This is for an agency owner, a web design studio or a marketing consultant who has sold SEO, or wants to sell it, and needs someone to actually deliver it under their brand. It is not for a business looking for SEO for itself. It is not for anyone who wants to sell an outcome they have not scoped. And it is not for a partner who wants to disappear entirely, because the client relationship stays yours and so does the responsibility for it.
Free, no obligation
Send me your agency and I’ll tell you the three things I’d fix first
Thirty minutes, on a call, looking at your actual site and your actual search results. If the fixes are things you can do yourself, I’ll say so. Pricing is published below — $800 or $1,500 a month, no contract. Cancel any month and keep everything I build.
If that is you, here is what I deliver, what stays invisible, how the paperwork works, and what happens when something goes wrong.
Who this is for, and who I turn down
The partners this works best for fall into three shapes. A web design studio whose clients keep asking who does their SEO. A small agency at capacity that does not want to hire ahead of revenue. A consultant or fractional marketing lead who sells the strategy and needs hands to execute it.
I turn down two kinds of partner, usually in the first conversation.
The first is the one who has already promised a ranking or a lead volume to their client and now needs someone to make it true. I will not underwrite a promise I did not make and cannot control. If you have committed to first position for a competitive term by a date, tell me on the call, because my answer is going to be that you should renegotiate with your client rather than hand the problem to a vendor.
The second is the partner who wants to resell at a margin so thin that the work has to be automated to survive. Bulk directory submissions, spun articles and mass link buying are still on sale and still cheap. They will eventually cost your client a manual action and cost you a client. I am not the vendor for that model.
What stays invisible
Concretely, here is what your client never sees.
My name and my company name appear nowhere in any deliverable. No logo, no footer credit, no “prepared by” line, no watermark in a PDF, no signature block, no author byline. Document metadata gets cleaned, because a Word file that lists an unfamiliar author in File → Properties has ruined more than one partnership. Reports carry your logo, your colours and your contact details.
I do not appear on your client’s calls unless you invite me, and if you do, I attend as a member of your team using an email address on your domain, because a stranger on a Google Meet invitation from an unfamiliar domain is exactly the moment a client starts asking questions. I never email, call or message your client directly. I do not connect with them on LinkedIn. I do not add my own tracking or attribution scripts to their site. And I do not publish their work as a case study, name them, or reference the project anywhere, which is worth stating because a lot of vendors want that permission and it is usually buried in their terms.
What I actually deliver, as files
The deliverables are ordinary and that is the point. A technical audit as a document you can send without editing, with issues ranked by impact rather than by whatever a crawler flagged first. Keyword and search-intent mapping as a spreadsheet, one row per target page. On-page recommendations written to be implemented, not admired: title, meta description, heading structure, internal links, the specific copy changes.
Content comes as drafts in your document format, written to a brief we agree, with sources where a claim needs one. Technical implementation happens directly in the site when you give me access, or as a change list when you would rather your own developer touch it. Local work covers Google Business Profile builds, category and service configuration, citation cleanup and review-request setup. Migration and redirect mapping when a client is replatforming. Schema markup. And a monthly report, which deserves its own section below.
If you resell web design as well as SEO, the split between what a build should cost and what an ongoing programme should cost is worth reading before you quote — I have written about it in the freelancer versus agency comparison for web design.
The reporting, specifically
Reporting is where most white-label arrangements embarrass the partner, so I treat it as a deliverable rather than an export.
Every report is unbranded and carries your identity instead of mine. It opens with what was done in the period, in plain language a client can read without a glossary. Then what changed, with the measurement stated honestly, including the months when nothing much moved. Then what happens next. I write a short summary you can paste into an email or read out on a call, in a voice that does not clash with how you talk to your own clients.
What I do not do is send forty pages of automated charts. A report that nobody reads is not proof of work, it is proof that nobody wanted to explain the work. If your client asks a question you cannot answer from the report, that is my failure and I will rewrite the report rather than send you a longer one.
How we communicate, and who I never contact
You are my client. Your client is your client. That line does not move.
In practice, everything runs through one channel you choose: a shared Slack or Teams channel, a project board, or plain email. I work in your project management tool if you have one, using an account under your control. Requests, questions and clarifications come to me from you, and answers go back to you. If a question genuinely needs the end client, I write it up for you to ask.
You decide how much you tell your client about the delivery arrangement. Some partners are open that they use a delivery team. Some are not. Neither position obliges me to do anything differently, and I will never be the reason that decision gets made for you.
NDA, non-solicitation and the paperwork
Send me your NDA and I will sign it. If you would rather I provide one, I can, but partners almost always have their own and theirs is usually better suited to their client agreements.
