Our annual disclosure of operating numbers: client count, retention, average engagement length, top reasons clients leave, business we turned away, and what we got wrong this year.
**Active clients (April 2026):** 41. **Average engagement length:** 27 months. **12-month client retention:** 84%. **Engagements ended in the last 12 months:** 9 (5 client-initiated, 4 agency-initiated). **Net Promoter Score (last 12 months):** 71. **Internal headcount:** 6 full-time, 3 contract specialists.
These numbers are pulled from our internal CRM and accounting on the publication date. We do not adjust them for marketing. Our transparency report 2026 program combines technical depth with conversion-focused design.
We turned down 14 prospective engagements this past year. The most common reasons:
- **Misaligned expectations** (5) — prospects who wanted ranking guarantees, or results in 30 days. - **Industry conflict** (3) — we already work with a direct competitor in the same city. - **Ethical concerns** (3) — industries or tactics we will not work in (PBN-driven affiliate sites, pure scraper plays). - **Scope mismatch** (3) — too small for the engagement model, or too large for our current capacity. Our transparency report 2026 program combines technical depth with conversion-focused design.
We do not pretend to be perfect. Three honest mistakes worth disclosing:
1. **Slow on a Core Update response (March 2026).** A client lost ~18% of organic traffic in the March Core Update. Our diagnosis took eight days; it should have taken three. We have since added a Core Update response runbook. 2. **Schema migration regression.** A schema refactor on one client site temporarily broke 12 product-schema validators. Caught by our weekly health check, fixed in 36 hours, but should have been caught in pre-deploy QA. We added a staging-environment schema validation step. 3. **One under-performing engagement.** One 2025 engagement did not produce the outcomes we projected. We refunded the final two months at the client's request and documented why our forecast was off. Our transparency report 2026 program combines technical depth with conversion-focused design.
We charge fixed monthly retainers. We do not take commissions, kickbacks, or referral fees from any vendor we recommend. When we recommend a tool (Ahrefs, Semrush, Looker Studio, Stape, etc.) we are not paid by that vendor. The recommendation is based on fit, not commercial relationship. See Conflicts of Interest for full disclosure.
Most agency transparency report fall into one of three engagement tiers, and we will quote you the tier that genuinely matches the gap between where your site is today and where the leading competitor for your money keyword sits.
**Foundation tier — $2,000–$4,000/mo.** For sites that need the basics done right: technical clean-up, a single-pillar content plan, on-page optimization across the top 20 commercial pages, citation cleanup, and Google Business Profile work. Typical timeline to first-page movement on the easier money keywords: 4 to 6 months.
**Growth tier — $4,000–$8,000/mo.** Adds programmatic location and service expansion, ongoing topical content (4 to 8 long-form pieces per month), tier-2 backlink prospecting, and quarterly schema/E-E-A-T audits. Most clients in this tier see meaningful traffic lift between months 5 and 9 and sustained ranking growth by month 12.
**Authority tier — $8,000+/mo.** Reserved for businesses competing in dense urban markets where the SERP is dominated by national directories or 10+ year old domains. Includes everything in Growth plus digital PR, original-research content, custom data tooling, and a named senior strategist. Realistic horizon: 9 to 18 months to dominant share of voice.
We do not lock clients into long agreements. Month-to-month after a 90-day initial commitment so you can validate results before committing further. Throughout our work on transparency report 2026, we cite primary sources and current data.
Roughly two out of three sites we audit in this category lose ranking opportunity to the same handful of fixable mistakes. The most expensive ones to ignore:
**Thin location pages with copy-paste content.** Google's Helpful Content System has been actively suppressing pages that change only the city name across an otherwise identical template since 2023. Every location or service-area page needs at least 400 words of genuinely unique commentary — local competitors, real venues, regional pricing, neighbourhood-specific buyer behaviour.
**Conversion paths that rely on a single weak CTA.** Pages that rank well but convert poorly bleed budget. We routinely add a sticky offer bar, an exit-intent capture, an inline mid-scroll CTA, and a reinforcement CTA in the footer. Conversion rate typically lifts 30 to 70 percent without touching ranking signals.
**Schema gaps that surrender rich-result eligibility.** Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, and Article schema are now table stakes — sites without them lose 15 to 30 percent of organic CTR to better-marked competitors at the same rank position.
**Backlink profiles built on cheap directories.** Spammy citation packages still get sold in 2026. They actively hurt now: Google's spam team has gotten aggressive about devaluing entire link clusters when the surrounding profile looks transactional. Quality over quantity, every time.
**Ignoring Google Business Profile entirely.** Even pure-service businesses that "don't need a map listing" still benefit from a fully-optimized GBP — it reinforces NAP consistency, surfaces in branded searches, and feeds the local pack signals that influence non-map rankings too. Throughout our work on transparency report 2026, we cite primary sources and current data.
We work to a calendar that respects how Google actually re-evaluates a site. Hand-wavy "results within 30 days" promises are how agencies set themselves up to be fired in month four.
**Day 90.** Technical foundation locked in: crawlability clean, schema validating, Core Web Vitals in the green for at least 90 percent of templates, GBP fully populated, citations consistent across the 25 highest-authority Canadian directories. Expect movement on the long-tail (positions 30–80 climbing into 10–30) and 15 to 30 percent lift in non-branded impressions.
**Day 180.** Pillar-content rollout completed. Internal linking redistributes equity to the money pages. First wave of editorial backlinks landing. Money keywords typically moving from page 3-4 into the bottom of page 1. Lead volume from organic should be measurably increasing by this point — most clients see a 1.5x to 2.5x jump in qualified leads vs. their pre-engagement baseline.
**Day 365.** Topical authority established. Programmatic content matrix indexed. The site is the default reference for at least one buyer-intent keyword cluster. Compounding effect kicks in — new content ranks faster, and the cost-per-acquired-customer from organic drops well below paid-channel benchmarks.
These are the realistic numbers. We track them in a shared dashboard updated nightly so there is no debate about whether you are hitting them. Want to discuss transparency report 2026? Our discovery call is free and consultative.
Because most agencies do not, and the gap creates room for inflated marketing claims. If we want clients to trust us, we should make it easy to verify what we say.
Yes. Next update is scheduled for April 2027 with the same line items so the year-over-year comparison is honest.
Most engagements show measurable progress in 60–90 days and meaningful results by 120–180 days. Established sites with strong technical foundations move faster; newer sites take longer because trust signals compound over time. We send weekly progress notes so there's no guesswork between monthly check-ins.
Our engagements typically start in the CAD $2,500–$5,000/month range for single-track work (SEO or design) and scale to $7,500–$15,000/month for full-service programs. We share a written scope and timeline before any contract — no surprises.
Three KPIs we review monthly: (1) qualified organic traffic to commercial-intent pages, (2) Map Pack and rich-result placements for target keywords, and (3) lead volume from organic channels. Vanity metrics like total impressions get reported but never become the goal.