SEO RFP Template with Sample Questions

Looking for an SEO request for proposal (RFP) template? You’ve come to the right place.

Save yourself the trouble of trawling through tons of sites by simply downloading our free SEO RFP template below.

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If you are vetting SEO agencies and need an SEO RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

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Whether you’re looking to level up your existing SEO program or start one from scratch, chances are you’ll want to partner with a high-quality SEO agency that can bring your ambitions to life.

But vetting different SEO agencies to find the right match for your business can be a challenging undertaking, especially in 2025, when the SEO landscape is evolving faster than ever with AI search, generative engine optimization (GEO), and constantly shifting algorithm updates.

The good news is that a well-crafted RFP makes outsourcing SEO services much more straightforward. The RFP process lets you gather proposals from various agencies and compare them side-by-side based on the predetermined criteria you’ve laid out. This allows you to reach an informed decision that makes the most sense for your business.

So, in addition to giving you a free template to help you on your way, we’ve also broken down all the essential elements you should cover when creating your SEO RFP, including critical questions about AI readiness that most templates miss.

And don’t worry, even if you’re not that familiar with the world of search engine optimization, crafting a solid SEO RFP is pretty straightforward.

What Is an SEO RFP?

An SEO RFP is a document that lets you gather service proposals from a shortlist of SEO agencies.

The document contains information about your specific SEO project requirements, allowing interested agencies to create a submission describing how they could support you.

Once all agencies have submitted their bids, you can determine which proposals best suit your project needs.

Why Use an SEO RFP?

Sharing an RFP with SEO agencies streamlines the procurement process in a number of ways.

Structures Responses for Easier Comparison

An SEO RFP specifies all the critical information you expect to see in an agency’s proposal. Ensuring each submission shares a similar structure makes it much easier to conduct fair, like-for-like comparisons between proposals. This is also why using a well-organized RFP template is so helpful.

Ensures Responses are Tailored to Your Needs

Since an RFP provides a comprehensive overview of your business background, project requirements, and operational constraints, agencies will necessarily submit proposals that take your specific needs into account.

At the very least, if an agency doesn’t seriously attempt to tailor their proposal to your needs, you’ll know they probably aren’t the right fit.

Minimizes Miscommunication

A good RFP leaves nothing to chance and ensures both parties are on the same page. Laying out all the important information upfront lets you avoid miscommunication, especially in regard to budget and the actual deliverables involved.

Saves Time When Onboarding Your New SEO Partner

By creating a comprehensive RFP, the agency you eventually pick as your SEO partner will already understand your business and project needs. This means that they can hit the ground running when you start working together.

Aligns Internal Stakeholders

Writing a comprehensive RFP allows you the opportunity to invite all stakeholders to the table to align expectations about what you hope to achieve with an SEO campaign. This sets clear expectations for your team at the outset and creates a shared understanding of success metrics.

By engaging in a rigorous pre-RFP discussion, you’re laying the groundwork for a more positive outcome, not only for your SEO agency search, but ultimately for your SEO campaign as well.

Download Now: Free SEO RFP Template

If you are vetting SEO agencies and need an SEO RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

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What You Should Cover in an SEO RFP

Since the goal of an RFP is to help you find a suitable SEO partner, you’ll need to provide prospective agencies with key details about your company’s SEO needs and ask them for information about their ways of working.

Here are the main areas your SEO RFP should cover to elicit high-quality proposals.

An Overview of Your Business

All prospective agencies will need some background information about your business and an explanation of why you’re seeking a new SEO partner. This is essential for determining whether both parties would be a good fit.

Your company overview should include information such as:

• Your business background, size, location, values, etc.
• Your products and services and unique value proposition
• Your market and vertical
• Your target audience
• Your competitors
• Your business goals
• Key stakeholders within your business
• Why you’re looking for a new SEO agency
• The structure of your existing online marketing team

Your SEO Goals

Your RFP should provide a breakdown of your SEO project goals and your expected time horizons for achieving them. The idea here is to paint a clear picture of what success would look like. Obviously, your SEO goals should also be logically related to your overall business goals.

For most businesses, the primary SEO goal will be to increase organic revenue. But to track progress towards this goal, you’ll also need to set targets for lead indicators such as organic conversions, traffic, and visibility.

Important note for 2025: With the rise of AI Overviews and zero-click searches, traditional traffic metrics may not tell the whole story. Consider including goals around conversion quality, not just traffic volume. Click-through rates are declining even as visibility increases, so work with your potential agency to define metrics that capture actual business impact.

