A proposal should tell you what will change, who will do it and how you will judge whether it helped. A list of SEO terms is not enough. Use these checks to turn a quote into a working agreement your practice can understand.
1. A service priority and a starting point
The proposal should name the service and audience that matter. It should also explain what is known about the current problem and what still needs investigation. A clinic seeking more suitable first appointments needs a different plan from a care provider trying to reduce enquiries outside its service area.
Ask for a starting record of relevant search activity and, where available, enquiry quality. Do not accept a forecast of appointments that has no connection to your capacity, location or existing results.
2. Website fixes with an owner
A supplier may call this technical SEO. In practical terms, it means finding problems that prevent people or search services reaching and understanding important pages. Examples include broken links, missing pages, unusable mobile layouts and forms that fail to deliver.
Ask which issues the supplier will fix directly and which will be passed to someone else. For each priority, request a plain explanation of the consequence and a check showing the problem has been resolved. A list of hundreds of warnings is not itself a delivery plan.
3. Research connected to your actual services
The research should distinguish people looking for your kind of service from people asking general questions. A high search volume is not useful if those visitors are outside your area or need something you do not offer. Ask which searches your own site appears for and which opportunities are estimates from other tools.
The output should lead to a decision: improve a service page, clarify local information, answer a missing question or investigate why an important page is hard to find.
4. Page improvements you can review
Agree the pages in scope and the information each needs. For an appointment page, this might include eligibility, location, clinician details, fees, what the first visit includes and what submitting the form actually does. The practice verifies those facts.
Ask to see the revised page before publication and confirm who implements feedback. A title change alone and a full service-page rewrite are different deliverables.
5. A reason for each article
A content plan should identify the reader's question, the useful answer and why an existing page cannot already do the job. It should include who checks the information and who keeps it current. An agreed article count can help estimate work, but it does not prove usefulness.
Reserve time for correcting existing pages. For healthcare content, specify where clinical review is needed and who provides it. Never imply that everything was written or reviewed by a doctor unless that is what happened.
6. Clear boundaries for publicity and links
If the service includes outreach, ask what kind of genuine story or expertise the practice has to contribute, who approves it and what is being purchased. Publicity cannot guarantee coverage, links, referrals or rankings. Be wary of a fixed volume of unexplained links presented as the main result.
7. Local work that matches your service area
For a local practice, agree who maintains the business listing, opening details, contact routes and useful location pages. A national online service needs a different explanation of where and how it can help. Neither needs interchangeable pages for places it cannot genuinely serve.
8. A specific scope for AI search
If AI visibility is included, ask which public information will be checked and which observations will be reported. Do not treat a special schema package or one successful prompt as a guarantee of inclusion. Google says its AI search features do not require special optimisation.
9. Measurement that respects its limits
A search click, a contact-button click, a received enquiry and a booked appointment are different things. Agree which can be measured in your setup and who verifies them. Keep personal or clinical information out of general marketing labels and reports. The practice's responsible person should review any new tracking arrangement.
A scope checklist to copy into your comparison
| Part of the quote | Write down |
|---|---|
| Delivery | Named pages or problems, deliverables and implementation owner. |
| Review | Factual and clinical reviewers, feedback rounds and approval route. |
| Costs | Setup, recurring fee, separate charges, tax and minimum term. |
| Access | Practice-owned accounts, supplier permissions and handover. |
| Reporting | Comparable periods, relevant visits, enquiry evidence and known gaps. |
| End of stage | Acceptance checks and the date to decide the next priority. |
A useful report ends with a decision
Ask for what changed, what happened afterwards and what else could explain the result. Compare similar periods and show the totals behind percentages. If enquiries have not improved, the commentary should examine that honestly and propose a focused next step.
Our enquiry reporting guide helps you discuss the result with reception.
Before you accept
Do not sign until you understand the work and its exclusions. If a promise depends on a future ranking, a guaranteed citation or a patient total, ask for it to be replaced with realistic deliverables and a review process. Google's hiring guidance is a useful independent check. See how Kay & Co. scopes healthcare SEO for our approach.
