Website terms and conditions of service

1. About these terms

These terms cover your use of southpawseo.com and set out, in summary, the commercial terms on which Southpaw SEO provides its services. By using this site you agree to section 11. The services themselves are provided under a written agreement we both sign before any work starts — the SEO Services Agreement for local SEO retainers and the Managed Website Terms for a website subscription. If anything on this page differs from a signed agreement, the signed agreement wins.

2. Who we are

Southpaw SEO is a Sydney-based consultancy providing local search engine optimisation and website development to gyms, boxing and martial-arts studios and boutique fitness businesses across Australia. “We”, “us” and “our” mean Southpaw SEO; “you” means the person or business using this site or engaging us.

3. Our services

We offer three things, each described in full on the pricing page:

Foundation — a monthly local SEO retainer covering Google Business Profile management, review responses, citation upkeep, a quarterly technical check and a monthly report.
Growth — the Foundation work plus new service and location pages, local content, monthly technical work and a quarterly strategy call.
Managed website — the build, hosting, maintenance and a capped monthly allowance of quick edits for a gym website, on a subscription.

Every retainer starts with a one-time onboarding phase: audit, keyword and competitor mapping, profile optimisation, analytics and Search Console setup and a baseline report. The exact deliverables for your tier are listed in Schedule 1 of your agreement, and they are the measure of what a month’s fee buys. We may swap a deliverable for one of equivalent value in a given month where we think it will do more for your results, and we will say so in that month’s report.

4. No guarantees

We do not guarantee rankings, leads or member numbers. Nobody legitimately can — Google says so, and so does the ACCC.

Google Search, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Bing and the AI assistants that recommend businesses are run by third parties whose algorithms and policies change without notice and are outside our control. We do not guarantee any ranking, map-pack position, traffic level, number of enquiries, number of members, or appearance in any AI-generated answer, and nothing on this site, in a proposal, in a case study or in a projection should be read as one. What we will tell you honestly is the shape of the timeline: first movement usually takes 60–90 days, and meaningful lead flow usually takes 3–6 months. Any projection we give is a good-faith estimate built on stated assumptions, and we report actual results against it every month.

5. Fees and GST

Foundation: $750–1,000 per month. Growth: $1,200–1,500 per month. Managed website: $99–179 per month. Onboarding: $500–1,000, one-time. The exact figure within each range is set on your signing page and depends on the size of the gym and the state of its current presence.
All prices are in AUD and are stated exclusive of GST unless marked otherwise. Where we are registered for GST, a tax invoice is issued for every payment.
Monthly fees are payable monthly in advance by direct debit under a Direct Debit Request with our payment provider. The onboarding fee is payable once, on signing, and is earned as the onboarding deliverables are provided; it is not a blanket non-refundable charge.
We may change the fee for a tier on 60 days’ written notice, never during your initial term. If you do not accept a fee change you may end the engagement on 30 days’ notice, without penalty, before it takes effect.
We do not charge dishonour fees, late fees or interest. An unpaid invoice is handled by reminder, then by pausing the work after written warning, not by penalty.

6. Minimum term and notice

Every retainer has a minimum initial term of 3 months. That is how long the foundational work takes to show, and it is the shortest period over which we can honestly judge whether the engagement is working. After the initial term the engagement continues month-to-month and either of us can end it on 30 days’ written notice.

There are no 12-month lock-ins and no automatic renewal into a new fixed term; only a new signed order can create one. If you need to leave during the initial term, your agreement sets a modest early-exit amount that reflects the work already scheduled, never the whole remaining term. Fees paid in advance for any period after the end date are refunded pro-rata within 14 days, and nothing in these terms limits the remedies the Australian Consumer Law gives you.

We take one gym per roughly 5 km catchment. While you are a client we will not take on a directly competing gym inside that radius; that exclusivity attaches to signed clients and active proposals, not to teardown requests.

7. Your accounts stay yours

This is the clause that matters most, so it is written plainly:

You remain the registrant of your domain name, the primary owner of your Google Business Profile, and the owner of your Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 properties and your website content at all times.
We work through named manager or user access granted to our own accounts. We will never ask for your primary passwords, and you should never hand them to anyone who does.
Any listing, profile or account we create on your behalf is created in your business’s name and recorded in a list we hand you on exit, together with the logins.
When the engagement ends, for any reason, we remove our own access and hand back everything above within 10 business days: the access list, the listing logins, export copies of paid-for content and the data snapshots behind your reports.
Handover is never conditioned on payment of disputed fees. We may pursue an unpaid amount as a debt, but we will not hold your domain, your profile, your site or your content as leverage.

