SEO agency vs SEO consultant
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[00:00:00] Hi, it's Olga Zarr from SEO Slideshow. Today, I want to talk about, the topic a lot of you have been asking me to talk about, and a lot of my existing past clients, this is also something that I usually want to learn. So the topic is, what are the differences between hiring an SEO agency and an SEO consultant?
[00:00:23] So, a bit about my history. So I've been working at SEO agencies for like eight years in total, I think, I work at one of the biggest SEO agencies. I helped a lot of SEO agencies with their processes. I was also like a director of SEO at lawyer, SEO agency. I also have a lot of, colleagues, friends from SEO agencies, so I know firsthand how things work there,
[00:00:50] , last year I went solo, so I became an independent SEO consultant. And my goal is to never become an SEO agency. I don't want to like, have Hundreds of clients. And this is what brings us to the differences between an SEO agency, having SEO agency as your SEO provider versus having an SEO consultant.
[00:01:18] There are pros and cons of each. I'm not saying that having an SEO consultant is definitely better. You should never hire an SEO agency. I've seen tons of people have SEO agencies and have wonderful results. And I've also seen people who hired an SEO consultant and they weren't happy, and of course vice versa.
[00:01:38] So, hiring an SEO agency, some things you need to know. First is that there will probably be a lot of people working on your project, not necessarily, but It is possible and people who work may change depending on like someone leaves, someone comes, depending on how much involvement your project needs. You may have junior or senior SEOs working, it's hard to tell.
[00:02:07] Sometimes you can set it up, establish this with the agency that who is working. Sometimes you, you don't know that. in most cases, there is like the account manager or some, this kind of a middleman, someone who will be like talking to you, who will be providing you with reports, someone to whom you will be sending questions and they will forward them to SEOs.
[00:02:32] This is, this can be an advantage and a disadvantage. Usually this is an disadvantage because you may not know who is working on your site. You may not be able to reach them quickly. So your question may reach them in a week. So you may get a response in two weeks or in a few days. While with having an SEO consultant work directly on your site, usually the response time, the feedback, the communication is, is way better.
[00:03:01] So if communication is something that you very, that you value a lot. This is something to kind of you need to be aware of that. Another crucial difference is maybe with pricing. So again, depends, but with SEO agencies, what I've seen is that they have various plans. They have like small plans.
[00:03:26] So very often you may just pay 500 bucks and have SEO agency. While in SEO consultants, especially those more experienced ones, you usually start with, I don't know, two, three, four, uh, K per month because they're not interested usually in busy work. They just want to like create a strategy, move the needle.
[00:03:52] And they usually don't take a lot of clients like myself. So I need. a specific number of hours per month to be able to move the needle. So I need to create the strategy. I need to execute. I need to monitor. I need to do the changes. Reacts to some things, I need to look at the entire picture.
[00:04:12] I need to do the audit. So this is. Usually like real SEO, real in depth SEO based on a decent strategy takes a lot of time. So sometimes like an audit takes me like 30, 40 hours depending on the site so that I can actually create that audit and make it contain useful information, actionable tips, actionable advice.
[00:04:37] While a poor SEO agency may run automated report with SEMrush with Within a second and send it to you. So With those lower price, packages at SEO agencies, I'm not saying this is the case with every SEO agency, those clients are not really prioritized. Very often a lot of the things that are done for them are heavily automated and they usually send automated reports and the things they do are very fast actually to implement, but they list, they have to list something.
[00:05:14] So they list like updating meta title, checking indexation, checking 404s, doing a crawl, blah, blah, blah. So they can list like. 50 things. But in reality, lots of those things, if not all, can be done automatically. It is just a matter of setting up a site in Ahrefs, whatever, and having automated alerts sent to you so that you, you know, if indexation changes if there are 404s.
[00:05:45] So this, this is basically one time thing. You set it up, I set it up usually at the start of the project and it's kind of runs automatically. And if you need some extra work to be done, usually they will charge you. And the, the worst thing is that you have Let's say 500 bucks package with an SEO agency and you need this, this, this, and that.
[00:06:08] You tell them, I need this done, that done, they say, okay, they do it. And then after a month, they send you 5k invoice. Some of them will tell you right away that this is beyond the scope. This requires extra, extra budget, stuff like that. But, but this is what will usually happen with SEO consultants. ,again, it depends.
[00:06:33] But for example, in my case, I am usually contracted for a given number of hours and I don't fill those hours with some busy work like checking crawls, checking that. Of course, I do that, but this is like the minimal amount. But if on a given month, for example, the client has migration. Then I don't say, okay, so migration is 10k.
[00:06:56] You need to pay extra for me to supervise the migration. No, I do migration as part of my weekly monthly SEO support. I don't do other things I would do. I just focus on migration, let's say for the entire month. And then I do what's most important for the client in a given month. And I don't charge him extra and I get paid for that contracted work.
[00:07:21] So this is a difference. Again, it is up to what you agree upon, but usually this is what I see. And another important difference between an SEO agency and an SEO consultant is the amount of attention you can get. So with SEO agencies, this is not uncommon to see that one SEO specialist has, um, 100s.
[00:07:47] clients to take care of. So the amount of attention they give you is, unless you're paying, I don't know, 50k, is very limited. And they only kind of take a look, react if something is happening. So your site gets the index, then they will They will spend more time and if nothing is happening, they will be doing this busy work while with SEO consultants, the kind of the purpose is to be proactive to execute the strategy that has been laid out to analyze, to tweak it.
