SEO consultant or SEO company: what a one-off consultation should leave you with
What a one-off SEO consultation should leave in writing, free or paid: your searches, the page Google picked, three fixes in order and a date to check.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 3 November 2026 · 7 min read
A one-off SEO consultation should leave you with a short written list, whoever runs it: the searches that matter to your business with their current numbers from your own Search Console, the page Google has picked for each, the first three fixes in order and who should do them, what to leave alone, and a date and a number that will show whether the fixes worked. A consultant and a company can both deliver that. If you leave with a package price and nothing written about your own site, you had a sales call, and a free consultation is often exactly that.
The word consultant covers a lot. To one owner it means a freelancer who advises by the hour; to another, the senior person an agency sends to the first meeting. Google's own page on whether you need an SEO lists a review of your site content or structure among the services SEOs and consultants provide, which is close to what most people mean. For this guide the label matters less than the output. The comparison of agencies, freelancers and in-house hires is in a separate guide; this one is about the session itself and what you take away from it.
Free or paid: what each can honestly deliver
A free consultation is usually a short call, and its limit is preparation. Unless you gave access to your data beforehand, the person can only react to what you tell them and what can be seen from outside the site. That still has value: someone experienced can spot a site Google has not indexed, a profile set up like a shop, or a slow home page, in the time it takes to open them. What a free call cannot do is read your query report, because nobody has opened it.
A paid consultation should run the other way round, with most of the work done before anyone speaks. The person reads Search Console and Analytics, crawls the site, compares the profile with the businesses above it, and arrives with findings. The call is for testing those findings against what only you know: which jobs pay, which customers you would rather not have, what happened in the month the enquiries dropped.
Our own version sits between the two and costs nothing: the free audit reads your Search Console if you share it and comes back in writing, with a quote, within one working day. We do not sell advice by the hour, because advice nobody acts on is worth nothing; the full written audit is our advice-only product, and the SEO audit page describes it.
What to send before any consultation
- Search Console access as a restricted user. Google's Search Console help describes a restricted user as having simple view rights on most data, which is all a consultation needs. You add the person's email under Settings, then Users and permissions; nobody needs your password.
- Analytics access with the Viewer role, which Google describes as able to see settings and data. It is the right level for someone who is advising rather than building.
- The jobs or products you want more of, in order of what each is worth to you. A consultation that does not know this ends up chasing traffic.
- The three businesses you lose work to, by name. The consultant will find the ones Google ranks above you; you know the ones customers mention on the phone.
- The history: when the site was rebuilt or moved, whether the domain changed, who did SEO before and what they did, and the month enquiries changed if they did. A drop is diagnosed by its date, and only you know the dates.
What you should leave with
| What you leave with | What a good one looks like | What a sales call gives you instead |
|---|---|---|
| Your searches, named | Six to ten searches with their current impressions and position from your own Search Console | A list of two hundred keywords, or none at all |
| The page Google picked for each | For each search, the page Google shows and whether it is the page you want | A ranking report with no pages in it |
| The first three fixes, in order | Each with its evidence, who should do it (you, your developer or a specialist) and roughly how long it takes | A package that does everything at once |
| What to leave alone | The pages already earning clicks, named, with the reason not to touch them | A promise to optimise every page |
| A date and a number | What should move in Search Console, and by when, so the advice can be judged | "Results in ninety days" |
| An honest no, where it applies | Ads first, a new site first, or nothing, if the searches do not exist | A retainer, whatever the finding |
The second row is the one owners have usually never seen, and it is quick to check. It happened on this site: for the searches that pair SEO with a town, Google picked our contact page rather than any service page, because the contact page was the only one that named the town. The guide on that problem shows the numbers and the fix. A consultation that skips the Pages tab for your top searches has skipped one of the cheapest findings there is.
Questions worth asking in the session
Google's page on hiring an SEO suggests asking what results the person expects to see and in what timeframe, how they measure success, and whether they will share every change they make and explain the reasoning behind their recommendations. It also says that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Those are the right questions for a company you are about to hire. In a one-off session, ask about your own site:
- If we could do only one thing this month, what would it be, and why that before the others?
- Which of our pages would you leave exactly as they are?
- Which search are we closest to winning, and what is in the way?
- What would make you tell us not to spend money on SEO?
- What will we see in Search Console, and by when, if the first fix works?
The answers should be specific and should come without a pause. An answer that would be equally true of any business tells you the person has not looked at yours.
Signs it was a sales call
- Most of the time went on their tools, their process and their awards rather than your data.
- The follow-up was a proposal with a package and no findings about your site.
- You were asked for passwords instead of being asked to add a user.
- There was a discount for signing that week.
- A ranking was promised. Google's page on hiring an SEO says that if someone guarantees their changes will give you first place, you should find someone else.
When a consultation is enough, and when it is not
A consultation is enough when the findings are few and someone can carry them out: a developer who can fix the indexing fault, an owner who will rewrite three titles and finish the profile. Plenty of small sites need that and nothing monthly. It is not enough when the work is continuous: a page a month from the query data, the profile kept current, the numbers read every month and acted on. That needs someone on the account, consultant or company, and the consultation's written list becomes the first month's plan and the yardstick the later months are judged by.
If you want that list for your own site, the SEO consultant page explains how we work as one named person, and the quote form takes the address and a sentence about the work you want more of. Share Search Console if you can; the answer is better with it.
Questions people ask about this
Is a free SEO consultation worth having?
Yes, if you give access to Search Console beforehand and expect a written follow-up. Without access it can still catch the obvious faults; without anything in writing it was a sales call.
Should I give an SEO consultant my passwords?
No. Search Console and Analytics both let you add a person with view rights under their own Google account, and you can remove them in a minute. If someone needs the website itself, create a separate login you can delete afterwards.
How is a consultation different from an SEO audit?
An audit is a written document that checks each area of the site in turn; a consultation is a conversation that should end in a shorter written list. A good consultation tells you whether a full audit is worth buying.
Do I have to hire the consultant afterwards?
No, and the list should be written so that you, your developer or another company could act on it. Advice that only makes sense if the same person does the work is a proposal.
What if the consultant says SEO is not right for us?
Take it seriously; it is the most useful thing a consultation can say and the one a sales call never does. Ask why: no searches for the service, a site that cannot be edited, or a timescale that needs ads first. Each has a different next step.