These terms apply to every paid engagement with Visible Owl LLC. Together with the written proposal or order you accept, they are the agreement between us. If the proposal says something different from this page, the proposal wins.
Accepting a proposal, signing an order, or paying an invoice means you accept these terms.
What we do
We provide the services named in your proposal, which may include website design and build, search engine optimization, local search and Google Business Profile work, AI search visibility, Google Ads and Local Services Ads management, social content, and website or ranking recovery.
The proposal sets the scope. Work outside it is a change, and a change needs both sides to agree in writing on what it is and what it costs before it starts. We may use subcontractors, and when we do they are bound by the same confidentiality obligations and we remain responsible for their work.
Unless the proposal says otherwise, we are not exclusive: we work with other businesses, including in your industry. We will not take on a direct competitor in your primary service area for the same service while you are a client, and if you want a wider exclusivity than that, it has to be written into the proposal.
Month to month, and how to stop
Retainer services run month to month. There is no long-term contract and no early termination fee.
You can cancel anytime. Just tell us by email. You pay for the month in progress; we finish that month’s work and hand everything over.
We may suspend or end work immediately if an invoice is more than 15 days past due, if you ask us to do something that breaks a platform’s rules or the law, or if the working relationship becomes abusive. We will always tell you why.
Fees, invoices and payment
Prices are as stated in your proposal. Retainers are billed monthly in advance and are due on receipt. Project work, including websites, is billed as the proposal sets out, usually part at the start and the balance before launch.
There is no setup fee on our SEO plans. Promotional pricing, including any limited-time offer published on the site, applies only for the period stated in your proposal and reverts to standard pricing after it.
Late payments may carry interest at 1.5% per month or the maximum the law allows, whichever is lower, plus any reasonable cost of collection. Fees are exclusive of any applicable taxes. Work stops while an account is past due, and we are not responsible for what that pause costs in rankings or campaign performance.
Retainer fees pay for the month’s work and are not refundable once that month’s work is under way. If we have not started a month’s work when you cancel, we refund it.
Advertising spend
Ad spend is separate from our management fee. You pay it directly to Google or whichever platform is involved, on your own account with your own payment method. We never mark it up, never take a share of it, and never hold it.
You set the budget and you can change it at any time. Platforms control costs, approvals and account status, and they can raise prices, disapprove an ad or suspend an account for reasons outside our control.
What we need from you
Most delays in this work are access and approvals, so this part matters:
- Access. Admin access to your website, hosting, domain registrar, Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, Google Search Console and any ad accounts, granted to our own accounts rather than by sharing your password.
- Content and approvals. Photos, service details, corrections and sign-off, within a reasonable time. If we do not hear back on a deliverable within 10 business days, we treat it as approved so the schedule does not stall.
- Accuracy. Everything you tell us about your business, your licences, your claims and your pricing must be true. We publish what you give us.
- Rights. Permission for every logo, photo, review, testimonial and piece of text you hand us. You confirm you have it.
- A point of contact. One person who can decide.
Who owns what
You own your accounts. Your domain, your website, your Google Business Profile, your Analytics and Search Console properties, your ad accounts and all the data in them are yours, during the engagement and after it. We do not hold your domain, your profile or your accounts hostage, ever. If you leave, we remove our access and you keep everything.
You own the deliverables you paid for, including page copy, the website build and reports, once that invoice is paid in full. Until then we keep ownership of what is unpaid.
We keep our own tools. Our templates, frameworks, internal processes, code libraries and know-how stay ours, and you get a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use them in the deliverables we built for you. Third-party components such as fonts, stock photography, plugins and hosting stay under their own licences, and some of those licences run per site or per year.
You grant us a licence to use your brand name, logo and materials for the purpose of doing the work. We may also name you as a client and show the work in our portfolio and case studies. Tell us in writing if you would rather we did not, and we will not.
What we promise, and what we cannot
We promise the work: the deliverables in your proposal, done to a professional standard, on the schedule we agree, with a report that shows what we did and what happened.
We do not and cannot guarantee any ranking, position, traffic level, number of leads, cost per lead, conversion rate or amount of revenue. Search engines, AI answer engines and ad platforms decide what shows, they change the rules without notice, and no agency controls them. Our full Results Disclaimer applies to this agreement and is part of it.
We follow the published guidelines of the platforms we work on. We do not buy links, spam listings, fake reviews or use any tactic designed to deceive a platform, and we will decline an instruction to do so.
Confidentiality
Each of us will keep the other’s non-public information confidential and use it only for the work, during the engagement and for three years after it. That covers your pricing, customer information, plans and account data, and our proposals, processes and rates.
It does not cover information that is already public, that either side already had, or that the law requires to be disclosed. We never publish a client’s private report figures without asking first.
Data protection
When we handle personal information inside your accounts, such as lead lists or customer data in your advertising platforms, we do it only on your instructions and to deliver the service, and we apply reasonable safeguards. You remain responsible for having the right to collect and use that data, and for what your own website and forms tell people. Our Privacy Policy covers information we hold as a business in our own right.
Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, neither side is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or lost business, even if warned they were possible.
Our total liability for any claim arising out of the engagement is limited to the fees you paid us in the three months before the claim arose. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, willful misconduct, or anything that cannot be limited by law.
We are not liable for outcomes caused by things outside our control, including platform policy or algorithm changes, account suspensions, hosting or domain failures, hacking, changes you or another vendor make without telling us, or your own delays.
Indemnity
You will indemnify us against any claim arising from the material you give us to publish, from your products, services or business practices, or from your breach of these terms. We will indemnify you against any claim that work we originated infringes someone else’s intellectual property rights.
Our relationship
We are an independent contractor, not your employee, partner or agent. We decide how the work gets done. Neither side may bind the other, and nothing here creates a partnership or joint venture.
We do not recruit each other’s staff: neither side will hire the other’s employee or contractor who worked on this engagement, during it and for 12 months after, without written permission.
Disputes and governing law
Talk to us first. Email hello@visibleowl.com and we will make a real effort to sort it out within 30 days.
This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any dispute that informal discussion does not resolve will be brought only in the state or federal courts in Williamson County, Texas. The losing side pays the winning side’s reasonable legal fees and costs.
The rest
Neither side is responsible for a failure caused by something genuinely outside its control, such as a natural disaster, an outage, war or a government act. If part of this agreement is unenforceable, the rest stands. Not enforcing something once does not waive it. Neither side may assign this agreement without the other’s consent, except to a buyer of the whole business.
This agreement, your proposal, and the policies linked from it are the whole agreement between us and replace anything said before. We may update these standing terms; we will tell active clients in writing before a change takes effect, and a change never applies to work already paid for.
How to reach us about this
Questions, corrections or requests about this page go to hello@visibleowl.com, or call (512) 553-9675. Postal mail: Visible Owl LLC, Round Rock, TX 78665. A real person answers, usually the same business day.