While it’s important to have clarity over where you want to go, there’s no need to go into too much detail about how you expect to achieve your goals. After all, the whole point of hiring an SEO agency is to defer to their advanced expertise about what works best.

Your Current SEO Performance

In addition to knowing where you want to go, prospective agencies will need a good sense of how your SEO program looks right now (assuming you have one).

Start by giving a top-level overview of your current organic performance (monthly traffic, keyword rankings, organic revenue, etc.). Then explain your current strategy in a little more depth, describing how you’ve historically approached key areas like technical maintenance, content management, and link building.

Be sure to cover the good and bad here. The more honest you are about the strengths and weaknesses of your existing approach, the easier it will be for a new agency to devise a strategy that allows you to grow.

Consider providing:

• Any manual penalties or significant traffic losses (and context around timing)
• Web traffic and traffic mix by channel
• Current keyword rankings and strategically significant keywords
• Results of past SEO efforts
• Details about your backlinking efforts and content strategy

A Breakdown of the SEO Services You Need

Your SEO RFP should also indicate which workstreams you want your agency to take charge of.

Of course, the specific items in your scope of work will depend on the particular problems you want to solve. That said, some standard SEO service deliverables include:

• Technical audit
• Keyword research and strategy
• Competitor analysis
• Google Business Profile setup and optimization
• Content strategy and production
• Link building
• Monthly reporting
• Quarterly review sessions
• E-E-A-T optimization (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust)
• AI Overview and generative search optimization
• Schema markup and structured data implementation

Once again, there’s no need to be too stringent here. Expect agencies to input their own recommendations, too.  

Your SEO Budget

While there’s no need to give a super-specific figure, you’ll need to provide a realistic ballpark range. This saves time for both parties and ensures you only receive workable proposals.

Including your budget upfront allows potential providers to step away from the process if they know they can’t meet your needs within your allocated investment. This means you’ll spend less time sifting through proposals from agencies that aren’t a good fit.

Focus on expected value in terms of revenue, profitability, or growth to help determine the desired rate of return on your SEO investment.

Internal Resources and Processes

Your future SEO partner will need to know what in-house personnel are available to help coordinate and implement your new SEO strategy (such as internal copywriters, developers, or PR specialists).

They should also have some idea of how high-level decisions are made in your company. For example, who are the relevant decision-makers, and how long does the sign-off process take?

Note whether these resources are internal or external, and be clear about any limitations that might affect campaign implementation.

What You Expect from an Agency

On top of explaining your own project requirements, your SEO RFP should also tell bidding agencies what information you need from them.

Once again, the goal is to ask questions that make it easier to determine which agencies best suit you.

For example, it’s a good idea to ask for a quick sketch of the agency’s background. How long have they been operating? How big is the company? What type of clients do they usually serve?

You’ll also want to learn more about how they can deliver success for a business like yours. For this reason, you should ask them to explain how they have delivered SEO results for clients similar to you in the past and invite them to provide any references or case studies that can back up their claims. You may also want to ask some questions on topics like:

• How they conduct keyword research
• Their stance on content marketing
• Their approach to link building
• How they think about local and mobile optimization
• Their current assessment of SEO trends

Tools and Reporting

Since different agencies use different tools, you should also ask them to give details about the kind of software they use when providing SEO services.

You should also inquire about the reporting schedule they will adopt if they end up working with you. Which activities and metrics will they report on, and how frequently? How often will there be status updates and/or review meetings?

You can also ask them to share an example of a recent SEO performance report to give you a better sense of what to expect.

Cost Estimate

Be sure to ask for a realistic cost estimate, including a breakdown of the services included in the quote.

Your Agency Selection Criteria

If there are any deal-breaking conditions that agencies must satisfy to have a chance of winning the contract, you should outline them clearly in your RFP. This will ensure all your responses are suitable and avoids wasting anyone’s time.

For example, do agencies need to be based in a specific location? Do they need to be a certain size? Do they need to be able to demonstrate past results within your niche?

Contact Information

Any agency interested in responding to your RFP will need a point of contact within your business. So make sure you include the name and contact details of a designated RFP coordinator whose role is to field agency questions and receive their proposals.

An RFP Timeline

Prospective agencies will also need to know the cut-off date for asking questions, the submission deadline, the selection date, and a timeline for next steps. Include your ideal start date so agencies can evaluate their capacity to meet your timeline.

