Why a US business would hire an SEO specialist in Nepal
Senior SEO in the United States is expensive, and much of what an agency charges pays for people who will never touch your account. The alternative most businesses find is a cheap offshore package that produces reports instead of results. This is the middle: a senior individual, working directly with you, at a fee that reflects where I live.
- Cost. For equivalent senior scope, expect to pay 40% to 60% less than a comparable US or Western agency rate. Fees are quoted and invoiced in USD.
- Overnight progress. Nepal is GMT+5:45, nine and three quarter hours ahead of US Eastern time in summer and twelve and three quarter hours ahead of Pacific. My working day runs while yours is closed, so audits, fixes and campaign changes are waiting when you start.
- Identical platforms. Ahrefs, Semrush, Screaming Frog, Search Console, GA4, Google Tag Manager and Google Ads are the same tools you would be paying an American agency to use. The results I analyze are google.com for your cities and services.
- No account layer. I do the audit, the implementation, the content briefs, the campaigns and the reporting. There is nobody to hand your account to.
- Month to month. No twelve-month contract, because a twelve-month contract mostly protects the agency.
What I can show you, and what I cannot
I do not yet have a published US case study, and I would rather tell you that on the page than let you find out on the call. The results I can show with the method that produced them are a Nepali tourism business whose organic traffic grew 180% in six months, an Australian mortgage brokerage whose cost per acquisition fell 35% in 60 days with 40 or more leads a month, and a Kathmandu fertility clinic that produced more than 150 leads at around NPR 180 each. They are written up in the case studies, and the businesses I have worked with are on the clients page. The closest analogue to a US engagement is the Australian work: an English-speaking market, a regulated industry, a client I have never met in person, described on SEO expert for Australian businesses.
What is different about SEO in the US market
Two things change the plan compared with a smaller market. First, competition: head terms such as “seo expert” or “personal injury lawyer” are contested by companies with budgets no small business can match, so the plan starts with specific, lower-competition terms that convert and builds toward the harder ones. Second, geography: “near me” and city-level searches behave differently from national ones, and a business serving one metro needs a different structure from one shipping nationwide.
- Local businesses need Google Business Profile work, city and service pages that are genuinely different from each other, citations and reviews. See local SEO, or multi-location SEO for chains and franchises.
- National ecommerce and SaaS compete on content depth, site architecture and links rather than proximity. See eCommerce SEO, SaaS SEO and B2B SEO.
- Large sites with thousands of URLs are usually held back by crawl and template problems rather than by content. See technical SEO and enterprise SEO.
What an engagement includes
- Technical audit and implementation: crawling, indexing, Core Web Vitals, schema, canonicals, and post-redesign cleanup.
- Keyword research and mapping with one search intent per page, so your own pages stop competing with each other.
- Content briefs, and writing where the site is small enough for me to do it well. See content SEO.
- Link acquisition through genuine outreach and digital PR angles, never purchased placements. See link building.
- Conversion tracking that makes the outcome provable: GA4, Google Tag Manager, call and form tracking.
- Paid search where it earns its place next to organic, described on Google Ads management for US businesses.
- A monthly Looker Studio report on your own data, leading with leads and revenue rather than rankings.
Working across a twelve-hour gap
This is the honest constraint, so it is worth being precise. For the East Coast, my evening is your morning: a 7am to 9am Eastern call is comfortably inside my working day. For the Pacific, your late afternoon is my early morning, which also works. What does not work is a same-hour, all-day chat channel, and I do not pretend otherwise. In exchange you get written daily or weekly updates, replies within 4 business hours on business days, and work that progresses while your office is closed. Most US clients find asynchronous work with one clear call a week or fortnight better than the interruption pattern they had before.
Fees, invoicing and US tax paperwork
Fees are quoted per scope after a free 30-minute discovery call, invoiced monthly in USD and paid by bank transfer or Wise. Engagements are month to month. Prices for the shapes below are on request.
| Engagement | What it covers | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| SEO audit and roadmap | Technical audit, keyword map, prioritized fix list, handover call | On request |
| Monthly SEO retainer | Implementation, content briefs, links, reporting, monthly call | On request |
| SEO plus Google Ads | The retainer above plus paid search management | On request |
On paperwork: I am a non-US person performing services outside the United States, so I can supply a completed Form W-8BEN for your records, and payments of this kind are generally not subject to US withholding or Form 1099 reporting. Your accountant should confirm the treatment for your situation.
US agency, US freelancer, or an offshore specialist?
| Option | Strength | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| US agency | Team depth, same time zone, in-person meetings | Highest fees, juniors on the account, long contracts |
| US freelancer | Senior attention in your time zone | US day rates; limited capacity |
| Offshore agency | Cheap volume of content and links | Account managers, turnover, templated deliverables |
| Solo offshore specialist | Senior judgment at a lower fee, direct access | Time-zone gap; check the proof before you hire |
For a fuller comparison, hire an SEO expert covers the engagement models and freelance SEO expert explains what a senior freelancer delivers. US agencies wanting white-label execution should read outsource digital marketing to Nepal.
Start with an audit
Request a free SEO audit and I will record a walk-through of what is holding your site back in google.com and what I would fix first, with no obligation. If you would rather talk, book a call. Businesses selling into several countries should also read international SEO; my other market pages are Australia and the UK, and working arrangements for overseas clients are on working with international clients.