r/Local_SEO

I spent 32 months working inside a U.S. marketing agency, and the experience changed how I look at agency retainers, team size, reporting, and the way client work is sold.

When I joined in December 2023, the company had four employees and around six or seven clients. I accepted a $60,000 salary, which was $20,000 less than I had been making in New York, because the role was remote and gave me the chance to move to Florida.

At that stage, I handled most of the SEO and web work. I worked on technical SEO, new pages, Google Business Profile optimization, website changes, strategy, and reporting. Clients saw progress, the agency grew, and for roughly the first 20 months, when results depended mostly on my work, client churn was close to zero.

The company expanded from a small team with a handful of clients to more than 30 high-ticket accounts. Some clients paid around $4,000 per month, while others paid $12,000, $15,000, or even $17,000.

The problem was that delivery did not grow at the same speed as sales.

At one point, I was responsible for local SEO across more than 30 clients while also preparing weekly reports. Some weeks, I had close to 40 reports to complete. That could take one full day out of a five-day workweek before I even touched strategy, technical work, page updates, client requests, or implementation.

Every client received something. I completed technical fixes, built pages, optimized Google Business Profiles, reviewed websites, and handled local SEO tasks. The issue was not that no work happened. The issue was that the amount and depth of work did not match what many clients were paying.
A company paying $12,000 to $17,000 per month should not receive only a few hours of senior SEO attention.

The agency also had separate content and link-building teams, but the departments were not working from one strategy. Content was often created without clear search intent or a long-term plan. Some articles competed with commercial pages. Link building was handled as a monthly quota instead of a coordinated plan tied to target pages and business goals.

People were busy, but busy is not the same as effective.

As the agency grew, it hired more people and added more management layers. Some new hires came in at much higher salaries than the people directly responsible for client results. Designers were hired around $85,000. Some account management and leadership roles were close to $140,000.

My salary moved from $60,000 to around $70,000 over nearly two years, even though the client base had multiplied and I was still central to delivery. I later asked for $90,000 because I wanted my pay to reflect the responsibility I already carried. I was told it was impossible, then the company agreed the next day.

The bigger problem was not one salary decision. It was the lack of a clear hiring and training strategy.

People were hired into important roles without enough relevant experience. Training was limited. Responsibilities overlapped. Teams worked in separate directions. Quality dropped, clients started leaving, and leadership turnover became constant. Two SEO directors changed within roughly six months, and several other leaders left within a short period.

When the last SEO director left, I took full responsibility for SEO operations.

During my final three weeks, I connected SEO, content, link building, programmatic SEO, and development under one plan. I created 12-month content plans covering more than 4,000 articles and six-month link-building plans covering more than 2,000 placements.

I trained the content, link-building, pSEO, and development teams. I introduced new workflows, reduced meetings that had no clear purpose, and moved more communication into Slack and Asana so people could see decisions, owners, and next steps.

The results came fast. Content output increased by roughly 280% to 400%. July content was completed, and a large part of August was already finished before the month began. The link-building team published more than 300 backlinks in one month and reached nearly every client goal early.

For the first time in a long time, the departments were working toward the same result.

Those final three weeks were also the most enjoyable part of my entire time at the agency. I was finally doing the work I do best, which is connecting teams, building one strategy, training people, and taking responsibility for the outcome.

I asked for $140,000 to continue leading the function. The company was happy with the work, the results, and the ownership, but did not agree to the compensation.

So I left and started building my own agency.

The main lesson for business owners is simple. A high retainer does not mean a senior strategist is spending meaningful time on your account. You may be paying $15,000 per month while the person responsible for results has only a few hours available for you.

The rest of your budget may be absorbed by reporting, meetings, management layers, disconnected teams, and work that looks active but does not move the business forward.

Before hiring an agency, ask who is responsible for strategy, how many clients that person manages, how much time they spend on your account, and how SEO, content, links, development, and conversion work are tied together.

Do not judge an agency by how large the team looks or how detailed the dashboard appears. Ask who is doing the work, what they are doing each month, and how much time they actually have.

That will tell you more than the sales presentation ever will.