SEO consultancy: what it includes, how to choose it and what it really costs

The owner of a window and door manufacturer receives three quotes for the SEO of his website. The first costs 290 euros a month and promises “page one for 30 keywords within 90 days”. The second costs 1,200 euros a month and talks about an “integrated strategy”, without saying what happens in the first three months. The third asks for 2,500 euros as a one-off for an audit and then proposes a monthly fee to be agreed. Three offers with the same name, SEO consultancy, describing three different jobs. Comparing them on price is impossible until you understand what’s inside.

The short answer: complete SEO consultancy covers six activities, namely a technical audit, keyword research by intent, a content plan, technical fixes, links and mentions, and reports that connect rankings and traffic to leads and sales. In 2026 it also includes visibility in the answers given by artificial intelligence, such as AI Overviews and ChatGPT. You choose a consultant by looking at their method and transparency, not their promises: nobody can guarantee the top spot on Google. Prices vary a great deal, but a quote can only be read if it says which of these activities are included and how often.

This article is for people who have to choose. If you are still deciding between organic search and advertising, start with the difference between SEO and SEM. If you already have a website that doesn’t appear where it should, the 24 reasons why a page doesn’t rank are a good check to run before calling anyone.

The prices in this article refer to the Italian market, where we work.

What is SEO consultancy?

SEO consultancy is the work of a specialist who analyses a website, decides which searches are worth targeting and recommends, or carries out, the changes needed to make it appear in the results of Google and other search engines. SEO stands for search engine optimisation.

The word “consultancy” causes some confusion, because it covers two different models:

• Advisory consultancy. The specialist analyses, writes the recommendations and explains them. The changes are made by your team or your developer. It costs less, but it only works if someone in the company has the time and skills to apply the recommendations.
• Hands-on consultancy. The specialist, or the agency, also does the work: writes the content, fixes the site, looks for links. It costs more, but there’s less risk of the audit ending up in a drawer.

Google itself, on its page Do you need an SEO?, describes the role broadly: reviewing content and structure, technical advice on hosting, redirects and JavaScript, content creation, keyword research, training, expertise in specific markets. The list now also includes optimisation for generative AI.

What does complete SEO consultancy include?

There are six items, plus one that has become part of the everyday work over the past two years. Not all of them are needed by everyone at the same time, but a quote that ignores three or four of them without explaining why describes a partial job.

Activity	What it produces	Typical frequency	Question to ask
Technical audit	A list of problems in order of impact	At the start, then periodic checks	“Which problems do we fix first, and why?”
Keyword research	A map of searches divided by intent	At the start, updated every quarter	“Which pages come out of this research?”
Content plan	A schedule of new pages and pages to update	Ongoing	“Who writes, and who do they talk to in the company?”
Technical fixes	Fixes to speed, indexing, structure, structured data	Ongoing, in blocks	“Who actually works on the site?”
Links and mentions	Citations from authoritative sites in the industry	Ongoing	“Where do the links come from and how do you get them?”
Reports	Trends in traffic, rankings, leads	Monthly	“Will you walk me through it?”
Visibility in AI answers	Citable pages, measured presence in answers	Ongoing	“How do you measure whether we get cited?”

Technical audit

This is the check of the site before any other work: indexed and non-indexed pages, errors, redirects, speed, mobile version, internal linking structure, structured data. A good audit isn’t a list of 300 warnings exported from a tool. It’s a short list, in order of impact, saying who needs to do what. Often two or three problems emerge that on their own are holding everything else back, such as an entire section accidentally excluded from indexing.

Keyword research by intent

Keywords aren’t chosen on volume alone. What matters is the intent of the searcher: people researching, people comparing and people ready to buy want different pages. We covered this in our article on search intent. The useful output of this phase is a map that links each group of searches to a page, either existing or to be created.

