The SEO RFI Template Most B2B Teams Skip

Why I use an SEO RFI before I send an RFP

An SEO RFI (Request for Information) is a short screening document I send before a full RFP. The point is to cut noise, force clarity, and narrow a long list down to a small group that’s worth deeper evaluation. In B2B services, that matters because the cost of picking the wrong partner is not just spend - it’s months of lost learning, internal frustration, and momentum that’s hard to regain.

I treat the RFI as a thinking test. I want to see whether the agency can connect SEO to lead quality, buying committees, and sales feedback loops - not just traffic growth. If an agency can’t be specific in an RFI, the RFP will usually be a longer version of the same vagueness.

The SEO RFI question areas I rely on (with sample prompts)

When I build an RFI, I keep responses short and comparable (I often cap answers to a few paragraphs). I also ask every agency the same set of questions so I can evaluate patterns instead of getting distracted by presentation style.

• Strategy and business goals: How would you design an SEO strategy for a B2B service company at our stage, and how do you tie SEO priorities to pipeline, win rate, and sales-cycle length? What would your first 90 days prioritize and why?
• B2B experience and ICP fit: Share 1-2 relevant B2B examples where organic search influenced qualified opportunities or revenue (starting point → actions → outcomes). What types of buyers and deal cycles do you work with most often?
• Accountability, KPIs, and ownership: Which KPIs do you track beyond traffic and rankings? Who owns results review, and what happens if performance stalls? What do you implement directly vs. what requires my internal team?
• Implementation, process, and resourcing: Who is on the day-to-day team, and what’s the realistic time allocation per role? How do you turn recommendations into shipped changes with content, design, and development stakeholders?
• Attribution and tool compatibility: How do you attribute organic leads and opportunities inside a CRM? What’s your approach to connecting SEO work to lifecycle stages and revenue reporting?
• Communication and collaboration: What is the meeting cadence, who attends, and what decisions get made in each meeting? How do you handle scope changes when priorities shift?
• Data security and compliance: How do you manage access to analytics and CRM systems, store/export data, and support privacy requirements (GDPR/CCPA or industry-specific expectations)?

If an agency answers these clearly - without hiding behind buzzwords - it’s usually a good sign their delivery will be equally structured.

How I turn RFI responses into a shortlist (and what I flag early)

After reviewing responses, I’m not just choosing who “sounds smartest.” I’m choosing who is most likely to execute well inside real-world constraints: limited dev time, messy analytics, shifting priorities, and stakeholders who need plain-language updates.

These are the red flags I treat as disqualifiers unless they come with unusually strong evidence:

• Promising outcomes without explaining the inputs (resources, dependencies, timelines, and tradeoffs)
• Talking primarily about rankings and traffic with no plan for lead quality or pipeline attribution
• Avoiding ownership questions (“We recommend” without clarifying who actually implements)
• Over-reliance on generic case studies that don’t match B2B deal complexity
• Link acquisition approaches that emphasize volume over relevance and brand safety

By the time I shortlist to three to five agencies, I want to feel confident that each contender can talk about systems, accountability, and business impact - not just activities.

What I include in an SEO RFP for B2B service companies

If the RFI is my filter, the RFP is my playbook. I use it to force specificity: what will happen, when it will happen, who will do it, what I need to provide, and how success will be measured.

Here are the sections I include so proposals are comparable without becoming a “novel”:

• Company context: My business model, ideal customers, typical deal size, decision process, and any growth constraints (markets, positioning, seasonality, compliance).
• Objectives (12-24 months): Pipeline and revenue outcomes I care about, plus supporting goals like entering a vertical, improving conversion on service pages, or strengthening category visibility.
• Scope of work (in/out): Technical SEO, content strategy, on-page optimization for core pages, authority building, analytics/attribution support, and what is explicitly excluded.
• ICP and search intent approach: How the agency will validate what my buyers search for and map it to sales stages and real decision criteria.
• Priority page types: Which pages they’ll focus on first (service/solution pages, industry pages, comparisons, implementation guides, case studies) and why that order makes sense.
• Success metrics and reporting: The KPI set, how often it’s reviewed, how KPIs connect to pipeline, and how decisions will be made from the data.
• Timeline and deliverables: A detailed first 90 days plus a higher-level plan for the rest of the year, including dependencies and review points.
• Pricing model: How fees are structured, what’s included, and what triggers additional cost (so I’m not surprised later).
• Requirements from my team: Access needed, stakeholder time commitments, and what must be true for delivery to succeed.
• Evaluation criteria: How I will score proposals (strategy clarity, B2B relevance, accountability, communication, risk management, and pricing fairness).

