Some companies need an agency to run their SEO end to end. Many don't. If you already have people who can write, design and deploy, what's usually missing is judgment: which problems matter, what to do first and whether the work is done right. That's what our SEO consulting services provide, from a single audit and roadmap to ongoing advisory and team training.
What's the difference between SEO consulting and a full-service agency?
The difference is who does the work. In SEO consulting, your team implements and the consultant provides strategy, prioritization, reviews and training. In a full-service engagement, the agency also produces the content, ships the technical fixes and runs outreach. Consulting usually costs less in fees but needs more of your team's time.
| SEO consulting | Full-service SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Who implements | Your marketers, writers and developers | The agency, with your approval |
| Best for | Teams with execution capacity but no senior SEO lead | Teams without the time or people to execute |
| What you get | A roadmap, decisions, reviews and training | A roadmap plus shipped fixes, published content and earned links |
| Time needed from you | Several hours a week across the team | A few hours a month for approvals and access |
| Pace | As fast as your team ships | As fast as the agreed scope allows |
| Where knowledge lives | With your team | Partly with the agency, unless it's documented |
Plenty of companies mix the two. A common pattern is consulting for strategy and content review, plus a scoped project for the work the team can't do, like a migration or a technical cleanup. If you'd rather hand over execution entirely, our SEO agency services cover it.
Who is SEO consulting a good fit for?
SEO consulting suits companies that can execute but lack senior SEO judgment in-house. That usually means in-house marketing teams without a dedicated SEO lead, founders doing marketing themselves, product and engineering teams shipping a site that needs to rank, and companies that want a second opinion before committing to a large SEO investment.
In-house marketing teams
You have writers and a web developer, but nobody whose full-time job is search. We set the plan, review briefs and pages before they publish, and keep the team focused on work that moves traffic and leads.
Founders
You're writing the blog posts and managing the website between sales calls. A short engagement gives you a focused plan for your first year of SEO, and tells you what not to spend time on.
Product and engineering teams
You're rebuilding the site or launching a new product area. We review architecture, rendering and URL decisions before they ship, while changes are still cheap.
Teams with an in-house SEO
Your SEO lead wants a sparring partner, an outside review of a big decision, or specialist help with a technical or AI search problem.
Consulting is a weaker fit if nobody on your side has time to implement. Advice that sits in a shared drive doesn't rank, and you'd be better served by an agency that does the work. Developers who are new to SEO can get a head start with our technical SEO checklist, which covers the checks we'd run on any rebuild.
Which SEO consulting formats do you offer?
We offer three formats: a one-time audit and roadmap, an ongoing monthly advisory retainer, and training for in-house teams. We usually recommend starting with the audit and roadmap, because it gives both sides a shared picture of the site, the market and the priorities before anyone commits to something longer.
Audit and roadmap
A full review of technical health, content, authority, competitors and AI search visibility, delivered as a prioritized roadmap for the next six to twelve months. Each item has an owner, an effort estimate and the outcome it should drive. We walk your team through it and answer questions as you start implementing. Our SEO audit services page covers what the audit includes.
Monthly advisory
A standing retainer for teams implementing SEO themselves. It typically includes a regular strategy call, reviews of briefs, pages and technical changes before they ship, a monthly performance read-out, and answers when decisions come up, like whether to merge two competing pages or how to handle a product rename.
Team training
Workshops for marketing, content and development teams on the parts of SEO they touch every day: keyword research and briefs for writers, technical basics for developers, Search Console and reporting for marketers, and how AI search changes each of them. Sessions use your own site as the example.
What does an SEO consultant actually work on?
An SEO consultant works on the decisions that shape results: which keywords and topics to pursue, which technical problems to fix first, how the site should be structured, what each piece of content needs to compete, and how to measure progress. Day to day, that means reviewing work, answering questions and catching mistakes before they ship.
- Keyword and topic strategy tied to your margins and best customers
- Technical priorities written up as developer-ready tickets
- Content briefs and pre-publication page reviews
- Site architecture and internal linking plans
- Reviews of redesigns, migrations and replatforming plans before launch
- AI search visibility: how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI features describe you
- Search Console, GA4 and reporting setup, so you can measure what matters
- Second opinions on vendor proposals, audits and link building offers
Here's what that looks like in practice. A B2B SaaS company in Boston with two content marketers and a shared developer might get a quarterly topic plan, a review of every brief before writing starts, and a monthly batch of technical tickets sized to the developer's spare capacity. The marketers write and the developer ships; we make sure each piece of work targets a query worth winning and has what it needs to compete.
For AI search, we bring the same methods our AEO agency work uses, including prompt tracking and query fan-out research. You can try the latter with our free query fan-out generator, and compare traffic across sections of your site with the GSC folder comparison tool.
How do you get the most value from an SEO consultant?
You get the most value by having implementation capacity ready, giving the consultant real data access, and naming one person who can make decisions. Consulting turns into results only when recommendations ship. Teams that benefit most treat the consultant as part of the team, not as an outside reviewer they check in with occasionally.
It also helps to be honest about bandwidth. A roadmap with 60 items and a team with four spare hours a week is a recipe for frustration. We scope the plan to what your team can realistically ship, and we'll tell you when a task would be faster to outsource.
Share context, too. Your sales team's most common objections and the questions your best customers ask before buying are some of the most useful inputs a consultant can get, because they show which searches lead to revenue.
How are SEO consultants priced in the US?
SEO consultants in the US typically charge by the hour, by the project or through a monthly retainer. Our SEO pricing guide puts typical hourly consulting at about $75 to $250 an hour and audits at roughly $1,000 to $10,000 or more, depending on site size and depth. Retainers vary with how much advisory time you need.
Hourly pricing is simple, but it can reward slow work and makes budgeting hard. Project fees suit audits and migrations with a clear end point. Retainers suit ongoing advisory, where the value is having an expert on call when decisions come up. We scope every engagement after a free audit, so the format matches what you actually need.
Whatever you choose, judge consultants on the clarity of their recommendations, not the volume. Our guide on how to choose an SEO agency includes the questions worth asking any consultant before you sign.
How does an SEO consulting engagement start?
It starts with a free audit and a call. We review your site, rankings, competitors and AI search visibility, then walk you through the three things we'd fix first. If consulting is the right fit, we propose a format and scope; if it isn't, we'll say so and suggest what would work better.
- Request an audit. Tell us about your site and goals on our contact page. We reply within one business day.
- Review and call. We share findings and the three highest-impact fixes, and learn how your team works.
- Scope. We recommend a format, a cadence and the access we'd need, such as Search Console, GA4 and your CMS.
- Kickoff. A working session with the people who'll implement, followed by a first 90-day plan.
If you need hands-on help partway through, our technical SEO services can take on specific projects without changing the consulting relationship.