SEO consultancy services, hired on evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to buy consultancy rather than hours

1. Name the decision you need help making. Consultancy is bought to resolve something specific: a migration, a plateau, a platform choice, a build-or-buy call on content. Write the question down first; it decides whether you need a strategist for six weeks or a delivery partner for a year.
2. Separate diagnosis from delivery in the quote. Ask every firm to price the diagnosis and the implementation as distinct lines. A consultancy fee that quietly assumes your developers will absorb months of work is not comparable to a quote that includes the build.
3. Check the evidence the firm already published. A named team, a real address, printed engagement shapes and case detail that names the client are all verifiable in minutes. Agencies are listed here only on what can be verified from their own pages; hold your shortlist to that standard.
4. Agree the measurement before the retainer starts. Decide what will be measured, from what baseline and on what date, and write it into the contract. A consultant who cannot define what progress looks like in ninety days is selling attendance rather than judgement.

What a consultant should hand you

The deliverable that earns the fee is a prioritised plan someone else can execute: what to fix, in what order, what each item requires from engineering or editorial, and what evidence will show whether it worked. Anything less is a report, and reports are cheap to produce and expensive to act on.

Good consultancy is also explicit about what it will not do. If the recommendation is that your team writes the content because they know the product, the consultant should say so and price the editing rather than quietly billing for ghostwriting that reads like a brochure.

Consultant, agency or hire

A consultant is the right purchase when you have execution capacity but not direction. An agency is the right purchase when you have direction but no hands. An in-house hire becomes the right purchase when search is a permanent, central channel and the institutional knowledge is worth keeping.

Most buying mistakes are category mistakes rather than vendor mistakes. A team with no writers hiring a strategist will get a plan it cannot run; a team with strong writers hiring a full-service retainer will pay agency margin for work it could do better itself.

Pricing and what it should include

Published pricing is the minority position in this market, which is why the firms that print theirs are useful reference points even when you do not shortlist them. Ask every finalist to position its quote against those published floors and to say what changes if the scope halves.

Whatever the model, insist on ownership: your analytics, your Search Console property, your content and your accounts stay yours, and access is granted rather than transferred. Ownership questions are cheapest to settle before the first invoice.

Questions people actually ask

What is the difference between SEO consultancy and an SEO agency?

A consultancy sells diagnosis, priorities and oversight; an agency usually sells execution as well. Many firms do both, so the honest test is how many hours in the quote are someone else's hands doing the work rather than advising on it.

How long should a consultancy engagement run?

Long enough to see whether the plan worked. Google's own guidance notes some changes take effect within hours while others take several months, so a fixed short engagement should end with a measurement date rather than a verdict.

Can a consultant promise a ranking?

No, and a promise is a reason to remove the firm from the shortlist. Google states that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking. Expect forecasts with stated assumptions, a review date, and an agreed definition of progress instead.

What should I check before the first call?

The firm's own published pages: named team, address, pricing if printed, and case detail that names clients and outcomes. Everything listed in this index is held to that standard, and the same check takes minutes on any shortlist.

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