SEO consultant
SEO consulting that comes with the code, not just the strategy.
Most SEO advice fails at the implementation step. Someone produces a document, it gets handed to a developer who has other priorities, and eighteen months later half of it still is not live. We close that gap because the people who diagnose the problem are the people who write the fix.
Why people call
The usual reasons someone gets in touch.
Rankings dropped and nobody knows why
Something changed and the obvious explanations do not fit. This is a diagnosis problem, not a strategy problem. Several causes usually look plausible at once, and the job is working out which one it actually is before anyone writes code or buys links.
You have an audit nobody implemented
A previous agency produced a document. Some of it was useful, some of it was a crawler export, and none of it is live. We can work through it, tell you which findings actually matter, and then build the ones that do.
Traffic is flat despite doing everything right
Content is going out, links are coming in, and nothing moves. Often the pages are competing with each other, or a structural rule is quietly holding a whole section back. On one site a canonical was pointing at a redirect and no amount of content would have fixed it.
You need someone to tell you the truth
You suspect you are being sold work you do not need. A second opinion from someone with no incentive to keep a retainer running is worth the hour it takes.
The work
What the consulting actually involves.
Weighted towards technical and architectural work, because that is where we are genuinely better than average and where most sites are actually stuck.
Competitive research
Who is ranking, and more usefully, why. Sometimes the answer is that they have less authority than you and simply built the page better, which changes the plan completely and saves the link budget.
Keyword and intent mapping
Which pages should target what, and where commercial and informational intent need splitting apart so your own pages stop competing. Cannibalisation is quietly one of the most common causes of a page that will not move.
Architecture
Hub and spoke structures, internal linking that is chosen rather than templated, and a governance rule so the tidy structure does not decay back into a link dump six months later.
Technical diagnosis
Indexation, canonicals, crawl control, structured data, rendering and speed. Detail on the technical SEO services page.
Backlinks and off page
Link quality review and disavow decisions, plus link building through digital PR and manual outreach where authority is genuinely the constraint. We have identified paid link and PBN networks approaching clients and advised declining them, which is usually the more valuable outcome.
Copy that reads human
Rewriting thin or machine spun pages into something a person would actually finish reading. This matters more since the helpful content updates, and it is measurable rather than a matter of taste.
Evidence
One example of what a diagnosis is worth.
The situation
A DR 72 domain was ranking for zero keywords on a page that should have been straightforward. The working assumption, as it usually is, was that the page needed more links.
Before agreeing to that we looked at who was actually ranking. The page one competitors were sitting at DR 16 to 32, far below the client's own domain. That single check changed the entire plan, because it proved authority was not the constraint. A link building campaign would have been expensive and would not have worked.
The real causes were on the page and in the structure around it. A canonical was pointing at a redirect. Two pages were competing for the same intent. The copy was machine spun. And a 25 link block was spreading equity across everything indiscriminately.
The fix was a hub and spoke rebuild with commercial and informational intent split apart, the canonical corrected, the copy rewritten by a human, and the link block cut to five chosen links. We also introduced an internal linking rule with a live ledger so the templated footprint could not creep back in after we left.
That is what consulting is for. Not producing a longer task list, but working out which task is the one that matters.
Working together
Three ways this usually runs.
A second opinion
A few hours
You have a proposal, an audit or a plan and you want someone independent to tell you whether it holds up. Cheap, fast, and occasionally saves a lot of money.
A defined project
Scoped
Fix a specific problem and leave. An architecture rebuild, a schema consolidation, a migration. Scope and cost agreed in writing before anything starts.
Ongoing ownership
Monthly
For sites where things keep moving and you want one accountable team on the technical side. A set number of hours against a shared roadmap.
Consulting and strategy is £90 to £110 an hour, or £95 blended where the work mixes strategy and development. Minimum engagement is four hours. Full detail on the rates page.
FAQ
Questions clients actually ask
What is the difference between an SEO consultant and an agency?
The label matters less than who actually does the work. In a lot of setups the person who diagnoses the problem is not the person who writes the fix, and that handover is where most SEO quietly dies.
Here, strategy and code sit on the same team. You deal with the people doing the work, which is what most people mean when they say they want a consultant rather than an account manager.
Do you guarantee first page rankings?
No, and be careful with anyone who does. Nobody controls Google's index. What we can commit to is that we will tell you honestly whether a target is realistic before you spend money on it, and that every change we make gets checked with before and after evidence.
On one project the useful finding was that a page did not need links at all. The competitors ranking above it had much lower authority, so the money would have been wasted on the wrong thing entirely.
Do you do link building?
Yes. Digital PR and manual outreach, earned placements and data led campaigns, with DR growth as the outcome of links people chose to give you rather than links bought. We also audit backlink profiles, assess link quality and make disavow calls.
What we do not do is buy links, run PBNs or touch link farms. We have identified and declined paid link and PBN networks on behalf of clients, and we would do the same for you.
We will also tell you when links are not the problem. On one project the pages ranking above the client had far lower authority, so an outreach campaign would have been money spent on the wrong constraint.
How much SEO consulting do I actually need?
Often less than you think. A lot of sites have one or two structural problems holding everything back, and once those are fixed the site does not need a permanent consultant.
We would rather do six weeks of useful work and step back than sell you a retainer you do not need. If ongoing ownership genuinely helps, which it usually does on sites that keep changing, we will explain why.
What do you need from me to get started?
The URL and a description of the symptom. That is enough for a first look. After that, read access to Search Console and analytics, and eventually admin access if you want us implementing rather than advising.
We will tell you exactly what we need and why before asking, and credentials go through a password manager rather than email.
Do you work with clients outside the UK?
Yes. The work is remote either way. We keep UK hours, so if you are more than a few hours off that we will need to be deliberate about when we talk, but the actual work is unaffected.
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Want a second opinion?
Tell us what you are seeing and what you have been told. We will give you an honest read on whether it holds up, and whether you need us at all.