What’s usually included in a full-service SEO plan?

A full-service SEO plan typically includes everything needed to improve your site’s visibility in search engines – from technical fixes under the hood to content creation and link building.

 In practice, that means a comprehensive mix of on-page optimization, off-page strategies, and continuous analysis. In the first few sentences: Yes, a proper SEO plan will cover technical audits, keyword research, content strategy, on-page tweaks, link outreach, and ongoing tracking.

 It’s essentially like hiring a team to act as your in-house SEO department, taking care of all the details to help you rank higher and get more organic traffic.

If you’re considering a full-service SEO package, here’s what you can expect to be included:

SEO Audit and Fixes

First order of business: make sure your website is healthy. A full-service plan always starts with a technical SEO audit. The team will crawl your site (using tools or custom audits) to find any issues that might hinder search engines or users. This includes checking for things like:

• Crawlability and Indexing: Are all your important pages accessible to Google? They’ll look at your sitemap, robots.txt, and whether any pages are mistakenly blocked or no-indexed.
• Site Errors: Broken links, 404 pages, or server errors can hurt both user experience and SEO. These will be identified and a plan made to fix them.
• Site Speed and Performance: Slow sites can rank lower. Expect them to analyze your page load times, Core Web Vitals (Google’s page experience metrics), and suggest optimizations like compressing images, enabling browser caching, or improving code.
• Mobile-Friendliness: With Google’s mobile-first indexing, your site must work well on phones. A full SEO service will test your mobile usability and responsiveness, making recommendations if things are clunky on small screens.
• Technical Structure: This covers URL structures, redirect chains, duplicate content issues, and use of structured data (like Schema markup for rich snippets). The plan should include cleaning up or improving these areas so search engines can understand and trust your site.

In a nutshell, technical SEO is about ensuring your website’s foundation is solid. Full-service SEO teams often have developers or technical specialists who will not only find problems but also help fix them (or guide your dev team on what to do). 

For example, if you have a bunch of slow, uncompressed images, they might compress and re-upload them, or if your site navigation is confusing to crawlers, they’ll restructure internal links. It’s like tuning up a car before a road trip – you want the engine running smoothly before expecting top performance.

Keyword Research and On-Page Optimization

Once the technical side is squared away, the next component is keyword research and on-page SEO. A full-service plan will include in-depth research to discover the best keywords and topics your site should target. This means they will:

• Research terms your potential customers are searching for (including search volume and difficulty).
• Analyze competitor websites to see what keywords they rank for and where opportunities lie.
• Identify both broad “head” keywords and more specific “long-tail” keywords relevant to your business.

After research, they’ll map these keywords to your content plan or existing pages. On-page optimization then involves tailoring each important page on your site for its target keywords and themes. This includes:

• Crafting or tweaking title tags and meta descriptions to be both keyword-relevant and compelling (because those show up in search results).
• Ensuring the primary keyword (and related terms) appear naturally in the page’s content, especially in headings (H1, H2s) and the introduction.
• Improving content structure and readability: breaking up text with subheadings, bullet points, images, and ensuring content is comprehensive and helpful to the reader (dwell time and bounce rate matter!).
• Optimizing URLs (short, descriptive URLs often containing the main keyword).
• Adding internal links between pages on your site where relevant, to help spread link authority and make navigation easier for Google and users.
• Using appropriate image alt text and media optimization so everything on the page is SEO-friendly.

For example, a full-service SEO team might take a mediocre blog post you have and revamp it: doing new keyword research to expand it, adding better headings, maybe including a FAQ section with common search questions, and optimizing the meta tags. The goal is to align every page with what people are searching for and what Google considers high-quality content.

Content Strategy and Creation

SEO and content go hand in hand. So any robust SEO plan will include a content strategy – and often, content creation services too. After all, to rank for new keywords and attract visitors, you likely need to publish quality content regularly.

Here’s what’s usually included on the content side:

• Content Strategy/Planning: Based on keyword research and your business goals, the SEO team will outline what content to create. This might be a calendar of blog topics, new landing pages to build, or refreshing existing pages. They’ll prioritize content that can capture relevant traffic and leads. For example, if you run an online project management tool, they might plan articles targeting “how to manage remote teams” or “project management software features” – topics your audience cares about, which can bring in traffic and subtly promote your solution.
• Content Creation: Many full-service SEO providers have writers and editors who will produce the content for you. SEO content writing is a special craft – it involves blending good writing with keyword targeting. Embarque, for instance, has a team of trained SEO content writers who ensure every blog post or guide is optimized to rank andvaluable to the reader. In a full-service plan, you can expect the team to handle writing new blog posts, articles, or even copy for your webpages as needed.
• Content Optimization: If you already have a lot of content, the plan might include auditing and improving existing pages. This could involve updating old posts with new information, adding target keywords you missed, or merging thin pages to create a more authoritative resource.
• Publishing and Formatting: Some agencies will even upload the content to your CMS (like WordPress), format it with proper headings, links, images, etc. Basically, they take the content piece from idea to published page ready to be indexed by Google.

The content element of a full-service SEO plan is ongoing. You don’t just publish one or two pages and call it a day. Typically, they’ll set a cadence (e.g. 4 blog posts a month, or whatever fits your strategy) to keep expanding your site’s footprint in search results.

Link Building and Off-Page SEO

Aside from on-site work, a full-service SEO plan definitely includes off-page SEO – primarily link building. Backlinks (other websites linking to yours) remain one of the strongest factors in Google’s ranking algorithm. But not all links are equal, and building them requires tact and effort.

