What “four SEO articles per month” actually looks like
Four articles is not a sales-pitch number. It is a calendar entry — written, edited, interlinked, and published on a known day every month, on the buyer’s domain.
· 5 min read
01
The number is the contract
$890 / 4 articles = $223 per article. Same as last month. That ratio is what the buyer is paying for.
“Four articles per month” reads like a sales line. At Slatelock it is a fixed scope: exactly four pieces, each approximately 1,200 words, published on the buyer’s domain every month. Same cadence, same count, same edit pass. There is no cushion for “this month is light” because the contract is the four articles, not the relationship.
The $890 fee is fixed against the four articles. Pull a single piece out of the month and the work does not match the scope. The process is wired so the same thing ships against the same fee — without an invoice addendum and without an email asking the buyer to approve “a heavier month.”
02
A working calendar, not a content calendar
Week 1: cluster selection and intent map for the buyer’s service area. Week 2: editorial briefs for each article (working title, target keyword, working angle, target cluster pillar). Week 3: drafts against the briefs. Week 4: edit pass, internal-linking pass against existing content and prior articles, publication on the buyer’s CMS.
Each brief goes out before a single word of draft is written. If the cluster or the angle is wrong, it changes before writing — not after publication. There is no draft-then-rework loop billed back to the buyer; the editorial calendar is a working doc, not a content plan the buyer can ignore.
03
The monthly report is the same for every buyer
Identical report, twelve months in a row. That is the artifact; compare the numbers, not the storytelling.
One page. Where the cluster ranks this month vs last. Calls the cluster drove. Clicks on the new pieces. One chart, one number, one paragraph. The report is identical in structure every month, which is the point: identical reports mean the trend lines are real and month-to-month comparisons are honest.
A bespoke report looks impressive in month one and stops being comparable by month three. The point of a monthly deliverable is that it ships the same — and that the report on the deliverable is the same — every month. The buyer can read the same page twelve times without re-learning the format.
The artifact is the contract
Same tier, same price, same shipped artifact every month.
Slatelock ships a fixed-scope monthly retainer. Cancel before the next renewal. No discovery call, no scope creep, no surprise invoice.