The work, not just the planA dedicated account manager$149 a month, no contract

Need an SEO Consultant? Get the Work Done, Not Just the Plan

An SEO consultant studies your site and your market, then tells you what to do: which searches to target, what to fix and what to publish. Someone still has to do that work. SeoVision is the team that does it: every month we research your keywords, publish 30 articles on your site, fix technical problems after your OK and earn backlinks, with a dedicated account manager as your person. It costs $149 a month per site, with no contract.

Published October 31, 2026.

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Definition

What an SEO consultant does

An SEO consultant is a specialist you hire for advice on search. A typical engagement starts with an audit of your site, a look at your competitors and keyword research. It ends with a strategy: the searches to target, the pages to create or improve and the technical problems to fix, in order of priority.

You will also see the job called an SEO service consultant, a web SEO consultant or a Google SEO consultant. An SEO marketing consultant or an internet marketing SEO consultant often adds advice on other channels too. A good SEO strategy consultant is worth hearing, because a clear plan saves months of guessing.

What a consultant usually does not do is the daily work. The articles, the fixes on your site and the outreach for links stay with you, your writers or your developer, unless you pay for extra hours. A typical engagement delivers:

An audit: what stops Google from crawling, reading or trusting your site.
Keyword and competitor research: the searches your buyers use and who wins them today.
A strategy: which pages to create or improve, and in what order.
Recommendations: titles, structure, internal links and schema, written up for your team.
Calls or training: to walk your team through the plan.

Who does the work

Who does the work after the SEO consultant's plan

Most SEO consulting firms and independent SEO consultants sell their time: by the hour, by the project or as a monthly retainer. A freelance SEO consultant is often one senior person. An SEO consultant agency, or an SEO consulting business with a few people, may add writers and a developer, and the price grows with them.

This is the gap many businesses fall into. They hire expert SEO consulting, get a strong plan and then cannot find the hours to carry it out. Six months later the audit is still open, the blog has three new posts and the links never happened.

We built SeoVision for that gap. Software does the daily jobs a consultant would hand back to you, and our team watches every paying project. You still get the research, a plan and a person to ask. The difference is that the work ships on your site every day, which is what managed SEO services should mean.

Compare

SEO consultant vs agency vs a done-for-you team

Three ways to buy SEO help, compared on what you pay and what you get. The consultant and agency prices are market figures, so ask each one you talk to for its own numbers in writing.

	Freelance SEO consultant	SEO agency	SeoVision
How you pay	By the hour or by the project	A monthly retainer, often with a contract	One monthly plan per site
Typical cost	Most common $100 to $150 an hour, projects most often $2,501 to $5,000	About $3,200 a month on average	$149 a month per site
What you get	Advice, an audit and a strategy	A strategy plus the hours in the package	Research, a plan and the work itself
Who does the work	Often you, your writers or your developer	The agency's team	We do, every day
Articles	Rarely included	Depends on the package	30 a month, published for you
Technical fixes	A list of recommendations	Often a report, sometimes fixes	Written on your site after your OK, with Undo
Backlinks	Advice on where to get them	Often extra	90 exchange credits a month, included
AI answers	Sometimes reviewed	Rarely included	70 prompts tracked every week
Your person	The consultant	An account manager or strategist	A dedicated account manager and priority 24/7 support
Calls and meetings	Usually part of the deal	Regular calls, sometimes in person	In writing, no calls in the plan
Contract	Varies	Varies, sometimes a minimum term	None, cancel anytime

Market prices: Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers for the hourly rate, the project fee and the agency average. Every provider differs, so compare written quotes.

What you get

What you get with SeoVision instead of a consultant

Everything a good SEO consultant would put in a strategy, plus the hands to carry it out.

The strategy, from research

A market and competitor study, then keyword research built from your site, your buyers' phrases and the searches your competitors win. From it we pick up to 20 queries your site can reach, show why each was picked and work on them first.

Progress you can check

Every two weeks we check where your site stands for those queries in Google, its AI Overview, AI Mode and ChatGPT. Search Console in your dashboard shows the rest.

30 articles a month

One a day, written to your brand brief with images, schema and internal links, and published on your site or sent as drafts for your review.

Fixes made, not listed

A weekly scan finds technical problems, and each batch of fixes waits for your OK, with a backup first and Undo. On WordPress, Shopify and custom sites connected through our receiver we write the fixes on your site ourselves. On other platforms you get every fix ready to paste, with the exact steps.

Links without outreach

90 credits a month in our backlink exchange, placed on other members' real business sites, in your niche first. See backlink safety.

AI answers measured

Every week we ask 70 questions your buyers ask in the AI assistants, and show who gets named: you, or a competitor.

Your person

How you work with your account manager

There are no calls to book and no hours to count. Every paying project gets a dedicated account manager and priority 24/7 support, and our team checks every paying project each morning. You write to us, and the request lands with our team: Help in your dashboard opens a request form, every request gets a ticket number and a reply, and you can email support at any time.

When your direction changes, such as a new product, a new audience or a competitor to watch, tell us through Request a change. Our team updates your Brand Profile and re-tunes the keyword research, the plan and the prompts that were built on it. A consultant would send you a revised plan. We change the work itself.