A mutual non-solicitation clause is normal and I have no objection to signing one. What it means in practice is that I do not approach your clients during the engagement or after it, and that if one of them somehow finds me directly, I tell you rather than take the work. I would rather lose one project than be the vendor an agency owner warns other agency owners about.
On access and data: I ask for the minimum required to do the job. That usually means a user-level account on the CMS rather than an admin password, delegated access to analytics and Search Console rather than a shared login, and no access at all to your client’s CRM, billing or customer records unless a specific piece of work requires it. Access gets removed at the end of an engagement. If your client has their own security requirements, send them and I will tell you plainly whether I can meet them.
How engagements are structured
Two shapes, and the right one depends on how you sell.
Per project. A defined scope with a defined output: an audit, a migration, a set of content pieces, a local build, a technical implementation sprint. You get a written scope and a price before anything starts. This suits partners who sell one-off work or who want to test the arrangement before committing to anything ongoing.
Per retainer. A monthly programme behind a client you have already retained. This is the model that scales, because your delivery cost becomes predictable and you can price your own retainer against it with a margin you can actually defend. Most partners who start with a project end up here.
The trade-offs between those two models, and the situations where a project genuinely beats a retainer, are covered in retainer versus project-based SEO. If you are still deciding whether to build the capability in-house instead, the outsourcing guide lays out the red flags to check for in any vendor, including me.
What it costs, and what it does not include
My published retainers are $800 a month Starter and $1,500 a month Core. Those are real, they are on the pricing page, and they are what a direct client pays. Starter covers on-page work, Google Business Profile management, tracking setup, technical clean-up and a monthly report. Core adds four published content pieces a month, internal linking, schema, citation work and location pages.
White-label engagements are quoted against scope rather than sold from a reseller price list, because the scope varies far more than it does with direct clients. One partner wants drafts only. Another wants everything implemented in the client’s site. A third wants me on two client calls a month. Those are not the same job and pretending they cost the same helps nobody.
What I will commit to: a written scope and a written price before any work starts, and that the price holds for the scope. What I will not do is publish a partner rate card I would have to renegotiate on every call, or invent a discount tier to make this page look more generous than it is.
Not included: ad spend, software licences, stock photography, and any tooling your client needs in their own name. If a piece of work needs a paid tool I do not already run, I tell you before it appears on an invoice.
Turnaround and capacity
Predictable turnaround is worth more to a reselling partner than fast turnaround, because you are quoting dates to someone else. So the arrangement is this: every piece of work gets a delivery date agreed in writing when it is scoped, and if a date is going to slip you hear it from me before it slips, not on the day.
I do not publish a blanket turnaround time on this page, because an audit, a content batch and a migration are different jobs and any single number would be marketing rather than information. What I will do is give you a date per deliverable, before you promise one to your client.
On capacity: this is meant to be switchable. Add a client, tell me. Lose a client, tell me and that retainer stops at the end of the month. No notice period to serve and no penalty for scaling down, which is the entire reason a partner uses a delivery vendor instead of hiring. What I ask in return is honesty about your pipeline, because I cap how many accounts I take and I would rather hold room for you than turn you down in the week you win the pitch.
The first 30 days with a new partner
Week one is calibration, and it is mostly about you rather than your client. I want to see how you write to your clients, what your reports currently look like, what you have already promised, and where the last vendor let you down. That last question is the useful one — it usually tells me exactly what to over-communicate.
Then we run one piece of work end to end, ideally something small. You review the deliverable before it goes anywhere near your client. I would rather you send it back twice in the first month than approve something you are quietly unhappy with, because the second version of a deliverable teaches me your standard faster than any briefing document.
By the end of the month you should have a clean deliverable in your hands, a report template that carries your brand, and a working channel. If any of that is not true, the arrangement is not working and month two should not happen.
Still reading? That usually means the fit is about right. The call costs nothing and I don’t run a pitch deck.
Days 31 to 90
This is where the arrangement either becomes routine or does not. Deliverables come in on the dates agreed. Your review load drops, because I now know what you send back. Content starts sounding like your agency rather than like a generic vendor, which is a function of feedback rather than of talent.
Somewhere in this window most partners add a second client, and that is the real test — not whether one project went well, but whether two run in parallel without the quality of either one moving. If it does move, say so immediately. I would rather slow down intake than deliver a second-rate month to a partner who staked their reputation on me.
Who does the work
I lead every account personally, supported by a team of 17.
The strategy, the audit, the scope and the decisions are mine. Production — content drafted to my brief, page builds, technical implementation, citation and listing work — runs through specialists on my team, because that is how the work gets done at a sane price and a sane speed. Nobody on my team contacts your client, and nobody on my team appears in a deliverable.
I run Sprout Sage Solutions out of Chandigarh, India, and I have been running it since 2020. I say that up front because you will find it anyway, and because you may have your own view on whether to tell your client where delivery happens. That is your decision to make, and you should make it with the facts rather than discover them later.
