What does an SEO consultant do?
An SEO consultant diagnoses, decides and reviews. The diagnosis tells you where your site stands and what is holding it back. The decisions set the order of work: what to fix first, which pages to build, which investments to skip. The reviews make sure the work that follows is done properly, whether by your developer, your marketing team or an outside agency.
What you pay for is judgement, not production hours. That makes consulting a good fit for companies that already have people to do the work but lack someone senior to steer it.
SEO consultant, SEO specialist or SEO agency: which fits you
SEO consultant, SEO expert and SEO specialist are often used as if they meant the same thing. In practice they describe different roles.
| SEO consultant | Hands-on SEO specialist | SEO agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Strategy, priorities, review | Executing specific tasks | Strategy and execution |
| Best when | You have people who can execute | You know what needs doing | You want the work done for you |
| You need in-house | Developer or marketer | Someone to set direction | A contact person |
| Main risk | Advice that nobody implements | Work without a strategy | Senior sales, junior delivery |
When SEO advice pays off most
- Before a redesign or migration. The moment where most rankings are lost, and where an hour of advice can save months. See our website redesign approach.
- When you enter a new market, such as Quebec or the US, and need the structure right before content is written. Our page on international SEO covers that.
- When you have an in-house team that executes well but has no senior SEO lead.
- When your agency's results are unclear and you want an independent view.
- Before a major investment in content, links or a new platform.
Forms of SEO advice at Kaptein Beacon
We work with a limited number of companies at a time and agree a fixed scope for each engagement. SEO consulting takes one of these forms:
Analysis with a plan of action
We score your site on our ten points, from Technical foundation & indexing to AI visibility, and turn the findings into a prioritized plan your team can execute. That is the basis of our SEO audit.
Guidance during a project
For a new website, a migration or an expansion, we are involved at the moments that matter: site structure, redirects, launch and the weeks after.
Ongoing guidance for your team
We steer the SEO strategy, review your team's work and adjust based on the data. We offer this by invitation, after a first project, once we know each other and your site well.
If you would rather have the work done for you, our SEO services cover execution as well.
What a good SEO expert does differently
- Explains the reasoning. Every recommendation comes with a why, so your team learns and can challenge it.
- Says what not to do. Cutting low-value work is often the most valuable advice.
- Measures what matters: enquiries, sales and qualified traffic, not only rankings.
- Makes no guarantees about rankings. Google's own advice on hiring an SEO warns against anyone who does.
- Thinks beyond Google. AI assistants increasingly shape how buyers research, and good advice takes that into account.
Certifications, credentials and industry knowledge
You will see "certified SEO professional" in many profiles. Google does not issue an SEO certification; its certificates cover products such as Google Ads and Analytics. Courses can be useful, but a certificate says little about judgement. Better tests: can the consultant explain their reasoning clearly, do their recommendations follow Google's own documentation, and will they let you check their work?
Industry knowledge matters more. Many searches for an SEO expert in Canada come from dental clinics and law firms, sectors with their own regulators and advertising rules. We have written about both: dental SEO and law firm SEO.
What you need in-house
Consulting works when someone can act on the advice. At minimum that means access to your website's content management system, someone who can make technical changes or a developer you can call on, and a person who owns SEO internally and has time for it. Without those, an agency model where the work is done for you usually gets further.
How a consulting engagement runs, and what drives cost
- Strategy session. A paid 50-minute conversation with the founder about your ambition, your market and whether we fit. It is a conversation, not an audit or a written plan.
- Proposal. If there is a fit, a fixed scope and a fixed price for the chosen form of advice.
- Analysis and plan, then guidance and reviews as agreed.
The cost depends on the size and complexity of your site, the number of markets and languages, and how much guidance your team needs. We work remotely from the Netherlands and schedule calls in your morning, Canadian time.