SEO Strategy Services, Compared on Published Evidence

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How to compare SEO strategy providers

1. Ask what the deliverable physically is. Make the candidate describe the artefact: how many pages, what sections, whether it names specific queries and specific URLs, and whether it includes a sequenced plan with owners. A strategy you cannot hand to a developer and a writer is a document, not a plan.
2. Ask whether execution is included or separate. Some firms sell strategy as a paid entry point to a retainer, others as a standalone product for in-house teams. Both are legitimate, but you should know which you are buying, and whether the fee is credited against later work if you continue.
3. Insist on a query list with reasoning. The core of any real strategy is a set of target queries with volume, difficulty, commercial value and a reason each was chosen or rejected. Ask to see a redacted example from previous work. If none exists, the engagement is likely to produce advice rather than aim.
4. Agree the measurement plan up front. A strategy should name what will be tracked, from which tool, at what baseline, and what result would count as the plan working. Agreeing that before the work starts is the only way to have an honest conversation about it six months later.

What strategy engagements cost and why

Standalone strategy work is usually priced as a project rather than a retainer, running from a few thousand dollars for a small single-market site to well into five figures for a large ecommerce catalogue or a multi-market business. The spread tracks site size, the number of markets and languages, whether competitor research is included, and how much of the work is original keyword research rather than a tool export with commentary.

The most useful question to ask is how many hours go into the query research itself, because that is the part that cannot be automated well and the part that most determines whether the resulting plan aims at anything. A proposal that is mostly audit and mostly automated will be cheap and will tell you things a crawler could have told you. A proposal with real research hours costs more and produces decisions.

What belongs in a real strategy document

Four things, at minimum. A target query set with the commercial reasoning behind each inclusion and exclusion. A site architecture recommendation showing which pages must exist, which should be merged and which should be removed, with URLs named. A technical remediation list ordered by impact rather than by severity label. And a content plan that says who writes what, in what order, against which query.

Google's Search Essentials set out the technical requirements a page must meet to be eligible at all, and its guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content describes what it is trying to reward. Neither is a strategy, but any strategy that contradicts them is going to age badly. A good test of a draft deliverable is whether an in-house team could execute it without further paid consultation. If every section ends in a recommendation to discuss further, the deliverable is a sales document.

Questions people actually ask

Can I buy strategy from one firm and execution from another?

Yes, and it can work well if the strategy is specific enough to hand over. Make the deliverable's independence a stated requirement so it does not assume the author's own tooling or team, and be prepared for the executing agency to want a short review period.

How long does a strategy engagement take?

Typically three to six weeks for a small to mid-sized site, including research, drafting and a presentation. Anything promised in a few days is likely to be a tool export with commentary, and anything running past a couple of months is usually a retainer wearing a project's clothes.

Do I need a new strategy every year?

Rarely a full one. What ages is the query set and the competitive picture, not the architecture. A yearly refresh of targets and priorities is sensible, but repurchasing a full strategy annually usually means the first one was never specific enough to execute.

What if I disagree with the recommendations?

Say so during the engagement, not after. A good consultant will show the evidence behind a call and change it if your commercial knowledge contradicts theirs. Insist that the reasoning for each target query is written down, which makes disagreement productive rather than a matter of opinion.

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