For a managed website the split is disclosed on the signing page in plain language: you always own the domain (registered under your ABN) and all content; we own the build — design, templates, code and configuration — until you buy it out for a fixed, modest multiple of the monthly fee, after which it is yours. Either way, if you leave you receive a full export and domain transfer authorisation within 10 business days.

8. Intellectual property

Content we create for you — pages, articles, profile posts, images and review responses — is assigned to you on payment of the invoice for the month it was delivered. Until then you have a licence to use it on your own properties.
Our methods stay ours — our processes, checklists, templates, scripts, software and reporting tools remain our property. You get the benefit of them, not the rights to them.
Material you supply — you confirm you have the rights to the logos, photos, videos, testimonials and member stories you give us to publish, including releases from any people shown, and you indemnify us against third-party claims arising from that material.
This website — the text, images, code and design of southpawseo.com belong to us. You may quote short extracts with attribution and a link; you may not copy pages, republish articles in full or use our brand to suggest an endorsement.
With your prior written approval we may name you and describe non-confidential results in a case study; you can withdraw that approval at any time for future use.

9. Third-party costs

Our fees cover our work. They do not cover costs charged by other companies, which are yours and are either paid by you directly or passed through at cost with your approval first: domain registration and renewal, hosting outside a managed website subscription, paid directory listings, Google Ads or any other advertising spend, photography and video, booking or membership software, paid plugins and licences, and print. We will tell you before recommending anything that costs money, and we never recommend paid links, paid reviews or paid placements that would breach a platform’s policy.

10. How we work

We do the work in line with Google’s spam policies and Business Profile guidelines and the Australian Consumer Law as they stand from time to time. We may refuse, without being in breach, any instruction to buy, fake, gate or incentivise reviews; to publish scaled or doorway pages; to buy links; or to put misleading data in a profile. If a client carries out such tactics against our written advice, we are not responsible for the resulting penalty or suspension, and we may end the engagement if it continues after notice. Any electronic marketing done under the engagement complies with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth).

11. Using this website

The articles, checklists and figures on this site are general information for gym owners. They are not legal, financial or tax advice, and they are not a promise about any particular business. Check anything that matters against your own circumstances or a qualified adviser.
We keep the site accurate and current as best we can, and we date our articles, but search engines change faster than pages do. We do not warrant that everything here is complete or up to date on the day you read it.
Links to other sites are provided for reference. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, policies or availability.
The free teardown is free and carries no obligation on either side. Submitting the form does not create a contract, reserve a catchment or commit us to take you on.
Do not use this site to send spam, to probe or attack our systems, to scrape content, or to submit false information through the enquiry form. We may block access to anyone who does.
Personal information you send us through this site is handled under our privacy policy.

12. Limitation of liability

Our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these terms or in any agreement with us excludes, restricts or modifies any consumer guarantee, right or remedy that the law says cannot be excluded.

Subject to that:

where the Australian Consumer Law permits, our liability for a failure to comply with a consumer guarantee in relation to services is limited, at our option, to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again;
each party’s total liability under or in connection with an engagement is capped at the fees paid or payable in the three months before the event giving rise to the claim, and neither party is liable to the other for loss of profit, revenue or goodwill or for indirect or consequential loss;
that cap does not apply to death or personal injury, fraud or wilful misconduct, a breach of confidentiality, or a client’s obligation to pay fees;
we are not liable for the acts, outages or policy decisions of Google, Apple, Microsoft, any AI service, a hosting provider, a domain registrar or booking software, except to the extent we failed to take the reasonable steps our agreement requires of us.

The information on this website is provided as is. To the extent the law allows, we accept no liability for loss arising from reliance on it.

13. Governing law

These terms and every agreement with us are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. Both parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts and tribunals of New South Wales. Before either of us starts proceedings (other than to recover a debt or seek urgent relief), we agree to try to sort the dispute out in writing, then in a good-faith conversation between principals, then, if it is still unresolved, through mediation with the costs shared equally.

14. Contact

Questions about these terms go to hello@southpawseo.com, which is monitored on business days. We will update this page when our services or the law change; the effective date at the top tells you which version you are reading, and current clients are told by email before a material change takes effect. A change never alters a signed agreement.