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Agency SEO Academy

Run SEO for clients profitably: one delivery process, reports they forward, fewer churned accounts.

Lessons
22 lessons
Chapters
8 chapters
Reading time
~107 minutes
Price
Free, no signup
Start the first lesson

First up: Productising SEO services

Productise the service, scope and price it, audit in a way that sells, ship content on a cadence, and use AI without lowering the bar.

Written for: Agency owners, account managers and freelancers running SEO for clients who need repeatable delivery and honest reporting.

Levels: 2 beginner, 19 intermediate, 1 advanced, marked per lesson and shown under each lesson title.

  1. Build an SEO service you can deliver every month

    Productise, scope and price SEO so every client gets the same process and you stop rebuilding it from scratch.

    Chapter 1 of 8

    3 lessons~15 min

    1. Productising SEO services· Start here5 minTurn 'SEO' into named packages with fixed deliverables, so selling, delivering and staffing get easier at once.
    2. Scoping and pricing SEO5 minPrice on outcomes you control and effort you can predict, and write scope that stops scope creep.
    3. Onboarding a client in a week5 minAccess, baselines, a first audit and a kickoff plan, in five working days, every time.

  2. Audits that sell and fixes that land

    The audit is your best sales tool and your first deliverable. Make it honest, prioritised and readable.

    Chapter 2 of 8

    3 lessons~16 min

    1. The audit as a sales tool5 minShow a prospect what's broken, what it's costing them and what you'd fix first, without a 60-page PDF.
    2. Prioritising fixes by impact6 minRank findings by traffic at stake and effort to fix, so the client's developer starts with the right thing.
    3. Presenting findings without jargon5 minExplain a canonical problem to a founder in one sentence, and why that is the skill that keeps accounts.

  3. Strategy you can run across every client

    One keyword and content process per client type, so strategy is a checklist, not a blank page.

    Chapter 3 of 8

    3 lessons~12 min

    1. Keyword strategy per client4 minA repeatable path from a client's offerings to a keyword map, sized to their budget.
    2. Content calendars that ship4 minPlan a quarter of content per client that the team can actually produce, and the client will actually approve.
    3. Local and e-commerce playbooks4 minWhat changes when the client is a dentist or a store, and the two playbooks to keep on file.

  4. Produce content at scale without dropping the bar

    A pipeline from brief to published page, with quality gates so volume never becomes slop.

    Chapter 4 of 8

    3 lessons~15 min

    1. The content production pipeline5 minBrief, draft, review, publish and verify: the stages, who owns each, and what passes between them.
    2. Quality gates before publishing5 minThe checks every article passes before a client sees it: facts, structure, links, intent match.
    3. Publishing to a client's CMS5 minWordPress, Shopify, Webflow and the rest: get access right, publish cleanly, and confirm the page is actually live.

  5. Reports clients read and forward

    One page, honest numbers, movement explained. The report is the product the client remembers.

    Chapter 5 of 8

    3 lessons~16 min

    1. Reports clients actually read5 minWhat to put on page one, what to cut, and how to write the sentence that explains the month.
    2. Proving ROI honestly5 minConnect rankings to traffic to leads without overclaiming causation, and survive the question 'what did we get for this?'
    3. Reporting AI visibility6 minShow clients whether AI assistants mention them, what changed, and what you're doing about it.

  6. Keep clients for years, not quarters

    A review cadence, a plan for the bad months, and upsells that genuinely help.

    Chapter 6 of 8

    3 lessons~13 min

    1. The monthly review cadence4 minA 30-minute review structure that keeps clients informed, involved and renewing.
    2. Handling ranking drops5 minDiagnose a drop in an hour, tell the client before they ask, and turn it into a plan.
    3. Upsells that help clients4 minLocal, content, AI visibility and technical add-ons, offered when the data says they're needed.

  7. Do the work of a bigger team with AI

    Where AI speeds up agency work, where it breaks it, and how to connect an assistant to live client data.

    Chapter 7 of 8

    2 lessons~10 min

    1. AI in the agency workflow5 minResearch, briefs, drafts, QA and reporting: which steps AI does well, which need a human, and how to tell.
    2. Claude as your SEO analyst5 minConnect Claude to live rank, page and AI-presence lookups over MCP, and turn client questions into checked, client-ready answers in minutes.

