Commercial
One SEO client per industry. Ads are different
Agency exclusivity by industry is usually a scarcity line on a pricing page with nothing behind it. Ours is a cap on our own revenue, enforced on every call, so the rule and all of its edges are written out here.
One SEO client per industry, per city.
We will not run SEO for two businesses chasing the same keywords in the same city. Not as a courtesy. Because it does not work: one of you has to lose the ranking for the other to win it, and we would be billing both of you for the privilege. When the search seat in your industry and your city is taken, we tell you it is taken. Paid social and websites are different and are not exclusive. A build with no search work competes with nobody, and two shops can run ads against different audiences without taking anything from each other. We will say which bucket your engagement is in, in writing, before you sign.
Why search is exclusive and the other two are not
A search result is one ordered list. There is a single first position for a given query in a given city, and if we are working for two businesses chasing it, one of them has to lose for the other to win. We would be billing both sides of a fight we staged, and making the strategy calls for both of them at once. No amount of internal process makes that honest.
Paid social does not work that way. Two shops can run ads to different audiences, with different offers, at different hours, and neither takes anything from the other. The auction is per impression and the budget is yours, not a shared pool. A website is further still from a conflict: a build with no search work attached competes with nobody at all.
So the line is the specific one rather than the flattering one. One SEO client per industry, per city. Ads and websites are not exclusive, and we say so.
SEO is $2,500 a month and the website is in it. We only do SEO on a site we built.
How an industry and a city get defined
Vague definitions are how an exclusivity promise gets broken without anyone technically lying, so both halves are defined narrowly and in writing.
The industry is the query set, not the business description. Two companies that both call themselves contractors are not in conflict if one gets hired for patios and the other for roofs, because almost none of the searches overlap. Two that both want the same high intent term are in conflict even if one of them files itself under a different label entirely.
The city is the service area the queries carry, not the mailing address. A business in a suburb competing for the metro term is competing in the metro, and pretending otherwise would let us sell the same seat twice on a technicality. Before you sign, you get the list of queries we consider yours. We will not quietly take a second client whose set overlaps it.
What happens when the seat is taken
You get told on the first call, before any pitch. We do not run a waitlist as a pressure tactic and we do not take money against a seat that might open up.
What we will do is tell you what is genuinely still available: a build, paid social, content, or AI answer work that does not sit in the same list as the existing client. If none of that is useful to you, we say so and the call ends early. That is a worse hour for us and a better one for you.
When an existing engagement ends, the seat opens. We do not hold it for the departed client and we do not auction it to the highest bidder who called while it was closed.
What the rule costs us
Every closed seat is revenue declined, repeatedly, from people who were ready to pay today. In a metro this size that makes it the most expensive policy we have, and also the one we are least willing to loosen, because the alternative is being the agency that works both sides of a fight and invoices for the privilege.
It also caps how large this can get, which at our size is a feature rather than a limitation. An agency with two hundred clients cannot make this promise and stay truthful. We can. The day we cannot, the promise comes off the page with a date on the change, rather than quietly getting looser while the wording stays the same.
There is one thing it is not, and that is a moat for you. Exclusivity stops us from working for your competitor. It does not stop your competitor from hiring somebody else, and anyone selling you industry exclusivity as a competitive advantage in the search results is overselling it.
Questions
Would you take on my direct competitor?
Not for SEO in the same city, once the seat is yours. We will tell you on the first call if it is already taken, and we will tell a competitor the same thing while you hold it.
Does exclusivity cover ads and websites too?
No, and we say so before you sign rather than after. Two businesses can run paid social to different audiences without taking anything from each other, and a website build with no search work attached competes with nobody.
How do you define my industry?
By the query set, not the label. Two contractors are not in conflict if one gets hired for patios and the other for roofs. Two businesses chasing the same high intent term are in conflict whatever they call themselves.
What counts as the same city?
The service area the queries carry, not the mailing address. A suburban business competing for the metro term is competing in the metro, and we will not use a postcode difference to sell the same seat twice.
What if the seat in my industry is already taken?
You hear it on the first call. We will tell you what is still available, and if none of it is useful we end the call rather than inventing a reason to keep talking.
