Your SEO Expert is in San Francisco and You’re Not - Should You Work with Them Remotely?

Yes, don’t limit your pool of talent to just the specialists in your area. The expert may not be able to travel to your office, but outside of training, that should not limit or lower their performance and quality of work.

The truth is, some locations just don’t lend themselves to producing experienced SEO consultants. Bigger cities tend to have more competition and more people. This means the top SEO consultants in these areas can’t fake it till they make it.

Working remotely with an elite SEO specialist from a big city (like San Francisco, Oakland or NYC) is a much better alternative to settling for whoever can make it to your office.

All site updates are done over the web, and all SEO tools are online. Working remotely is more than OK when it comes to search marketing. 

How to Hire a SEO Consultant the RIGHT Way

You're probably thinking, "Email them, get on the phone and agree on a price." Yes, that's how we hire everybody. But with a SEO consultant you should think about the following. Consider these questions to make sure you get the RIGHT specialist:

Questions for you:

• Is the SEO help you need more around the design, development and technical aspects of your site? This includes URLs, indexing issues and filters if you're an ecommerce site.
• Do you need help with your blog? For companies that do SEO, the blog should be a huge driver of web traffic from Google.
• Do you need the SEO consultant to do the work themselves, or simply advise?
• Do you need someone who is on-call, or available for work every day?
• Will you be giving the SEO expert access to the backend of your website? This is where they could make substantial changes, but potentially do some damage if they're not careful.
• And finally, have you done any SEO work on your website in the past, or will you be starting from scratch?

You should know the answers to all of these BEFORE you discuss a contact or hire your SEO expert.

There are also questions that you should ask the consultant, via phone or email.

• How many years of experience do they have? The more the better
• What industries have the worked in? Familiarity with the industry should be considered a bonus, as they probably know what the competition is up to. But it should not be a requirement for your hiring decision.
• Are they more comfortable creating or evaluating SEO content vs improving the technical aspects of a site?
• Do they have case studies they can show you? This is a must. All marketing can be measured and the consultant should have a successful track record
• How many hours do they have available to work on your project? Hopefully they can meet your needs
• Would there be a scenario where they had to leave the project before it was done? Some SEOs will just go to the highest bidder, regardless of where they are with a current client
• Do they have the ability to work in-person or remotely?
• Do they feel comfortable training your content or development teams? This is an essential part of consulting, being able to relay knowledge and expertise to those that need it

Finally, evaluate their communication ability, both in email and on the phone. Being a specialist means you have to make the complicated simple. This means they should be strong communicators.

How Much Does Expert SEO Consulting Cost?

This is a lot like the question, how much does it cost to build a swimming pool? It depends on the size, location, materials you want, design etc. 

No one can give you an exact price until all the details of your project or scope of work are ironed out. Even the most simple pricing model - hourly - doesn’t mean you can estimate the number of hours. 

So like other forms of business services, a price range should be suitable until you can put everything down on paper. 

I break down different SEO pricing models below. But let me say this - if you need a SEO person to come in and produce blogs and web pages, do not pay for monthly services that are less than $750. 

Why that number? Because it’s hard for me to see how you can produce enough SEO content on that budget to move the needle. Remember, SEO is about content, content, content. You need blogs and web pages. Writing costs a good amount of money. 

If you’re looking for a combination of content, technical SEO consulting and dev work, you’re probably going to pay thousands per month. Agencies are the most expensive place to retain SEO services. They can charge $10,000 a month to very large companies. But they usually bring a breadth of experience and specialists - you’re getting a team when you get an agency. On the downside, they have more overhead.

In general you should expect to pay $1500-$4000 per month for really good SEO work.

SEO Pricing Models

Hourly, fixed monthly cost or performance based. These are your typical seo pricing models, whether it be with a Bay Area consultant or agency. 

If you go the performance based route, you could be shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t put a ceiling on things. Have a hard cap.  On average, SEO and email marketing return the highest ROI of any digital marketing activity. Sometimes I wish I had done performance based. I might be retired by now.

SEO Retainer Services

If you’re hiring a specialist, you might be able to retain them as needed on an hourly basis. There’s no issue here - you pay for what you get. 

If you’ve retained a SEO agency or are paying them a monthly fee for services, please do the following. I have seen people squander tens of thousands of dollars going this route with agencies:

• Ensure you have weekly communication
• Ask for analytics in every meeting or ask for consistent reporting
• Review where the content they produce is currently ranking - this way you can see if they’re moving the needle with the blogs they make
• Make sure you know how many leads or sales SEO has generated. If your agency can’t tell you this, you’ve hired the wrong agency

Lastly, make sure that you have a person in the meeting on YOUR TEAM that knows digital marketing very well. SEO can be complex to people outside the field, and you need someone who can put things in layman’s terms + know when the agency is bullshitting you.

I offer every company that is using an agency for SEO to show me the proposal they signed and the pricing. I can review it for free and let you know if you’re getting a good deal.

SEO Package Prices

This might be the worst way to go for two reasons. 1) the only people I see doing this are agencies or small shops. They tend to have a lot of clients and not a lot of time. This cookie cutter package stuff is how they simplify things. Most people who sign up for it also like it because it’s simple.

2) the other reason these packages suck is they do not allow for the flexibility needed to seize opportunity. If all you’re buying is 5 site updates a month and 3 blog posts, how can you take advantage of changes in searcher behavior? You can’t because you’re stuck.

If new keywords are discovered that - at the moment - are very easy to rank for and highly converting, how can you get the blogs you need to have your site on page 1 of Google for them? You can’t.

Also, if things are not going well - you’re not hitting your numbers - cookie cutter SEO packages don’t allow the specialist or agency to “step it up.”

Sometimes you fall behind as a marketer, and the only way you’re going to help the client reach their growth goals is to crank out more work. Cookie cutter services have you locked in, which is why you shouldn’t agree to this type of work. 

What Do SEO Consultants Charge Per Hour? 

The ranges I’ve seen go from $50 to $250 (yes, $250) per hour. It’s almost like hiring a lawyer. According to ahrefs, the most popular pricing tier is $100-$150 per hour. They also say that 88% over SEO experts charge $150 or less, so the $250 number is a big outlier.