Short answer: Hire on evidence, not promises. Shortlist people who can show you real Search Console results, interview them with specific questions, start with a small paid job, give them user access rather than ownership, and sign month to month. Walk away from anyone who guarantees rankings or sells links.
Google’s own page on hiring an SEO opens by warning you that hiring one can “save you time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation”. Both halves are true, and which one you get depends mostly on how carefully you hire.
This is the vetting process from start to finish: whether you need anyone at all, what it costs, what to ask, what access to hand over, and the signs that should end the conversation.
How do you hire an SEO consultant?
Hiring an SEO consultant takes six steps: decide whether you need one, write down the problem, shortlist on evidence, interview with specific questions, start with a small paid job, then sign month to month with user access only.
Decide whether you need one
Small sites with a clear offer can often do the basics themselves.
Write the problem down in one sentence
"Traffic halved after the redesign" or "we rank for nothing that sells" gets you a specific proposal. "We need SEO" gets you a package.
Shortlist on evidence
Search Console screenshots with date ranges, case studies with real numbers, and clients you can contact. Ignore rankings for terms nobody searches.
Interview two or three people
Use the questions further down. Listen for whether they ask about your business before they pitch you anything.
Start with a small paid job
An audit or a single fix shows you how they think, how they communicate and whether they finish things, before you commit monthly money.
Sign month to month, with user access
A notice period instead of a lock-in, and access that you can remove in a minute.
The first paid job is the step that saves the most money. A consultant who can’t deliver a clear, prioritised audit on time won’t deliver a retainer on time either, and you’ve found that out for a few hundred pounds instead of a year of invoices. Here’s what an SEO audit should cost, and what should be in one.
Before you sign
0/ 10
That is the whole list. Anything still unticked is your next job.
Do you need an SEO consultant at all?
Often, you don’t. Google’s own advice is that a small local business “can probably do much of the work yourself”, starting with its free starter guide. Hiring pays off when the problem is technical, the site is large, you sell in several countries, or you’re about to redesign or launch a site.
The self-serve route is real. Google’s SEO starter guide covers titles, descriptions, site structure and content well, and my free SEO checkers will show you missing titles, noindexed pages and broken sitemaps in a couple of minutes. If your site has twenty pages, a clear offer and no traffic problems you can’t explain, start there.
Pay for help when the work outruns what you can learn quickly:
- Something broke. Traffic dropped after a redesign, a migration or a Google update, and you don’t know why.
- You’re about to redesign or launch. Google calls this “a great time to hire”, because fixing a site after launch costs more than building it right.
- The site is big. Hundreds of product or service pages, filters, duplicate URLs and crawl problems that a checklist won’t catch.
- You sell across borders. Several countries or languages bring hreflang, country targeting and duplicate content problems.
- You haven’t got the hours. Content that ranks takes research and writing time most owners don’t have.
If none of those apply, spend the money on your product or your ads and come back to SEO later.
SEO consultant, freelancer or agency: which should you hire?
Hire a consultant or freelancer when you want one experienced person doing the work and talking to you directly. Hire an agency when you need several specialists at once, or cover when one person is off. In Ahrefs’ survey, agencies and consultants averaged about $3,200 a month and freelancers about $1,350.
The labels overlap more than the pricing suggests. “Consultant” and “freelancer” often describe the same person, depending on whether a client wants advice or the work done. What actually changes is who does the work and how many people you’re paying for.
Who does the work
With one consultant, the person you talk to is the person doing the work
Consultant or freelancer
- You
- The consultantResearch, fixes, writing and reports
Agency
- You
- Account managerYour contact
- StrategistPlans the work
- SpecialistsWriters, developers, link builders
In short: Neither is better in general. The wrong choice is paying agency rates for work a junior does, or hiring one freelancer to cover five specialisms.
Ask any agency who will do the work day to day, and ask to speak to them before you sign. If the answer is vague, you’ve learned what you needed to.
