A request for proposal for search work usually asks for a list of deliverables and gets a list of deliverables, which every competent firm can produce and which distinguishes nobody. The documents that produce useful replies ask what the firm would do on your specific site and why, and give them enough access to answer.
Give them the information to answer
Analytics and search console access under a confidentiality agreement, or at least a meaningful export, plus the commercial context: which services make money, what a lead is worth, what has been tried. Firms asked to propose blind will propose generically, and you will have run a process that tells you only who writes the best generic proposal.
Ask what and why, not how much of each
What would you do first on this site and why. What is the biggest problem you can see. What would you refuse to do. What would you do if results were flat at six months. These separate firms immediately, and they cannot be answered from a template, which is exactly the point.
Settle the commercial terms in the document
Who owns the accounts and data, whether the firm implements or only recommends, what the reporting cadence is, what the fee buys in hours and seniority, and what happens on exit. Putting these in the document rather than in a later negotiation means proposals are comparable on the terms that matter.
Run it fairly and keep it short
Same document, same access, same questions window with answers published to all bidders, two to three weeks to respond, three or four firms. Long processes with many bidders reward proposal capacity rather than capability, and they exhaust the people you would want on your account.
Questions people ask about seo rfp
Should an SEO RFP name a budget?
Yes, as a range. It tells firms which of several possible approaches to propose and makes the replies comparable.
Should I ask for a free audit?
A short diagnostic shows how a firm thinks. A large free audit is a sales cost recovered elsewhere, and firms giving away substantial work often have capacity to spare.
How many firms should be invited?
Three or four that already pass your filters. More produces polished proposals and a harder decision rather than a better one.