The 90-day KPI guarantee, explained
Most agencies ask you to take performance on faith. We agree the numbers with you in writing before any work starts, review them against your own baseline at 90 days, and keep working at no additional charge if they are not met.
In short
- KPIs are agreed in writing before work starts — no verbal targets, no moving goalposts.
- If those KPIs are not met within 90 days, we keep working at no additional charge until they are.
- Targets are set against your current Search Console and GA4 baseline, not an industry average.
- We do not guarantee ranking positions. We guarantee movement on traffic, enquiries and revenue.
- It applies to every engagement — SEO, Google Ads, paid social and web design — and sits alongside no lock-in contracts.
What the guarantee actually is
The 90-day KPI guarantee is a written commitment made before a single hour of work is billed. We agree the KPIs your programme will be measured against, put them in writing, and hold ourselves to them. If those KPIs are not met within 90 days, we keep working at no additional charge until they are.
That is the whole mechanism. The KPI agreement written at the start is the same document we are judged against at the end of the quarter.
It works because the targets are specific. "More traffic" is not a KPI. A named set of commercial queries, a baseline number of enquiries and a review date are.
How the KPIs are set
KPIs are set during the blueprint phase of the Odin Method, once the audit has told us what is actually happening in your accounts. We work from your own data: the current Search Console and GA4 baseline, not a generic industry figure or a competitor's numbers.
The written agreement names three things. The target queries or campaigns we are working on. The baseline metrics we are starting from, taken from your own reporting. And the 90-day review date the work will be measured on.
Because the baseline is yours, the target is honest. A business with strong existing visibility is held to a different number than one starting from a standing start, and both sets of numbers are agreed before the engagement begins rather than explained afterwards.
What happens at the 90-day review
At the review date we put the original KPI agreement next to the actual result and write up the comparison. You see every agreed metric, where it started, where it landed and what drove the difference — including the work that did not perform as expected.
If the agreed KPIs have been met, the review turns into a planning session: what the next quarter's priorities are, where the budget should move, and which channels have earned more of it.
If they have not been met, the work continues at no additional charge until they are. The review is also a natural exit point — engagements are month-to-month, so you can end one there if you would rather.
What the guarantee does not cover
It is not a ranking guarantee. No agency can guarantee a specific position in Google, and a position guarantee would be a lie — the placement decision belongs to a search engine that changes its results daily, not to the agency selling you the promise.
What we can guarantee is measurable movement against numbers both sides agreed to: traffic to commercial pages, qualified enquiries and revenue. Those are the measures a business is actually run on, and they are the ones written into the agreement.
Any agency quoting you a guaranteed position, in any timeframe, is either guaranteeing a term nobody searches or guaranteeing something outside its control. Our buying guide on what SEO costs in Australia covers the questions worth asking before you sign.
Why we are able to offer it
The guarantee only works because we are selective about who we take on. We decline work we do not believe we can move, which is a harder conversation in the short term and a far cheaper one for both sides over a quarter.
We also take one business per industry per market. Your competitor is not our client, so nobody on the team is optimising two businesses against each other, and the strategy built for you stays yours.
The result is a client base that stays: a 93% client retention rate, and reviews you can read for yourself on our reviews page. Clients stay because the work performs, not because a contract makes leaving difficult.
Which services it applies to
Every engagement. As the Odin Method states, the four phases are identical whether the programme is SEO, Google Ads, paid social or a website build — so the KPI agreement, the 90-day review and the guarantee behind them apply the same way on each.
What changes between channels is the metric, not the mechanism. An organic programme is measured on rankings for the agreed queries, organic traffic and the enquiries it produces in Search Console and GA4. A paid programme is measured on cost per lead and return on ad spend. In every case we report on leads, customers and profit rather than impressions or clicks.
Guarantee against KPIs vs "guaranteed rankings"
"Guaranteed rankings"
- Promises a position in a result page the agency does not control.
- Often delivered on low-competition terms nobody searches for.
- Measured against whatever makes the report look good.
- Usually paired with a long lock-in that keeps you paying regardless.
- No stated consequence when the promise is missed.
A guarantee against agreed KPIs
- Promises movement on measures the work genuinely influences.
- Written against named target queries and campaigns.
- Measured against your own Search Console and GA4 baseline.
- Month-to-month, with the 90-day review as an exit point.
- We keep working at no additional charge until the KPIs are met.
Questions about the 90-day KPI guarantee
What exactly is guaranteed?
What happens if the KPIs are missed?
Do you guarantee rankings?
When is the 90-day review?
Does it apply to Google Ads as well as SEO?
Is there a lock-in contract?
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See the numbers we would put in writing for you.
The free growth blueprint shows the baseline we would work from and the KPIs we would commit to. Prefer to talk it through first? Book a call and we will walk you through the agreement, the review date and how the month-to-month terms work.