How much does it cost to hire an SEO consultant?
Most SEO consultants charge $100 to $150 an hour or a monthly retainer, and the most common consultant retainer in Ahrefs’ 439-person survey was $2,501 to $5,000 a month. Marketplace freelancers start lower: Upwork puts SEO experts at $15 to $35 an hour. My retainers start at £999 ($1,299) a month.
Ahrefs survey of 439 SEO providers (updated August 2024). Upwork's hiring page, checked 30 September 2026.
Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers, and its averages are best read as a ceiling rather than a midpoint. Ahrefs worked them out by assuming everyone charged the top of their price band, so a consultant in the “$2,501 to $5,000” band counts as $5,000. The most common bands are the more reliable figures. The Upwork figure comes from Upwork’s own hiring page and covers everyone on the platform, from beginners up.
The spread comes down to three things: experience (in the same survey, SEOs in business 5 to 10 years averaged more than double the monthly rate of those with two years or less), whether the work is advice or implementation, and how many pages you need written. Here’s what SEO costs, in more detail, including what each price band buys.
Monthly retainers
Freelancers charge less than half the average agency or consultancy retainer
For reference, my full audit is £599 ($799) for the report, or £899 ($1,199) with the fixes done, and retainers start at £999 ($1,299) a month. Custom quotes are available, because most jobs don’t fit a package neatly.
What questions should you ask an SEO consultant?
Ask to see results in Search Console, who will do the work, what they’d do in the first month, how they measure success, and how you leave. Google’s own list adds whether they follow Google Search Essentials and what experience they have in your industry and country.
The answer matters less than how specific it is. A good consultant answers with examples and numbers. A bad one answers with reassurance.
| Question | A good answer | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| Can you show me results in Search Console? | A screenshot with clicks and a date range, and what they did to cause it | Only rankings, only impressions, or “that’s confidential” for every client |
| Who will do the work? | Their own name, or named people you can speak to | “Our team” and nobody you can meet |
| What would you do in the first month? | Specific checks on your site, in order | A package that’s the same for everyone |
| How do you measure success? | Clicks, enquiries or sales from search | Rankings for terms you didn’t choose |
| Do you follow Google Search Essentials? | Yes, and they can explain what that rules out | They don’t know what it is |
| What results do you expect, and when? | A range, with the reasoning and what could slow it | A guaranteed position or a date |
| What’s your experience in my industry and country? | Examples, or an honest “none, but here’s what’s similar” | Invented experience |
| How do I leave? | A notice period and a handover | A 12-month minimum |
Also watch what they ask you. Google’s advice is to check whether the SEO “is interested in you and your business”: your competitors, how customers find you, what makes you different. Someone who pitches before asking a single question is selling a product, not solving your problem.
What are the red flags when hiring an SEO?
The biggest red flags are guaranteed rankings, offers to buy links, cold emails promising page one, secrecy about methods, and contracts that lock you in for a year. Google warns about the first four directly, and says you’re responsible for what anyone you hire does to your site.
That last point is the one people miss. In Google’s words, “you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire”. If a consultant builds spam links to your site and Google demotes it, the penalty lands on your domain, not theirs.
- Guaranteed rankings. “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google,” says Google, and it warns about anyone claiming a “special relationship” with Google or a “priority submit”.
- Link packages. “50 high-DR backlinks a month” is buying links, which is exactly what Google’s link spam policy describes.
- Cold emails. Google says to be wary of SEOs “that email you out of the blue”, and gets the same spam itself.
- Secrecy. If they won’t say what they’ll change on your site, don’t give them access to it.
- Reports that lead with impressions. Impressions are the easiest line to make go up. Clicks and enquiries are harder to fake.
- Lock-in contracts. Twelve months with no exit tells you how long they think you’d stay if you could leave.
- They want to own your accounts. Search Console, Analytics, the domain and the website belong to you.
How do you check an SEO consultant’s results are real?
