SEO consultant FAQs

Are you an agency or one person?

One person. I am an independent SEO and digital marketing consultant based in London, and the person you speak to on the first call is the person who plans and runs your SEO or ads work. There is no account manager passing messages along and no junior member of staff picking up your account after the sale.

The trade-off is capacity. One person can only take on so much at once, so I agree the scope before anything starts rather than promising to do everything for everyone.

How do we get started?

Send me a message with your website address, what you sell and what you would like to change. I look at the site and the search results you compete in before we speak, so the first conversation is about your business rather than marketing in general. If working together makes sense, I send a written proposal with the scope, the order I would tackle things in and the fee. Nothing begins until you have agreed to it.

Do I have to sign up for a long contract?

One-off audits and fixed projects end when the agreed work is delivered, so there is nothing to cancel. For monthly work, any minimum term and the notice period are written into the proposal before you sign, so you know exactly how to end the arrangement before it begins. My terms of engagement cover payment, notice and who owns the work.

How quickly do you reply?

Enquiries come straight to me rather than to a sales team, so the person who replies is the person who would do the work. Once we work together, the proposal sets out how we keep in touch and how often you hear from me, agreed before work starts.

Can I hire you for a single project?

Yes. A lot of useful work has a clear finish line: an audit, a site move, a rebuild of a Google Ads account or a tracking set-up. Ongoing monthly work suits businesses that want someone running SEO or ads continuously, but it is not the only option. Which arrangement fits is agreed with you before any work starts.

Do you only work with businesses in London?

No. I am based in London and work with businesses anywhere in the UK. Most of the work happens remotely, over video calls, email and shared documents, so where you are makes little difference to how it runs.

Who owns the accounts and the work?

You do. Your Google Ads account, Meta ad account, Google Analytics and Search Console should all sit under your business, with me added as a user. That way you can see everything I do and remove my access whenever you choose. Please never send me passwords; adding me as a user from your own account is safer and leaves a record.

What does an SEO consultant actually do?

Most of the work is finding what stops the right pages appearing in Google, then fixing it in a sensible order. That covers technical problems that keep pages out of the index, pages that do not match what people search for, thin or competing content, weak local signals and too few links from relevant sites. The SEO services I offer are split by problem, so you can see which one fits where your site is today.

How long does SEO take to make a difference?

Fixes to technical faults can show within weeks once Google recrawls the pages. Ranking for competitive terms usually takes months, and it depends on how strong the sites above you are, how much your site has to fix and how much new content the work needs. I explain the variables in more detail in how long SEO takes and what decides it. Anyone who gives you a fixed date for page one is guessing.

Do you offer one-off SEO audits?

Yes. A full SEO audit goes through the site page by page and ends with a written action plan, ranked by how much each problem is likely to be holding you back, that your developer or in-house team can follow. If you want to see how I work before paying for anything, the free SEO audit is a shorter first look at the problems most likely to be costing you visibility.

Can you help my business show up in Google Maps?

Yes, and for businesses that serve one town or a few boroughs it is often the most valuable part of SEO. Showing in the map results depends on a complete and accurate Google Business Profile, consistent name, address and phone details across the web, a steady flow of genuine reviews and pages on your own site that make your area clear. My local SEO work covers all of it, including businesses that travel to customers and do not want their home address on show.

Can you recover traffic lost after a redesign or a Google update?

Often, but the cause decides the fix. Traffic lost after a redesign usually comes down to changed URLs without redirects, pages that were merged or dropped, or a stray instruction telling Google not to index the new site. Those are found by comparing the old site with the new one, and they can often be put right. A fall after a Google core update is different: there is no single fault to repair, and recovery comes from making the pages more useful than the ones that overtook them. If you are planning a rebuild, SEO support for a website migration is far cheaper than recovering afterwards.

Do you write the content?

I plan it. Content SEO decides which pages a site needs, which search each one should answer and how they link together, and I write the briefs for them. How the pages themselves get written is agreed separately, and every page is checked against its brief before it goes live.

What budget do I need for Google Ads?

There is no minimum that suits every business, so I work backwards from your numbers. Start with what an enquiry or sale is worth to you, estimate what a click costs in your market and how many clicks it takes to produce one enquiry, and the daily budget follows from that. My page of UK cost-per-click and cost-per-lead benchmarks gives you sourced starting points. If the budget only buys a handful of clicks a day, I will tell you before you spend it, because the account will not gather enough data to improve.

How quickly will Google Ads bring in enquiries?

Ads can appear on the day a campaign goes live, which is the main advantage over SEO. The first few weeks are still a learning period: search terms that waste money get excluded, bids settle and the ads and landing page get tested against each other. Expect the cost per enquiry to move around before it steadies.

Can you fix my existing account instead of starting again?

Usually, yes. An existing account holds history that is worth keeping, including which searches have already produced enquiries. I start by checking the conversion tracking, because an account optimising towards the wrong action cannot be fixed by changing bids. Then I clean up wasted search terms, structure and ads. A rebuild only makes sense when the account is so tangled that untangling it would cost more. Ongoing Google Ads management picks up from there.

Should I start with SEO or Google Ads?

It depends on how soon you need enquiries and how long you can wait for a return. Google Ads produces traffic while you pay for it; SEO builds slowly but keeps working without a cost per click. Many businesses run a modest search campaign first, because the search terms report shows which phrases produce real enquiries, and that evidence then guides which pages the SEO work should build.

Is boosting a post the same as running Facebook ads?

Not quite. A boost is a simplified ad made from a post you have already published, with limited choices about what you are paying for and who sees it. Ads built in Ads Manager let you choose the outcome you want, such as enquiries or purchases, test several versions side by side, and measure them against conversions on your site. Boosting is fine for getting a post seen; for Facebook and Instagram ads that produce enquiries or sales, Ads Manager is the right tool.

Do Facebook ads still work after Apple’s privacy changes?

Yes, but measurement needs more care than it used to. Since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency in 2021, many iPhone users opt out of tracking, so the Meta Pixel on its own misses a share of conversions. Sending events from your website’s server as well, through Meta’s Conversions API, fills part of that gap. The ads still reach people; the reporting simply has to be set up properly before the numbers can be trusted.

How much should I spend on Facebook and Instagram ads?

Enough to test properly. Meta’s delivery system needs a steady number of results each week to learn who responds, and a budget spread across too many campaigns never gives it that. I would rather run one well-funded campaign than five starved ones. As with Google, the right figure comes from what a customer is worth to you, and I will give you a recommendation in the proposal rather than a number pulled from the air.

Can you make the videos and images for the ads?

Who produces the images and videos is agreed before the campaign starts. Whoever makes them, I write the brief: the message, the format for each placement and the variations worth testing, because creative usually decides whether Meta ads succeed or fail.

What do your services cost?

Every quote is written for the job, in GBP, after a free audit or a first call, because the cost depends on the size of the site or account and what needs doing. Whatever the work, you see the fee in writing in the proposal before anything starts, along with what it covers and what it does not.

Do you take a cut of my ad spend?

Your ad spend is paid by you, straight to Google or Meta, from an account in your name. It is separate from my fee, so you can see exactly what went to the platform and what went to me. How my fee is worked out is written into the proposal before you sign.

How do I pay?

Fees are in GBP. When you are invoiced and when payment is due are agreed in writing before work starts, and payment terms are set out in the proposal and my terms of engagement.