Packaging is how agencies make an inherently custom service comparable and sellable. A national SEO package bundles a defined amount of work into a monthly fee with a name attached, usually three tiers, and the tiers differ by how much of each thing you get. That is useful for a buyer, because you can finally lay two proposals side by side, and it is also where the sleight of hand lives, because a package can be built to look larger than it is by counting inputs nobody should be buying by the unit. This page explains what a package normally contains, why the tiers are priced the way they are, which line items are meaningful and which are filler, and how to compare two proposals that have bundled the same work in different shapes.
What is normally inside a package
Most packages contain five components in varying proportions. Technical work covers crawling, indexing, site speed, structured data and the fixes that stop a site from competing with itself, and it is front-loaded, so it is heaviest in the first months and lighter afterwards. On-page work covers titles, headings, internal linking and the reorganisation of existing pages around the queries they should serve. Content production is the volume component and is usually the line that separates the tiers. Digital PR or link acquisition is the most variable, both in method and in whether it is included at all. Reporting and strategy time is the fifth and is often the least specified, which is a shame because access to a senior person is frequently the most valuable part. Ask for the hours or the deliverable count against each of the five, because a package described only by tier name is not a specification.
Why the tiers are priced the way they are
Tiers exist to sort buyers by budget, not by need, which is why the middle tier is designed to be chosen. The honest version of tiering varies the things that genuinely scale with cost: number of pages produced, number of target queries worked, hours of senior strategy time and the volume of outreach. The less honest version varies things that either do not scale or should not be sold by the unit, such as counts of keywords tracked, directory submissions or numbers of social posts, all of which cost the agency almost nothing and inflate a comparison table. A useful test is to ask what the difference in outcome is between two tiers, expressed in pages and queries rather than in features. If the answer is a longer list of activities with no explanation of what more of them achieves, you are looking at a pricing device rather than a plan.
How to compare two packages that bundle differently
Normalise before you compare. Reduce every proposal to four numbers: pages of new content per month, target queries actively worked, senior hours per month, and link or coverage acquisition per month. Then add the things that should be present in all of them and are sometimes hidden in only one, including technical remediation, internal linking work and Search Console monitoring. Ask each agency to confirm those four numbers in writing. Next, separate the fee from any pass-through spend so a media budget or a content production cost is not padding one side of the comparison. Finally, compare the term and the exit: a cheaper package on a twelve-month minimum with a ninety-day notice period is often more expensive in practice than a dearer one you can leave in thirty days if the first quarter goes badly.
The line items that should make you ask questions
Some inclusions are neutral filler and some are actual risk. Directory and bookmark submissions in volume, article syndication to networks, and guaranteed numbers of links per month all describe link acquisition by purchase rather than by merit, and Google's spam policies treat link schemes as a violation with consequences that land on your site rather than the agency's. Guaranteed rankings are not deliverable by anyone and their presence tells you how the firm sells. Keyword counts are a weak proxy for anything, since a hundred tracked phrases nobody searches is worse than five that convert. Also question a package with no technical component at all: a site with indexing or speed problems will not convert content spend into positions, and a proposal that skips the audit is usually one that intends to publish regardless of what the site needs.
Questions people ask about national seo packages
What should a national SEO package cost?
It depends on the number of queries you are contesting, the competitiveness of the category and how much content and outreach the plan requires, so a published tier price is only comparable once you normalise it to pages, queries, senior hours and coverage per month. Do that arithmetic on every proposal and the range narrows quickly, and the outliers explain themselves.
Is a package better than a custom scope?
A package is easier to compare and easier to start, which is why they exist, and for smaller programmes the standardisation is genuinely efficient. A custom scope makes sense once the site has specific problems, such as a migration, a large catalogue or a technical platform constraint, since a fixed package will spend its budget on the standard activities regardless of what your site needs most.
How long is a reasonable contract term?
National SEO needs two to three quarters before a trend is unambiguous, so an agency wanting some commitment is being reasonable. A twelve-month lock with a long notice period is less reasonable. A common middle ground is a three to six month initial term followed by a rolling arrangement with thirty days notice, which gives both sides enough runway without trapping either.
Should content volume be the main thing separating tiers?
It is the most defensible variable, since more pages genuinely does mean more coverage of the queries you want. Just check that the volume comes with a plan, meaning named target queries and a reason each page should exist. Volume without a query map is how sites end up with a large library that competes with itself and earns nothing.