for the extra 2 at $200 per hour. The rate doesn't penalize the overflow because the goal is the work, not the metering. If overflow becomes a pattern, the conversation shifts to whether the tier itself needs to step up.
Free 30 minute call

Not sure if a retainer fits your situation?

Book a free consultation. Whitewater pulls your site up live, walks the gaps, and tells you whether a retainer, a package, or something else makes sense based on what you actually need.

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