Terms of engagement

Using this website

Everything published here — the service pages and the guides — is information, not advice about your particular situation. Read it, argue with it, use it. But a page on a website cannot know your site, your market or your constraints, so do not treat it as a recommendation to act.

The words, images, code and design on this site belong to us. You are welcome to quote a passage with a link back. You are not welcome to republish a page.

Working with us

Scope comes from a written proposal. Before any work starts, you get a written plan setting out what we will do, who owns each task, and what it costs. That document is the scope. Anything not in it is not in the engagement until we both agree to add it, in writing.

Plans are month to month. Every plan is a flat monthly retainer. There is no minimum term and no notice period dressed up as one: you can stop at the end of any month. We will finish what is already in flight for that month.

You own the deliverables. The pages, the copy, the code changes, the audits, the reports and the research we produce for you are yours. They stay yours if you stop working with us, and we do not hold them back or make them dependent on continuing to pay us.

We cannot guarantee rankings. Nobody controls a search engine's results, and nobody controls what a language model says about a brand. We commit to the work in the plan, to shipping it, and to reporting honestly on what moved and what did not. Any timelines we give you are expectations based on what usually happens, not promises.

What we need from you. The work depends on access and answers: analytics and search console access where it is relevant, the ability to publish changes or a developer who can, and decisions when we ask for them. Where you cannot give us those, we say so early and we adjust the plan rather than quietly missing it.

Confidentiality. We keep what we learn about your business to ourselves. We do not use your name as a client reference, publish a case study or show your numbers to anyone without asking you first, and you can say no.

Prices. The numbers on the pricing page are starting prices, not quotes. The number that binds either of us is the one in your written proposal.

Things that are outside these terms

We are not responsible for what happens to a site we do not control: a platform changing its rules, a search engine changing its results, a plugin update breaking a template we did not touch, or work carried out by someone else. We are also not responsible for losses that follow from those things.

Changes to these terms

When the way we work changes, this page changes with it, and the date above the text is the last time it did. If a change affects an engagement that is already running, the proposal you signed governs it, not a page we edited afterwards.

How to reach us

Email hello@rankpearl.com. The contact page has the other ways to get hold of us.