You can also connect SeoVision to Claude or ChatGPT through our MCP connection. Ask about your results in plain words, manage your project and send a request to our team from the same chat.

Hiring

How to hire an SEO consultant: a short checklist

If a consultant is the right fit, these five questions separate a good hire from an expensive report. Ask us the same ones.

1
What do I get at the end?
A written strategy, an audit, a number of hours? Get the deliverables and their dates listed before you sign.
2
Who does the work?
If the answer is «your team», check that your team has the hours. A plan nobody carries out changes nothing on your site.
3
What have you shipped?
Ask for pages they wrote or fixed for a similar business, and what changed in that site's Search Console afterwards. A screenshot of one ranking proves little.
4
Where do the links come from?
Real sites with real readers are worth having. Networks and bulk directories put your site at risk.
5
How do I leave?
Check the notice period and who owns the content, the reports and the accounts. You should keep access to your own data at all times.

Red flags

Red flags when you hire an SEO consultant

Walk away, or at least ask harder questions, when you hear any of these.

A guarantee of first-page rankings or a set number of visitors
Secret methods they will not explain
Link packages sold by the hundred
No access to your own Search Console or analytics
A twelve-month contract before you have seen any work
A monthly report full of numbers but no list of what was done

Honest fit

When an SEO consultant is the better hire

We are not the right answer for everyone. A consultant fits better when:

Your team already has writers and developers and only needs direction
You are planning a site migration, a redesign or a move to a new platform
Google has taken a manual action against your site and you need a person on the case
You want your own staff trained in SEO
You want regular calls, or someone in the room with you
Your site is large and complex enough to need one senior person who knows it inside out

Pricing

How much an SEO consultant costs, and what we charge

Freelance SEO consultants most commonly charge $100 to $150 an hour, and a one-off project most often costs $2,501 to $5,000, according to Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers. Agencies average about $3,200 a month. Our plan is $149 a month per site, with the strategy and the work included and no contract. Compare the market in our SEO pricing guide.

All in One

$149a month per site

No contract. 10% off from 2 sites, 15% from 5 and 20% at 20. Pay yearly and save 20%.

Get started

$1 for 3 days, then $149 a month per project. New customers only.

Every site on the plan gets

30 articles a month, researched, written and published on your site
Technical SEO fixes on your site, each batch approved by you and undoable
90 backlink credits a month in our exchange of real business sites
70 AI visibility prompts, tracked every week
5 full SEO audits a month with a priced fix plan
Keyword, market and competitor research done for you
Search Console, Google Analytics and Merchant Center in one dashboard
A dedicated account manager and priority 24/7 support

What we are not

We are not SEO consultants in the usual sense. The plan has no hourly consulting, no paid strategy sessions and no call booking. You work with us in writing, through requests with a ticket number, and the work itself shows in your dashboard.

If you want people on top of the plan, the Human Curated Service adds our editors and SEO specialists, a plan for each month, a report at its end and a person you can talk to, from $5,000 a month. We do not build websites, we have no office to visit, and nobody, including us, can promise a position on Google.

Questions

SEO consultant: frequently asked questions

What does an SEO consultant do?

An SEO consultant audits your site, researches your keywords and competitors and writes a strategy for what to fix and publish. Most leave the work itself to you or your team, unless you pay for extra hours.

What is an SEO service provider?

Anyone you pay to improve how your site shows up in search: a consultant, an agency, a freelancer or a done-for-you service like ours. The real difference is whether they advise or do the work. We do the work: articles published on your site, fixes written into it and links placed for you.

How much does it cost to hire SEO help?

Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers found the most common retainer at $501 to $1,000 a month and the most common freelance rate at $100 to $150 an hour. Agencies average about $3,200 a month. SeoVision is $149 a month per site, with the work included.

What are SEO service charges?

They are what a provider bills for SEO work: an hourly rate, a project fee or a monthly retainer. In Ahrefs' survey about 78% of providers charge a retainer. Ask for the list of work behind any fee. Ours is one plan at $149 a month with research, 30 articles, fixes, links and AI tracking included.

Is $100 an hour good for consulting?

For SEO, $100 an hour sits at the low end of the most common rate, which is $100 to $150 an hour in Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers. Whether it is good value depends on what the hours produce: a plan your team can carry out, or a report that waits.

How much does a digital marketing consultant typically cost?

The surveys we cite cover SEO only. Freelance SEO consultants most commonly charge $100 to $150 an hour, and one-off projects most often cost $2,501 to $5,000, according to Ahrefs. Consultants in other channels also bill by the hour, the project or a retainer, so ask each one for a written quote.

Who is the best SEO specialist?

There is no single best one. The best SEO specialist for you is the one whose work you can check: pages they shipped, fixes they made and results in a site's own Search Console. Be careful with anyone who promises rankings.

Do you offer SEO consulting calls?

Not in the plan. We do not sell hourly consulting or strategy sessions, and you work with us in writing, with a ticket number on every request. The Human Curated Service add-on includes a person you can talk to, from $5,000 a month.

Keep reading

Get the work done, not just the plan.