Ask for a Search Console screenshot of clicks, not impressions, with the date range visible and the period before the work started. Real results show a before and after. Screenshots of rankings, traffic tools or cropped charts without dates prove very little.
Search Console is Google’s own data, so it’s the hardest source to dress up. Three checks catch most padded case studies:
- Clicks or impressions? Impressions count every time a page appears in results, even on page five. Clicks are people arriving.
- Is the “before” visible? A rising line means nothing if it was already rising before they started.
- Brand or not? Traffic from people searching the company’s own name usually comes from its marketing, not its SEO.
Here’s what that looks like with real data, from the London surveying practice case study. The grey months are before the work started, and the flat line is the point: it shows the growth came after, not before.
Search Console, monthly clicks
A real result shows the flat line before the work, then the change
BeforeDuring / after
What access should you give an SEO consultant?
Give an SEO consultant user access and keep ownership yourself. In Search Console, add them as a full or restricted user, never an owner. In Google Analytics, a Viewer or Editor role is enough. For an audit, Google advises read-only Search Console access.
Owners in Search Console can add and remove other users, which means an owner can remove you. Search Console’s user roles give a full user view rights to all the data and some actions, and a restricted user view rights to most of it. For an audit, Google’s hiring page is specific: “only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don’t grant them write access)”.
| Account | Give them | Never give them |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console | Restricted user for an audit, full user for ongoing work | Owner |
| Google Analytics | Viewer to read, Editor if they need to set up tracking | Administrator |
| Website / CMS | Their own login, with a role that fits the job | Your login |
| Domain registrar and hosting | Nothing, unless a migration needs it, then temporary access | The account itself |
In Google Analytics roles, Administrator is the only role that can manage users, so there’s no reason for a consultant to have it. When the work ends, removing a user takes a minute. If they owned the account, it takes a support ticket and a lot of patience.
What should an SEO contract include?
An SEO contract should state the monthly deliverables, what’s reported and how often, the notice period, who owns the content and work, and what happens to access when it ends. Ask for month to month with a notice period. A twelve-month minimum mostly protects the seller.
Check for five things before you sign:
- Deliverables. What gets done each month: fixes, pages written, pages improved. “Ongoing optimisation” isn’t a deliverable.
- Reporting. What’s measured, how often, and in whose account. You should be able to see the same numbers yourself.
- Notice period. Thirty days is what I’d expect. Anything with a minimum term should explain what you’re getting for it.
- Ownership. Content, research and changes made to your site are yours when you’ve paid for them.
- Exit. Access is removed, anything in progress is handed over, and nothing on your site is switched off.
For comparison, my terms are month to month with 30 days’ notice, and I keep working through the notice period.
Where to go from here
Run the checklist above on everyone you speak to, and keep a copy of the questions table for the calls.
If you want the whole thing handled, that’s a monthly SEO retainer. If you’d rather start with a question, send me a message.
Common questions
Is SEO dead now with AI?
No. Google's guidance on AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond the normal ones for appearing in search, so the work that gets a page found in search is the work that gets it quoted in AI answers. What has changed is that some clicks now end on Google's page instead of yours, which makes clicks and enquiries a more honest measure than impressions.
Can ChatGPT do my SEO?
It can write a first draft of a title or explain what a canonical tag is. It can't see your Search Console data, check what Google has actually indexed, or tell which of forty problems is costing you money. Use it like a fast intern: useful for drafts, dangerous as the decision-maker.
Do I need a local SEO consultant?
Only if you want to meet in person. SEO is done in Search Console, a CMS and a spreadsheet, none of which care where the consultant sits. What matters is experience with your market: Google suggests asking about experience in your country or city, and with international sites if you sell across borders.
What does an SEO consultant actually do?
Finds out why a site isn't getting found or clicked, then fixes it or tells you exactly how. In practice that's reading Search Console, fixing technical problems like indexing and redirects, researching what customers search for, and writing or improving the pages that answer it. A good one also tells you when SEO isn't the answer.