In a comprehensive plan, the SEO team will:

• Audit your current backlink profile: Are there any spammy links hurting you? Who’s linking to you now? This sets the baseline.
• Research competitors’ backlinks: to find link opportunities. If your competitors have links from certain industry blogs or directories, maybe you should too.
• Develop a link building strategy: Common white-hat strategies include outreach for guest posting (writing articles on other relevant sites that include a link back), creating high-value content that naturally attracts links, digital PR campaigns (pitching stories or data to news sites), or engaging in industry partnerships.
• Execute the outreach: This is the labor-intensive part. The SEO team might reach out to bloggers, journalists, or webmasters to promote your content and secure links. They might also list your business in high-quality directories if local SEO is a focus, or seek reviews and mentions on reputable sites.
• Monitor and refine: A good plan tracks new backlinks acquired, checks their quality, and adjusts tactics over time. For instance, if guest posts are yielding good links, they might scale that up; if a particular piece of content isn’t getting the love they expected, they might try promoting it via another channel.

Quality is emphasized over quantity. Ten great links from relevant, authoritative sites beat a hundred low-quality spam links any day (in fact, spammy links can harm SEO). So a full-service team will focus on “white-hat” link building – meaning ethical strategies that won’t get you penalized by Google.

For example, Embarque has an internal standard for link quality: we look for partners with strong authority metrics (like a solid domain rating and real traffic) before pursuing a link. 

In one case, using purely white-hat link building, we helped a client achieve a 60x increase in organic traffic over a year – showing how powerful good backlinks can be. In your plan, expect the SEO provider to similarly put effort into earning solid backlinks that boost your site’s authority.

Beyond links, off-page SEO can include things like managing your Google Business Profile for local SEO (if relevant), encouraging positive online reviews, or even social media signals to some extent. The core, however, is building that backlink profile.

Analytics, Reporting, and Ongoing Optimization

A full-service SEO plan isn’t a one-and-done deal – it’s an ongoing process. So, included in the package will be regular analytics monitoring and performance reporting. Typically, you’ll get monthly reports (or access to a dashboard) showing key metrics:

• Increases in organic traffic, and which pages are driving it.
• Changes in keyword rankings for your target terms.
• New backlinks acquired.
• Engagement metrics like bounce rate or time on site (to gauge content effectiveness).
• Conversion data (if you have goals set up, like form submissions or product sales from organic traffic).

Why is this important? Because SEO is iterative. The team will use this data to continually refine the strategy. If some content pieces are outperforming others, they’ll analyze why and apply those learnings elsewhere. If certain keywords aren’t moving up, they might pivot focus or try a different tactic (perhaps those terms are too competitive, so they target related easier ones first).

Continuous optimization means they don’t just “set it and forget it.” They will:

• Adjust the content plan based on what’s working (e.g., if technical tutorials are doing well, double down on similar topics).
• Update older content periodically to keep it fresh and maintain rankings.
• Fix new technical issues that arise (websites are living things – new errors or opportunities pop up, especially if you redesign or add features).
• Keep building links over time to steadily increase your domain authority.
• Stay tuned to algorithm updates. If Google rolls out a big change (happens several times a year), a full-service SEO partner will assess the impact on your site and adapt if needed.

Communication is often part of the ongoing service too. Good agencies or consultants will have regular check-ins, whether monthly calls or quarterly strategy reviews, to keep you in the loop and discuss results. This also gives you a chance to give input or mention new business directions so the SEO can align with your current goals.

Additional Elements That May Be Included

Depending on the provider and your specific package, there might be other pieces folded into a full-service SEO plan. Some examples:

• Competitive Analysis: A thorough look at what your competitors are doing in SEO – their content, keywords, and link sources – to inform your strategy.
• Local SEO (if applicable): Managing local citations, Google Maps optimization, and local keyword targeting for businesses serving specific regions.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Some SEO teams also advise on optimizing landing pages for conversions, since more traffic is only as good as the leads or sales it produces. They might suggest changes to your site layout or calls-to-action to help turn visitors into customers.
• Technical enhancements: Implementing advanced SEO tactics like Schema structured data (to get rich results stars, FAQ dropdowns, etc.), fixing pagination or duplicate content with canonical tags, and setting up proper hreflang for multilingual sites if needed.
• Content promotion: Apart from publishing content, sometimes they’ll help promote it via newsletters or even light social media promotion to gain initial traction (though this crosses into content marketing territory, which a full-service SEO often overlaps with).

Essentially, “full-service SEO” means holistic SEO – any aspect that can impact your search ranking and traffic, the plan has it covered or has a way to address it. It’s like having an outsourced SEO department handling strategy, execution, and maintenance.

A One-Stop Shop for Search Success

A full-service SEO plan includes all the critical pieces: technical tuning, smart keyword and content strategy, on-page improvements, consistent content creation, authoritative link building, and constant monitoring. By covering all bases, it ensures that your SEO growth isn’t hampered by a missing piece.

If you’re investing in such a plan, make sure the agency or consultant walks you through everything they’ll do. You should come away confident that “Yes, they’re handling everything: my site will be technically sound, filled with great content, and promoted through quality backlinks.” That peace of mind – and the results that follow – are exactly what full-service SEO is meant to deliver.

At Embarque, for example, our full-service approach has helped clients see massive traffic and revenue gains (think 500%+ increases in signups, or double/triple-digit growth in organic visitors) because we don’t leave any stone unturned. 

Whether you work with us or another SEO partner, make sure they cover the comprehensive checklist. When all these components work together, that’s when SEO truly pays off, driving more visitors and customers straight to your virtual door.