This structure also makes internal alignment easier because I can share one document with marketing, sales, and leadership without rewriting the story for each group. If you want a tighter framing for leadership, pair it with a pipeline-first checklist like Vendor LLM security disclosure checklists for marketers and adapt the scoring to your revenue model.

What “good methodology” sounds like (so I’m not buying buzzwords)

In B2B services, I don’t need an agency to impress me with jargon. I need to understand how their method turns into measurable outcomes and shipped work.

A strong strategy description usually starts with discovery (positioning, ICP, sales process, current performance), then moves into research (technical baseline, content and intent gaps, competitive patterns), and ends with a prioritization model that explains why certain work happens first. I listen for tradeoffs and dependencies: what requires development support, what can be done in parallel, and what the agency will stop doing if it isn’t working.

For technical SEO, I want to see a clear approach to crawl/index control, architecture and internal linking, performance/Core Web Vitals, structured data where it matters, and risk management during redesigns or migrations. For content and on-page SEO, I look for a plan that emphasizes the pages that sell (service and solution pages, comparisons, proof assets) instead of defaulting to “publish more blog posts.”

For authority building and digital PR, I care less about volume and more about relevance, quality control, and brand safety. I want the agency to explain how they vet sites, avoid risky tactics, and measure impact beyond “we built X links.” (If you need a sanity check here, see b2b saas internal linking for product pages for how I think about relevance and downstream impact.)

Attribution, reporting, and who owns the data

I treat attribution as a core requirement, not a “nice to have.” If organic performance can’t be tied to lifecycle stages, I end up managing SEO based on belief instead of evidence.

In the RFP, I ask agencies to describe how they will:

• Track organic sessions and engagement on high-intent pages, not only sitewide traffic
• Distinguish informational visits from visits that correlate with pipeline actions
• Pass lead source data into a CRM cleanly (and explain limitations honestly)
• Report on MQLs/SQLs/opportunities influenced or sourced by organic search, using definitions that match how my business actually qualifies leads

I also make ownership explicit. If reporting lives in an agency-controlled dashboard that I lose access to after the contract, I’m effectively renting my own history. I prefer reporting that my team can access and retain. For a deeper build-out of SEO-to-CRM measurement, I reference Event lead enrichment and deduplication with LLM pipelines and b2b saas search to pipeline reporting when aligning definitions with RevOps.

Data security, compliance, and access controls

Even “just SEO” can touch sensitive systems: analytics, tag managers, CRMs, and sometimes customer conversations used for research. That creates real risk if access is casual or undocumented.

I ask agencies to explain how they provision and revoke access, what permissions they request, how they store exported data, and what happens when the engagement ends. If I’m in a regulated industry (or my buyers are), I also look for practical answers about privacy expectations, audit trails, and working within security constraints - not hand-waving.

This section may feel administrative, but it prevents delays later when IT or legal asks questions after I’m already trying to start execution. If you want a concrete example of what “good” documentation looks like, you can point stakeholders to security and access-control materials like Cognigy’s trust center and role-based access control documentation - not because you’re buying that product, but because it sets the bar for specificity.

Team structure, resourcing, and what working together looks like

Many SEO engagements fail because the “plan” is fine but the delivery is under-resourced or poorly integrated with internal teams. I use the RFP to force operational clarity.

I ask who is on the account day to day, how senior people stay involved, and how many hours each role realistically allocates. I also want to know how the agency collaborates with content writers, designers, and developers - because the best recommendations are useless if they never get implemented.

Finally, I ask how they handle urgency: traffic drops, indexation issues, broken deployments, analytics outages. The answer tells me whether they have a real process - or whether I’ll be chasing them when something breaks.

How I score proposals without getting distracted by the pitch

When proposals come in, I score them against the same criteria I set in the RFP. This keeps the decision grounded in fit and evidence rather than presentation.

I’m typically looking for: (1) B2B relevance and proof tied to pipeline, (2) a prioritization method that matches my constraints, (3) clear ownership of implementation and reporting, (4) communication that’s structured and decision-oriented, and (5) a pricing model that aligns with the scope and risk. If you see teams getting stuck on definitions, Terminology alignment across sales, product, and marketing using AI is a practical companion.

A good SEO RFI and SEO RFP template doesn’t guarantee results - but it dramatically improves the odds that I pick a partner who can execute, communicate, and stay accountable to the outcomes that matter in B2B services.

If you also evaluate AI tools alongside agencies, hold them to the same standard: clear methodology, ownership, and documentation. (As a reference point for what comprehensive product documentation looks like, see Documentation.)