  8. From five clients to fifty

    The playbook for your first five accounts, and what has to change to run fifty without the wheels coming off.

    Chapter 8 of 8

    2 lessons~10 min

    1. The first five clients playbook5 minPick the right first clients, over-deliver on process, and turn them into case studies.
    2. Scaling to fifty sites5 minTemplates, tooling, team roles and the reporting system that keeps fifty accounts honest.

What a lesson looks like

All 22 have the same shape: the mechanism first, then one thing to do, then the free tool that does it. Nothing is held back, so the page below is the whole page. 18 of the 22 link at least one free tool from inside that block, and the Mark as complete control at the foot of each lesson is what fills the meters beside the chapters above.

The opening of the lesson How Google ranks a page: the chapter it sits in, Lesson 1 of 4, the title, a one-line summary of what it covers, and a row giving its reading time, its level and the date it was last reviewed.
The opening of one lesson: the chapter it belongs to, its place in that chapter, a one-line summary of what it covers, and a row giving reading time, level and the date it was last reviewed. Every lesson in the academy opens this way.

The client you learned on, and the people you asked

Four ways running SEO for other people actually gets learned. The first two teach things no page can, and they say so in the row.

Learning it on live client accountsHow it worksScope, price, a missed month and a renewal call all arrive at once, and the account you save teaches more than any lesson. The tuition is paid by the client whose quarter you learned on.Agency SEO track3 lessons and 15 minutes in Build an SEO service you can deliver every month: productising, scoping and onboarding, so the process exists before the first account tests it. Written for people already doing the work, and marked that way: 20 of the 22 lessons are intermediate or advanced.
A peer group of other agency ownersHow it worksCurrent numbers from people delivering this month: what a package sold for, what churned, what the client said in the room. The sample is whoever turned up, and last year's answer keeps circulating as this year's.Agency SEO trackScoping and pricing SEO gives the arithmetic, deliverables then loaded hours then margin, and states no rate card, because we have surveyed no agencies and an invented figure is worse than none. On what the market is paying this quarter, the group has a number and this does not.
Hiring someone who has run delivery beforeHow it worksThe process arrives working on day one, which is faster than any curriculum. It also arrives in one person's head, so it leaves when they do, and it is the most expensive line in the plan.Agency SEO trackThe same process, written down: 3 lessons in Produce content at scale without dropping the bar take brief, draft, review, publish and verify with an owner named at each stage, and Quality gates before publishing is the check that runs whoever is on the account that week.
Outsourcing delivery to a white-label supplierHow it worksIt ships the work this month with no team, so a service can be sold before it can be delivered. The mechanism stays with the supplier, and the question in the review call is still yours to answer.Agency SEO trackThe part that stays yours either way is two chapters: Reports clients read and forward, then Keep clients for years, not quarters. Proving ROI honestly and Handling ranking drops sit inside them, 6 lessons on the conversation the supplier is not in.

Questions before you start

Do I need an account to read this?
No. All 22 lessons are public pages with no signup, no email and no paywall, and the free tools their actions run on open without an account too.
What happens to the lessons I mark as read?
They are written to this browser's local storage and nowhere else. Nothing reaches a server, so the count follows the browser rather than you: another device, a private window, or cleared site data each start again at zero, and we cannot restore it because we never held it.
Do I have to read it in order?
No. The order is the one that costs the least backtracking, and every lesson states what it assumes, so the chapter that matches today's problem reads on its own. Start here is a recommendation, not a gate.
How long does the whole track take?
About 107 minutes of reading across 22 lessons in 8 chapters, counted from the lesson files at 220 words a minute. The doing takes longer than the reading, because every lesson carries one thing to go and do.
Is this pitched at beginners or at people already working in SEO?
The 22 lessons break down as 2 beginner, 19 intermediate, 1 advanced, and each one carries its level under its own title. The chapters climb, so the later ones assume the earlier ones.
Is the curriculum an advert for the product?
The lessons link out where a step needs a tool: 17 of our 42 free tools appear across 18 of the 22 lessons, and none of them ask for an account. Nothing in the track is held back for a paid plan.
How current is it?
Every lesson shows the date it was last reviewed under its title, and the most recent review in this track is 2026-08-22. Lessons explain the mechanism before the tactic for the same reason: how ranking is decided outlives whichever tactic was working the week it was written.

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