Master Services Agreement

If your legal team needs you to use an MSA when conducting business, include a copy in your RFP. Remember that agencies might want to include their own terms and conditions before agreeing to anything.

AI and Future-Readiness Questions to Include

The SEO landscape has changed dramatically. With AI Overviews reducing website clicks, generative search platforms capturing more traffic, and algorithms evolving at an unprecedented pace, your RFP needs to go beyond the basics.

Traditional RFPs often fall short in addressing the demands of modern SEO. When vetting agencies in 2025, you need to assess how “future-ready” they are.

Consider adding these questions to your SEO RFP:

AI Integration Questions

• Walk me through one example of an SEO process at your agency through a “pre-AI” and “post-AI” lens. Why did you pick that process to change, and what’s next?
• How might your agency determine if our customers are starting to use ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini for answers instead of traditional search?
• In an LLM world, how is the work you’re doing today (link building, technical SEO, content, E-E-A-T signals) likely to pay dividends in “AI search” as well? Which areas will have the biggest crossover impact?
• How do you track our visibility in generative AI results, and how do you evaluate our market share in AI search?
• How have AI Overviews impacted click-through rates for your clients, and how do you measure actual business impact beyond rankings?
• What is your AI usage policy? What tools can your team use, and how do you disclose AI usage on our project?
• With the increasing role of AI in content creation, how do you ensure our content strategy retains authenticity and genuinely engages our target audience?

Adaptability Questions

• Given recent changes in search (AI Overviews, algorithm updates, new SERP layouts), take one change and explain how your process has adapted.
• Google makes changes to their layouts constantly. How do you catch new layouts, evaluate their impact on clicks, and pivot strategy accordingly?
• There are penalties now for low-quality AI-generated content. How do you use AI in a way that doesn’t expose clients to risk?
• Imagine Google makes a massive change mid-project that requires new work to hit our goals. How do you manage the scoped project against evolving needs?

Cross-Channel and Data Integration Questions

• What unique data can we provide (CRM, call tracking, partner domains, paid media data) that would enable a more effective SEO strategy?
• We see more YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok results showing up in search. How does your approach account for these platforms?
• How do you use SEO data to help us understand our customers in ways that benefit not just SEO, but our entire organization?
• Where are other places besides Google where people go to get answers that your team is actively researching and optimizing for?

How Many Agencies Should You Include?

Including 5 to 10 agencies in your RFP process should give you a diverse set of approaches to find the right fit. This range allows you to objectively evaluate different SEO philosophies and methodologies without becoming overwhelmed by responses.

Keep in mind that “blind” RFPs (sent without prior relationship or outreach) may yield fewer responses, as agencies often prioritize prospects they’ve had some contact with. A brief introductory call or email before sending your RFP can increase participation from quality agencies.

Quick Tips for Writing an SEO RFP

As we’ve just seen, there are multiple areas to cover in an SEO RFP. To ensure your RFP elicits the best responses possible, keep in mind the following tips.

Be Clear and Comprehensive

Remember, one of the main benefits of a well-crafted RFP is that it eliminates ambiguity and miscommunication between you and the bidding parties.

But you can only do this if you make your document as clear as possible. A confusing or incoherent RFP is unlikely to yield a positive response.

Be sure to double-check your RFP to ensure you haven’t missed anything important (again, this is why a template is so helpful). And although bidding agencies should feel free to contact you if they have any questions, you don’t want to leave it to chance if there’s something you definitely want them to factor into their proposal.

Brush Up on SEO Fundamentals Beforehand

When crafting your RFP and interacting with various agencies, you should try to demonstrate at least a basic understanding of SEO.

In practice, this means avoiding fundamental blunders, like asking agencies how they’ll “put SEO on the website” or “turn SEO on.” This isn’t to say you need to be an SEO expert, but an appreciation of the basics will reassure any would-be SEO partner and allow you to better judge their proposal.

Give Respondents Enough Room to Prove Their Worth

Providing sufficient structure and detail in your SEO RFP is key to getting the best responses possible. But your instructions for bidding agencies shouldn’t be too stringent.

Beyond answering your core questions, you should encourage agencies to bring up anything they think you might find valuable.

Don’t Ask Too Many Questions

While comprehensive RFPs are valuable, asking too many questions creates significant work for agencies, which may limit your responses. Balance is key.

