SEO Retainers for Recruiters: Advocate vs. Elevate vs. Dominate

Choosing the Right SEO Retainer: Advocate vs. Elevate vs. Dominate

Choosing between the Advocate, Elevate, and Dominate SEO retainers depends on your agency’s size, growth goals, and budget. Every recruitment agency faces unique pressures on candidate flow, client leads, and marketing spend, making the decision difficult without a clear comparison. This guide breaks down the specific outcomes, costs, and strategic focus of each Kaizen SEO retainer to help you match the right service to your current business stage.

Key Takeaways

Advocate Retainer (£395+/month) provides entry-level SEO support for start-ups and smaller agencies.
Elevate Retainer (£1,495/month) delivers growth-focused SEO for mid-sized recruiters breaking revenue plateaus.
Dominate Retainer (£2,499+/month) offers advanced, AI-ready SEO for national firms seeking market leadership.
Selection criteria relies on traffic goals, candidate vs. client focus, and internal resource availability.
ROI generation comes from measurable reductions in job board spend, higher client enquiries, and long-term organic growth.

What’s included in Kaizen SEO retainers?

Kaizen SEO retainers share a unified technical foundation regardless of the tier. All packages include technical SEO audits, structured data deployment, core content support, and reporting in GA4 and GSC.

The difference lies in scope, speed, and sophistication. The Advocate package focuses on stability, Elevate focuses on expansion, and Dominate focuses on market authority and AI visibility.

Don’t just compare packages by price. The true cost is the opportunity lost if your agency remains dependent on job boards while competitors scale their client visibility.

Why a Monthly SEO Retainer beats Ad-Hoc Projects

Monthly SEO retainers beat ad-hoc projects because search engines require consistent signal reinforcement to validate authority. Ad-hoc fixes decay because they fail to address the continuous indexation cycles and competitive content velocity required to hold rankings.

A one-off project fixes a snapshot of your site at a specific moment in time. However, Google updates its algorithm thousands of times per year, and competitors publish new content daily. A retainer ensures your recruitment agency adapts to these changes in real-time, building compounding authority rather than relying on a static, decaying technical baseline.

Advocate Retainer: Affordable SEO for start-ups

The Advocate Retainer is Kaizen SEO’s starter SEO package, designed for agencies just launching or those with small teams. Priced from £395/month, the Advocate tier focuses on low-cost, high-impact essentials:

Page copy analysis and optimisation
Meta data analysis and optimisation
Internal linking to connect similar pages and demostrate relevancy
Creation of new pages to capture higher-intent searches
Restructuring pages and blogs for better AI surfacing

Success Story: Education Recruitment Start-Up
A new one-person agency was invisible to its target clients: Multi-Academy Trusts. After 3 months on the Advocate plan, we restructured and optimised their "Education Leadership" service page. The

Best for:

New/smaller agencies with limited budgets.
Recruitment marketing teams who want to "test the water".
Founders who need SEO foundations but can’t yet commit to large-scale investment.

Elevate Retainer: Growth-focused SEO for mid-sized agencies

The Elevate Retainer bridges the gap between start-up survival and market scaling. Priced from £1,495/month, the Elevate tier is designed for agencies that have hit a growth plateau and need consistent visibility gains.

What Elevate covers:

Full technical SEO with speed optimisation.
2-4 AI-optimised blogs per month.
Structured data across service and core pages.
Internal linking and authority-building plans.
Roll-out of high intent pages to cature candidates/clients with a higher level of readiness to transact
Reporting tailored to client and candidate goals.

Success Story:
A tech recruiter had invested heavily in marketing but couldn’t scale organic leads. Elevate restructured their architecture, refined their content targeting, and added advanced schema. Within four months, their visibility in AI Overviews increased by 44%, and inbound applications grew by 29%.

Agencies that delay moving from a starter package to Elevate often waste 6–12 months of potential growth. If your aim is national reach, Elevate gets you there faster and saves the compounding cost of missed leads.

Best for:

Agencies with regional visibility looking to scale nationally.
Firms balancing candidate attraction with client lead generation.
Marketing managers needing structured, consistent SEO execution.

Dominate Retainer: SEO & AI Growth System for Recruitment Agencies Ready to Dominate Their Market

The Dominate Retainer is the flagship programme. Priced from £2,499+/month, the Dominate tier is built for large, multi-office recruiters competing nationally against established brands.

What Dominate delivers:

Advanced technical SEO (duplicate URL consolidation, crawl efficiency).
4+ AI-optimised blogs per month.
5-10 new pages deployed each month to ramp up lead gen from ready-to-transact audiences
Authority-building through outreach and mentions.
Full structured data deployment across jobs, services, and FAQs.
AI visibility optimisation for Google Overviews and answer engines.

Client Proof: A national recruiter on Dominate saw a 65% increase in organic lead form completions within 6 months after a complete technical restructure and AI visibility optimisation.

Dominate isn’t just about more hours. It’s about positioning your brand for the future of search, where AI Overviews and answer engines are already shaping client buying behaviour.

Best for:

National firms competing with big-name agencies.
Agencies wanting AI visibility in Google Overviews.
Leadership teams needing aggressive growth in client leads.

How to choose the right retainer for your recruitment agency

Follow this process to match your SEO investment to your agency’s stage and growth goals.

Audit your current SEO health Use Screaming Frog or GSC to check for crawl errors and indexing gaps. High error counts often require the technical depth of Elevate or Dominate.
Define your growth stage Identify if you are a start-up (Advocate), in a growth plateau (Elevate), or ready for national expansion (Dominate).
Decide focus areas Determine if you need more candidate applications, more client leads, or both. Client lead generation typically requires the content volume found in Elevate and Dominate.
Review your internal resources Assess your writing capacity. If your team can create blogs, Advocate may be enough. If not, Elevate or Dominate provide the necessary content production.
Set a timeline for results Acknowledge that faster growth requires more hours and investment.
Calculate ROI potential Compare package costs against savings on job boards and projected placements to determine the most profitable tier.

FAQs

Which SEO package should recruiters choose?

Recruiters should choose an SEO package that matches their growth stage. Start-ups should consider the Advocate Retainer, mid-sized agencies often benefit from Elevate, while national firms require Dominate.

What’s the difference between Elevate and Dominate SEO?

The difference lies in AI readiness and scale. The Elevate Retainer supports mid-sized recruiters with technical SEO and blogs, while Dominate adds AI visibility, national-scale authority building, and advanced technical restructuring.

Is the Advocate Retainer enough for growth?

The Advocate Retainer is enough for foundations. It builds the initial technical base and generates first organic leads, but sustained, scalable growth usually requires the content velocity of Elevate or Dominate.

How much do recruitment SEO retainers cost in the UK?

Recruitment SEO retainers vary by service level. Kaizen SEO packages range from £395/month for Advocate, £1,495/month for Elevate, and £2,499+/month for Dominate.

Can small recruitment agencies afford professional SEO?

Yes, small agencies can afford professional SEO. The Advocate Retainer starts at £395/month, making professional technical support accessible without heavy upfront capital.

About the Author

Daniel Jones is the Founder of Kaizen SEO, a UK-based consultancy specialising in SEO for recruitment agencies. With frameworks like Advocate, Elevate, and Dominate, Dan has helped start-ups, mid-sized recruiters, and national firms cut job board costs, win client leads, and secure AI visibility.

Book Your Consultation

Stop guessing which package fits your budget. Book a free consultation with Kaizen SEO to get a clear, data-backed recommendation on whether Advocate, Elevate, or Dominate is the right engine for your growth.