[00:08:26] to change if necessary and to be proactive with new ideas. So I have a lot of time, so I can execute my strategy after three weeks or three months. I can say that, okay, those things I have experimented with, those things are done. Now I want to move to something else, but I also want to try. new ideas I have based on the new things I learned in the course, whatever.
[00:08:52] So this is another thing, not saying this is always like that. It is easy to also find SU consultants that don't know what they're doing and to have SU agencies that have excellent, brilliant people who are actually like devoted to making every client successful but is everything in seo it depends Let's talk about another seo agency versus seo consultants Possible difference so we talked about like communication that middleman, someone in between the pricing the amount of attention you can get And this is maybe a little bit overlapping, but the amount of expertise you get.
[00:09:40] You may have SEO agencies, as I said, who hire senior SEOs only. I know there are such agencies that only have senior SEOs that do not, like, hire low wage workers oversee. I'm not saying that workers oversee are like bad, but they may have less experience. So I know a ton of agencies who are registered in the U.
[00:10:04] S. They claim to be like the best. Actually all they do is cut costs and they hire on Fiverr or on whatever very low wage workers. They pay them like $1, $2, $5 per hour, and they actually delegate all the su work to them. And they don't have problems with them working full-time because they basically cost them nothing.
[00:10:31] So they may have even like 20. Those low, low wage workers. And it doesn't matter for them because they cost nothing right so It is important that if you hire an seo agency or an seo consultant You actually pay for the expertise as you experience and you get it I also know seo consultants who like I like to call them bullshit artists So they say I know this I know that I am the best like hire me I I do everything perfectly.
[00:11:06] And when I see some of their like, even, I don't know, social media posts, like small things I share, it is so easy to see that they don't have, they don't know what they're talking about. They jump from one thing to another. And, and they basically just, just want to
[00:11:23] create that hype around them, that buzz, but actually they bring nothing to the table. So one example there was like, co vitals three years ago, core vitals were announced that they're going to become a factor in, I don't know, in, In May it was announced, I don't know, half a year before. And I saw one of such bull bullshit artists right on LinkedIn that, during a core update, I think it was, that, okay, so now there is a core update running and you're losing traffic because your core vitals are not passed, your Cumulative layout shift is broken.
[00:12:03] So content is shifting around. So that's why you're losing traffic. And he wrote that in the middle of a core update, which was like, when I read this, I thought, Jesus, and such people are hired to SEO first. They don't, they totally don't understand what Core Web Vitals are and how severe they are.
[00:12:25] Second, Core Web Vitals hadn't even become a ranking factor then. Even if they did, they, we couldn't really talk about such an impact. Third, a core update was running, so. We know that during the core update everything is like very volatile and core revitals are never, were never part of a core update.
[00:12:47] so this also shows total lack of understanding what a core update is, what core revitals mean. And lack of understanding of the messaging that Google provides about when it becomes a ranking factor and how much of a ranking factor it becomes. And it's really sad to see such people create themselves as like super duper best SEO consultants.
[00:13:13] I'm not saying that I'm the best, that I know everything. I don't. I still make mistakes. But I try to learn from them and I never call myself an SEO expert. Because I don't think if I will ever be one. I am an SEO explorer. I try to learn as much as I can every day. Experiment, help people. If something I'm doing is not working, then I try something different.
[00:13:37] It is my goal to learn a ton about SEO. To read a lot of seo books to read a lot of seo materials to share what I learn And i'm not saying that to promote myself that okay Now you need to hire olga because I am pretty busy right now And I don't think if I even have capacity to for more clients. I'm just saying this to kind of warn you that In such cases, if you have such bullshit artists versus an SEO agency, usually it is better to choose the SEO agency because in SEO agencies, there are at least usually a lot of people.
[00:14:13] So if there is like a huge problem, maybe one person can consult it with a different one. Maybe they have a meeting and brainstorm about your ideas, about your problems together. And definitely something better will come out of it. So , I'm thinking if there is something else to add, like SEO consultant versus SEO agency.
[00:14:37] So usually SEO consultant will work on strategy, less on busy work. I'm not saying SEO agency won't, but more, it is more focused on strategy, high level picture saying what should be done, what shouldn't be done, recommendations. Working directly with you, making sure the communication is smooth. And usually if you want to have such a dedicated person, you will have to pay more for that.
[00:15:04] And it is not uncommon for, for those packages with SEO consultants to cost like 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 grand. depending on the scope and on the experience of the SEO consultants. But I will have an, I have another episode about the pricing. So I hope that helps. if you need help with me, like screening someone, I can help you do that.
[00:15:31] Assuming that I find a bit of time because I'm very, very busy right now. I just wish you, the best of luck when looking for your SEO provider. And I'm definitely not discounting anyone. I like it. either SEO agencies or SEO consultants or SEO freelancers. I know perfect examples of both, but I just want you to be careful.
[00:15:55] There's also a video where I share top red flags when hiring an SEO agency. You may also take a look at that. Okay, so that's all from me. I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions, just type them below. Subscribe, share, give me thumbs up, and if you like my videos, you can just simply engage with them so that you can help my SEO channel grow.
[00:16:20] All I do is I share my knowledge for free and I just want to share with you my 10 plus years of experience. So that's all for now. Thank you and see you in the next video. Bye bye.