What SEO consulting is, and when it beats a retainer
Consulting is the version of my SEO services where you keep the execution and I supply the direction. You have a content writer, a developer or an agency, but nobody senior enough to decide what they should work on, check whether it was done right, or explain to management why traffic moved. That is the gap a fractional SEO consultant fills, at a fraction of the cost of a full retainer or a senior hire.
It beats a retainer when the team already has capacity and needs judgement, not hands. It is the wrong choice when nobody on your side has time to implement, in which case one of the tiers on the SEO packages and pricing page will get more done.
Who hires an SEO consultant
- Banks, groups and larger companies in Nepal with a marketing department and an IT team, where SEO changes need a strategy document and a business case before they are approved.
- Marketing managers in Australia, the UK and the USA who run content in-house and want a strategist reviewing the plan, not an agency reselling it.
- Web and design agencies in Nepal that want to offer SEO to their clients and need someone to set the strategy and audit the builds.
- Founders of SaaS and eCommerce companies who will make the decisions themselves and need a sparring partner with data.
- Companies between agencies who need an independent assessment of what the last one did.
What SEO consulting includes
- SEO strategy: a written strategy covering the market, the keyword and intent map, the site structure, the content plan, the technical priorities and the measurement plan, with the reasoning management needs to approve it.
- Quarterly roadmap: what the team does in the next 90 days, in what order, with the expected effect on rankings, traffic and enquiries, and the checkpoints to judge it by.
- Review of the team’s work: content briefs before writing, drafts before publishing, developer changes before release, redesign mockups before build. Most of the value of consulting is catching problems at this stage.
- Monthly hours: a fixed block for calls, Slack questions, ad-hoc analysis and second opinions. Unused hours do not roll over; overuse is billed at the same hourly rate.
- Reporting review: I read your rankings, Search Console and analytics each month and send a short note on what moved, why, and what to change in the roadmap.
- Training: working sessions with your writer or developer on the specific practices your site needs, rather than generic courses.
Consulting engagements often begin with a full SEO audit so that the strategy is built on the site’s actual condition and a competitor analysis so that the targets are realistic.
How a consulting engagement runs
- Discovery. Two sessions: one with marketing on goals, resources and history, one with the developers on the platform, the release process and what they can change without approval.
- Audit and strategy (first month). Site audit, keyword and intent map, competitor review, and the strategy document with a 12-month view and the first 90-day roadmap.
- Working rhythm. A fortnightly call with the people doing the work, a shared board of tasks with my review as a step before “done”, and Slack or email for anything between calls.
- Quarterly review. Results against the roadmap, presented to management if useful, and the next quarter’s roadmap.
Fractional SEO for larger organizations
For companies that need an SEO lead inside the organization for a period, I work as a fractional head of SEO: a fixed number of days per month, attending planning meetings, owning the SEO roadmap across marketing and IT, writing the requirements for developers, setting the standards writers work to and reporting to management. It suits a bank or a group planning a large site rebuild or a new digital product, where the decisions taken in six months will shape search visibility for years. The website migration and redesign SEO page describes the most common such project.
Pricing
Consulting is priced as a monthly block of hours, or as a fixed project fee for a strategy document. Fractional arrangements are priced per day. Figures are quoted after discovery because the hours depend on the size of your team and how much review it generates.
Next step
Contact me with a short description of your team, your site and what you want from a consultant and I will propose a format and a price. If you first want a picture of where the site stands, the free SEO audit is the quicker start. All the execution services a consulting plan can draw on are listed under SEO services.