Quality control, and what happens when something is wrong
Everything passes through me before it reaches you. That is the whole point of a founder-led arrangement, and it is also the thing that limits how many partners I can take.
When something is wrong, the sequence is fixed and boring. You tell me. I fix it, at no additional cost, on a date I give you the same day you raise it. If the error reached your client, I write the explanation for you to send, in your voice, taking the blame in a way that does not expose the delivery arrangement. If the same category of error happens twice, I tell you what I changed in the process so it does not happen a third time.
What I will not do is argue with you about whether your client is right. They are your client. If they are unhappy with a deliverable, the deliverable gets redone.
Proof, and what it is actually worth
Here is what I can substantiate. I have shipped 450+ websites since starting Sprout Sage Solutions in 2020. I have 224 jobs delivered on Upwork with a 96% Job Success score, where the review history is public and you can read it yourself, which is more relevant here than usual because it is exactly the kind of vendor diligence you should be doing. There are 17 Google reviews on the business profile.
The case studies on this site are direct client work rather than white-label work, for the obvious reason that white-label work cannot be published. Read them for the mechanics.
The form rebuild teardown documents a service-business enquiry form rebuilt into a multi-step flow with the mobile call-to-action moved into thumb reach. The local SEO map pack rescue covers a grid audit across a service area, a full Google Business Profile rebuild and a review system built for velocity rather than raw count. Both describe the kind of scope a partner most often resells. The full set is at the case studies hub. Those results belong to those businesses in those markets, and I am not going to present them as a forecast for a client I have never met.
The objections agency owners raise
“How do I know you won’t poach my client?”
You have my signature on a non-solicitation clause, and beyond that you have the commercial logic. My business depends on partners who send repeat work. Taking one client once would end that, and every other agency owner would hear about it within a month. That is a stronger guarantee than any clause, but you should still have the clause.
“What if the quality embarrasses me?”
You review everything before your client does, and nothing goes out under your name that you have not approved. Start with one small piece of work rather than a full retainer. If the first deliverable is not at your standard, you have lost one project fee instead of a client relationship, and I would rather be tested that way than talked into a big first engagement.
“Why not just hire someone?”
If you have consistent, predictable volume, hire. An in-house specialist you can train to your standard is a better long-term asset than any vendor, and I will say so on the call. The reason partners use me instead is that agency revenue is lumpy, hiring ahead of it is how agencies die, and a salary does not scale down in the month a client leaves. If you are weighing that decision, the agency versus freelancer comparison covers the same trade-off from the buying side.
What you keep if you leave
Everything. Every deliverable, in editable formats, not locked PDFs. The report templates. The keyword maps and audits as working files. Documentation of what was done in each account, so whoever takes over is not starting from an archaeology project.
No contracts. Cancel any month. Keep everything built. Access I hold gets removed on request the same week, and any account I provisioned was created under your ownership or your client’s from the start. I do not build stacks that punish a partner for leaving, because a partner who feels trapped tells other agency owners about it.
Questions agency owners ask me
Will you sign our NDA and our MSA?
Yes to the NDA, and I will read the MSA and tell you plainly which clauses I can accept. The ones I push back on are usually uncapped liability and guarantees of ranking outcomes, and I will explain why rather than quietly sign and hope.
Can you use an email address on our domain?
Yes, if you set one up for me. Most partners do, because it removes the one moment where a shared document or a calendar invitation could raise a question.
Do you work with more than one agency in the same city?
Yes, unless you and another partner are pitching the same account, which happens rarely and which I will tell you about immediately. Geographic exclusivity between agencies is not something I offer, and any vendor promising it to every partner is telling somebody an untruth.
Who talks to the client if something breaks on their site?
You do. I give you the explanation, the cause and the fix, fast enough to be useful. Client communication stays yours by design, including the uncomfortable parts.
Can you work inside our process instead of yours?
Within reason, yes. Your project board, your brief format, your file naming, your report structure. The only thing I insist on is a written scope per deliverable, because scope drift is what turns a profitable partnership into a resented one.
What happens if we go quiet for a few months?
Nothing. Retainers stop when you say so, projects are priced individually, and picking things back up does not require a new negotiation.
Do you white-label web design and paid ads too?
Web design, yes. Paid search management, yes, though the ad spend stays on your client’s card or yours, never on my invoice. Anything outside what I actually do well, I will decline rather than subcontract it further behind your back.
Book a 30-minute call
The call is free and there is no deck. Bring one live account or one deal you are trying to close, and I will tell you what I would scope, what I would price it against, and whether I am the right vendor for it. If I am not, I will say so on the call.
Book the free 30-minute call, or call me directly at +91 97297 12388.