Consider asking for links to existing resources (case studies, methodology documents, sample reports) rather than requiring agencies to write everything from scratch. This lets them focus their time on the nuanced questions that reveal their true capabilities.

Request a Preliminary Audit

A proposal submitted in response to your SEO RFP should ideally include a preliminary audit of your website. This is especially important for enterprise-level SEO buyers, as there are few agencies that can handle the complexity of optimizing large domains.

The rigor and expertise you see upfront speak volumes about what you can expect once you’ve signed a contract. Pay close attention to the strategic recommendations a prospective partner shares during the proposal process.

Note that not every agency provides the same level of analysis during the proposal process, but the detail they provide is often a proof point of their expertise.

Common SEO RFP Mistakes to Avoid

When creating your SEO RFP, watch out for these common pitfalls:

• Being too specific: Over-prescribing tactics limits creativity and may prevent agencies from proposing their best strategies.
• Asking too many questions: Lengthy RFPs create excessive work and may discourage quality agencies from responding.
• Sending blind RFPs: Without prior relationship, top agencies may not prioritize your request. Brief outreach beforehand helps.
• Leaving everything to procurement: Procurement teams may miss nuances that highlight opportunities for agencies to demonstrate working style and fit.
• Focusing only on traditional metrics: In 2025, rankings and traffic alone don’t tell the full story. Include questions about conversion quality and business impact.

How to Evaluate SEO Proposals

After you’ve finished your RFP and received proposals from competing agencies, how do you choose who to work with?

The best fit for your business depends on several factors, including your SEO goals, the services provided by the agency, and the overall experience you have throughout the RFP process.

Use a consistent scoring method across all evaluations to keep comparisons objective. Consider these factors:

Agency Experience and Specialization

How many years have they been in business? What brands have they worked with? Have they worked on projects as complex as yours? Would you benefit from deep expertise in organic search, or would you prefer a multi-tool generalist?

Level of Support

Consider the support structure:

• Do you have one point of contact, and what happens when they’re unavailable?
• Is there a designated team assigned to your campaign?
• Working with a team with clearly assigned responsibilities allows for continuity in service and better accountability.

Service Comprehensiveness

Some agencies focus on specific areas of SEO, such as content creation, technical analysis, or backlink generation. Make sure your agency can support you with services you don’t have internal resources for.

Proposal Quality

Consider the form of the proposal itself. It should speak directly to your objectives in a comprehensible way. Careless mistakes could reflect a lack of rigor that might extend to campaign quality. Opaque jargon will set the tone for ongoing communications.

Reputation and References

Look at the agency in the broader context of the industry. Are they well-respected? Do they have a proven track record relevant to your business? Ask for:

• Case studies from customers in your industry
• References from past and current customers
• Third-party reviews on platforms like Clutch, G2, and Google

Team Transitions and Offboarding

Ask how they manage team member transitions, and whether you can speak to a client who has experienced a recent team change. Also ask how they help clients who choose to transition work to another agency or in-house, this speaks to their professionalism and client-first approach.

Once evaluation is complete, share feedback with all respondents, even agencies you don’t select. This transparency keeps doors open for the future and helps your selected partner make improvements from the start.

Red Flags to Watch For

Be cautious of agencies that:

• Promise guaranteed first-page rankings (no one can guarantee this)
• Guarantee a specific number of leads or clients within a fixed period
• Focus only on a single metric (usually rankings) over other important KPIs
• Can’t explain how they’ll adapt to AI search changes
• Provide generic proposals that don’t address your specific business needs
• Are evasive about their methodologies or past results

Final Thoughts

A carefully considered RFP is essential for narrowing down your list of potential SEO partners before moving on to the pitch phase.

The effort you put into creating your RFP will save you a ton of time and frustration down the line, ensuring you steer clear of poorly-matched agencies.

Remember that the RFP is your opportunity to learn what different agencies can do for you. It’s important to think deeply about what you include in the document, as this will determine whether agencies provide the answers you need.

In 2025, it’s more important than ever to find an agency that understands the evolving search landscape—one that can navigate AI search, generative engine optimization, and the shift from traffic-focused to conversion-focused metrics.

So if you need a little extra guidance when drafting your RFP, don’t forget to download our free template.

Download Now: Free SEO RFP Template

If you are vetting SEO agencies and need an SEO RFP template that can be customized to your needs, simply enter your email and we will instantly send you the template.

Email *

If you are human, leave this field blank.