A good brief is the single best thing you can do to get useful proposals from SEO agencies. It saves everyone time, makes quotes comparable, and shows agencies you're a serious, organised client, which tends to attract better providers. This lesson explains what to include, gives a template you can adapt, and covers how to share access safely.

Why write a brief?

Without a brief, agencies have to guess your goals, budget and constraints. You'll get generic pitches that are hard to compare: one quotes for content, another for links, another for a website rebuild. With a brief, every agency answers the same questions, so you can judge their thinking, not their sales skills.

A brief also forces you to clarify your own goals. Many owners discover while writing one that they really need a better website, more reviews, or a sales process before more traffic.

What to include

Aim for about two clear pages. Long enough to be useful, short enough to be read.

1. About your business

  • What you sell, to whom, and where (suburbs, cities, states, countries).
  • Your most profitable services or products, and any you want to grow or phase out.
  • What makes you different, in honest terms.
  • Key competitors, both business competitors and sites you see ranking.

2. Goals

Write goals in business terms, with a measure and time frame where possible:

  • Weak: "Rank higher on Google."
  • Better: "Increase organic quote requests for commercial fit-outs in Melbourne by 30% within 12 months, compared with the previous year."
  • Better: "Grow organic online sales of our outdoor furniture range in the UK, measured as revenue from organic search in GA4."

Mention any secondary goals, such as recruitment, brand awareness, or reducing reliance on paid ads.

3. Current situation and history

  • Your website platform (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, custom) and who manages it.
  • Recent changes: site migrations, redesigns, domain changes, platform switches, which often explain traffic changes.
  • Past SEO work and agencies, and anything you're worried about, such as purchased links or old penalties.
  • Current marketing: ads, social, email, PR.
  • Baseline data if you have it: monthly organic sessions, enquiries or sales from organic search, top pages and queries.

4. Budget and timing

Give a budget range. Agencies can then propose what's achievable rather than guessing. Include when you want to start and any deadlines, such as a seasonal peak or product launch.

5. Resources and constraints

  • Who will approve work, and how quickly?
  • Do you have a developer, content writer or designer?
  • Can the agency interview your experts and access case studies, photos and data? This is the resource that most improves content quality.
  • Any regulatory or brand constraints (for example AHPRA advertising rules for health practitioners, financial services disclosures, franchise brand guidelines).

6. What you want in the proposal

Ask every agency to cover the same things:

  • Their initial view of opportunities and risks.
  • A proposed approach and priorities for the first three to six months.
  • Deliverables, team, seniority, and who does the work.
  • How success will be measured and reported.
  • Fees, terms, and what's excluded.
  • Two or three relevant case studies and client references.

7. Your decision process

State the timeline (for example: proposals due in two weeks, shortlist calls the week after, decision by month end), who decides, and the criteria you'll use. This helps agencies plan and shows respect for their time.

A short template

Business: Coastal Joinery, custom kitchens and cabinetry, Sunshine Coast and Noosa. Average project $28k. Goal: 25% more qualified kitchen enquiries from organic search in 12 months; reduce Google Ads spend by 20%. Situation: WordPress site rebuilt in March; organic enquiries fell about 15% afterwards. No previous SEO agency. Google Business Profile has 41 reviews (4.8). Baseline: around 1,900 organic sessions and 22 organic enquiries per month (GA4, last 6 months). Budget: $2,000–$3,000 per month plus up to $4,000 for an initial audit. Start in July. Resources: in-house designer for photos; owner available for one interview per month; web developer on 10 hours/month. Proposal should include: initial observations, 6-month plan, team, reporting, fees, two local case studies and references. Process: proposals by 15 June; calls with up to three agencies; decision by 30 June.

Sharing access safely

Agencies need data to write good proposals, but be careful:

  • Grant user access, never share passwords. Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Business Profile and most tools let you add users with specific permissions.
  • Use least privilege: read-only ("Viewer" in GA4, "Restricted" user in Search Console) is enough for a proposal. Give higher permissions only when work starts and only if needed.
  • Keep a list of who has access to what.
  • Remove access from agencies you don't hire, and from any agency when the relationship ends.
  • Consider an NDA if you're sharing commercially sensitive data, such as margins or customer lists.
  • Think about privacy law: don't share personal customer data unnecessarily. In Australia, the Privacy Act applies to many businesses; in the UK and EU, GDPR applies.

Where to send your brief

Send it to a shortlist of three to five agencies or consultants. You can find them through recommendations, industry associations, case studies relevant to your sector, and directories that verify providers. Avoid sending it to dozens of agencies at once; you'll get too many responses to evaluate properly.

Gathering your baseline before you brief

You'll get sharper proposals, and be able to judge results later, if you capture a baseline first. Even a basic one helps:

  1. Search Console (Performance → Search results, last 12 months): total clicks and impressions, top 20 queries and top 20 pages. Export to a spreadsheet.
  2. Google Analytics 4: organic search sessions, key events such as form submissions, calls or purchases, and revenue if you sell online. Check that conversion tracking actually works by submitting a test enquiry.
  3. Google Business Profile performance: calls, website clicks and direction requests over recent months.
  4. Enquiry records: how many leads came from "Google" according to your CRM or intake form, and roughly how many became customers.
  5. Seasonality notes: busy and quiet months, so year-on-year comparisons are fair.

If you don't have Search Console or GA4 set up, do that before briefing, or make it the first task in the engagement. Without measurement, nobody can prove whether SEO is working.

Common brief mistakes

  • Listing keywords instead of goals. "We want to rank for these 50 keywords" limits the agency's thinking and may ignore better opportunities. Share keywords as examples, not as the definition of success.
  • Hiding problems. If a previous agency bought links or the site had a manual action, say so. Agencies will find out, and hidden problems derail plans.
  • Unrealistic timelines. Asking for results before a seasonal peak that's six weeks away rarely works.
  • No budget. "Tell us what it costs" produces quotes from $500 to $15,000 that can't be compared.
  • Asking for free strategy. It's reasonable to ask for an initial view, but expecting a full audit and plan before engagement is unfair; consider paying for a short discovery project instead.

Key takeaways

  • A two-page brief gets better, comparable proposals and clarifies your own goals.
  • Include your business, goals (measurable), history, baseline, budget, resources, constraints and decision process.
  • Mention recent migrations or redesigns, which often explain traffic changes.
  • Access to your experts and case studies is the most valuable resource you can offer.
  • Share data with user access and least privilege, never passwords, and remove access when you're done.