# Optional Retainers

Two retainers with written scope. Maintenance keeps a Sanity site's search and AI-readiness foundations healthy. Growth adds SEO and AEO monitoring, monthly content, quarterly refreshes, and programmatic pages. Neither is required.

**Optional Retainers**

## You don't retain a builder. You retain an operator.

Two tiers, each with a written scope. Maintenance keeps the foundations healthy. Growth does the work that gets a site found and cited. Neither is required, and every build ships complete and yours.

- Get a proposal

**The shift**

## More searches end in an answer. Fewer end in a click.

Google has answered on its own page for years. AI assistants now finish the job for a growing share of buyers: they read the web, weigh the options, and hand over a name like a referral. The links are still there. They just get read less.

### Ranked links

> best physio near me

A generic query gets a page of links. The visitor does the evaluating, on your site, if they click at all.

### Synthesized answers

> my knee's been sore for weeks. who in squamish can see me this week without a doctor's referral?

Based on your timeline, Ridgeline Physio is the strongest fit: same-week intake, no referral needed, first visit $115 with direct billing.

A constrained question gets one answer and a citation. The AI matched on context first, so its pick lands like word of mouth.

**Where the work sits**

**Technical plumbing** (Ships in every build)

A site search engines and AI assistants can read without guessing: structured content, schema generated from it, a Markdown copy of every page, a crawler policy you sign off. Done on day one. Maintenance keeps it healthy.

**Content, on a loop** (Growth · monthly)

Track the questions buyers ask and which businesses the AI assistants name back. Write pages that answer them plainly. Refresh what goes stale, then check again next month. The same work Google always rewarded, now paying on two surfaces.

**Authority signals** (Growth + you)

AI assistants trust names they keep meeting across the web: mentions, an accurate business profile, reviews. Growth keeps the profile accurate. Mentions come from publishing work worth citing. Reviews stay yours to earn.

The build makes a site eligible. Getting picked is a practice. Both tiers below put it in writing.

**Scope, in writing**

## Two tiers. Both have a written scope.

Maintenance keeps it healthy. Growth makes it compound.

| | Maintenance | Growth |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Foundations** | | |
| Upgrades, tested before production | Included | Included |
| Uptime and error monitoring | Included | Included |
| Incidents, same business day | Included | Included |
| Search and AI-readiness foundations watched | Included | Included |
| Editor support and small changes | Included | Included |
| Content model changes | Included | Included |
| Monthly report, quarterly review | Included | Included |
| **SEO and AEO** (Growth core) | | |
| SEO monitoring: keyword tracking | Not included | Included |
| AEO monitoring: prompt tracking, who gets cited | Not included | Included |
| Quarterly refresh of core pages | Not included | Included |
| SEO and AEO numbers in the report | Not included | Included |
| **Content** (Growth core) | | |
| Monthly content against the gaps found | Not included | Included |
| Programmatic location, service, and comparison pages | Not included | Included |
| Google Business Profile upkeep | Not included | Included |
| **Conversion** | | |
| Conversion iteration on real traffic | Not included | Included |
| Small feature builds | Not included | Included |
| **On request** | | |
| Paid ads, set-up and monthly runs | Not included | Optional |
| Social content from site content | Not included | Optional |
| Email sends and sequences | Not included | Optional |

How it compounds: the monitoring finds the gaps, content and pages fill them, and conversion iteration turns the visits into bookings. Full scope in writing, in every proposal.

**The rhythm**

## What a month looks like

Incidents and editor questions come first, any day.

- **Week 1: Monitor and patch** (Maintenance and Growth)
- **Week 2: Track and tune** (Growth only)
- **Week 3: Ship content and pages** (Growth only)
- **Week 4: Report and plan** (Maintenance and Growth)

**Pricing**

Retainers are a fixed monthly fee, scoped to your site and how much change you push through it. You get the number once we've seen the site. A blind quote is how retainers end up mispriced and resented on both sides.

- **Posture:** Fixed monthly fee. No hourly meter.
- **Term:** Month to month. No long-term contract.
- **Scoped:** After a look at the site, in writing.

**What it follows**

## It runs on the foundation we build.

Both tiers run on the Growth Website OS: a Sanity foundation and the automations that come with it. Any other stack is migrated first.

### [Growth Website Build](https://nativewise.ai/growth-website-build)

Branding, design, and a Sanity-powered site your team can edit, with search and AI-readiness foundations, performance, and booking in at launch.

### [Sanity Migration](https://nativewise.ai/sanity-migration)

Change your CMS without losing your rankings. URL-for-URL migration with redirects mapped and traffic watched, and your content becomes something AI agents can work with.

**Before you call**

## The questions every owner asks.

### Do we have to take a retainer?

No. Every build ships complete and yours: trained editors, documentation, full ownership. Retainers exist because sites compound when someone operates them, not because the build is incomplete.

### What's the difference between Maintenance and Growth?

Maintenance keeps the foundations healthy and produces no content. Growth is Maintenance plus the monthly work of being found and cited: SEO and AEO monitoring, monthly content, quarterly refreshes, programmatic pages, and Google Business Profile upkeep. If the site is done and you want it to stay done, Maintenance. If you want it to earn more each month than it did the last, Growth.

### Does Growth guarantee rankings or AI citations?

No, and be wary of anyone who does. Nobody controls what Google or ChatGPT shows. What Growth guarantees is the work, in writing: which prompts we track, what we ship against the gaps, what we refresh, and a monthly readout of what moved. Rankings and citations come from content, mentions, and freshness over time. That is the work the retainer does.

### We already pay for SEO. Why switch?

Maybe don't. Put the two scopes side by side. Ours names the work each month: the SEO and AEO monitoring, the content and pages shipped, the refreshes, the profile upkeep, the conversion changes, and a report that says what moved. If your current retainer's scope reads the same and the work is landing, keep it. If you can't find the scope, that is the answer.

### Can you work with our existing site?

Sometimes the audit's honest answer is "your site is fine; your phones are the leak, and you'd get more from an AI automation than a rebuild." That's a different service and we'll say so. If the site is the leak, we'll show you exactly where. Retainers on sites we didn't build start with the same look, and sometimes the honest answer is a migration first.

### What isn't covered?

Redesigns and large builds are project work, scoped separately. Review management isn't in either tier yet. When retainer work uncovers something bigger, we flag it with options rather than quietly burning the month on it.

**Get a proposal**

## Find out which tier, if either, earns its fee.

Send us the site and what you push through it each month. You get a written scope and a fixed number, or a plain "you don't need one yet."

1. **Look** — Your site, what it runs on, what's breaking.
2. **Scope** — Which tier, what's in it, in writing.
3. **Number** — A fixed monthly fee, month to month.

You'll hear back within one business day, from the person who'd run the retainer.