Content plan

The plan grows out of the map: service pages, categories, product pages, guides, articles. The decisive question is who writes them. Effective SEO copy comes from a conversation with the people in the company who know the product. Google says so explicitly in its guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content: first-hand experience and expertise count for more than quantity.

Technical fixes

This is where you find out whether the consultancy is advisory or hands-on. Correcting a canonical tag, sorting out redirects after a redesign, improving Core Web Vitals, adding structured data: somebody has to actually do it. If the consultant doesn’t have access to the site, the quote must say who will take care of it and how quickly.

Links and mentions

Links from other websites remain a signal of trust, but how you get them makes all the difference. Buying links or swapping them systematically falls under the link schemes prohibited by Google’s spam policies. Serious work looks more like press relations: original data, contributions to trade publications, associations, trade fairs. It’s the slow part, which is why it’s rarely what gets sold. We go into detail in our article on digital PR for AI search.

Reports

A useful report answers three questions: what we did, what changed, what we do next. Rankings on their own say little. You need organic traffic by groups of pages, the leads and sales that come from that traffic, and an interpretation of the Google Search Console data. If the report arrives as a thirty-page PDF with nobody to explain it, in practice nobody reads it.

Why is visibility in AI answers now part of SEO consultancy?

Because some searches now end inside a generated answer, before anyone clicks. It happens in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, in ChatGPT, in Perplexity. Only a few sources appear in those answers, and the work of becoming one of them is called GEO, generative engine optimisation. We explained it in our guide to GEO.

For a company choosing a consultant, one thing matters: GEO isn’t a separate service with rules of its own. Google says so in its guide to AI features in Search: to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode you don’t need special optimisation or AI-specific files or markup, just the same SEO fundamentals, meaning crawlable pages, internal links, clear text content and structured data consistent with the visible text. The same guide explains that traffic from these features is included in Search Console reports, under the “Web” search type.

In practice, SEO consultancy in 2026 should include:

• pages that answer the main question straight away, with everything else in support;
• clear information about who the company is, who is writing and why they are credible;
• content with data, examples and first-hand experience, the kind models tend to cite;
• a measure of your presence in AI answers for the questions that matter in your industry.

Be wary of anyone selling GEO as a separate package, with “magic” files or markup supposedly guaranteeing citation. The practical checklist is in our article on SEO for AI search.

Freelance consultant, agency or in-house: which is best?

It depends on three factors: how much hands-on work is needed, how many different skills your website calls for and how much time someone in the company can give it. None of the three options is better in absolute terms.

	Freelance consultant	Agency	In-house
Strength	Direct relationship, lower costs, often highly specialised	Several skills together: technical, content, development, PR, data	Knows the product and processes, always available
Limitation	Just one person: time and skills run out	Risk of hand-offs and changing contacts	Fixed cost, hard to find all the skills in one person
When it makes sense	Small sites, advisory consultancy, an in-house team that does the work	Medium and large sites, e-commerce, ongoing hands-on work	High content volumes, SEO central to revenue
What to check	Who carries out the technical work and the content	Who you actually talk to every month	Training and tools available

There’s also a hybrid option, very common among SMEs: an in-house person who coordinates and writes, and a consultant or agency who sets the strategy, runs the audits and handles technical work and links. It works when responsibilities are written down: who decides priorities, who publishes, who checks.

One detail matters more than the label: who you talk to. In agencies it sometimes happens that one person makes the sale and another does the work, someone the client never meets. Ask who looks after the project day to day and whether you can talk to them before signing.

What questions should you ask before choosing an SEO consultant?

Google itself suggests interviewing candidates and proposes a list of questions on the page Do you need an SEO?: examples of previous work, compliance with the guidelines, expected results and timescales, experience in the industry and the geographical market, how they communicate. We add the ones that, in our experience, separate a serious quote from a generic one.

1. What will you do in the first three months, week by week? A vague answer (“we’ll optimise the site”) is a weak signal.
2. How do you measure success? If the answer only talks about rankings, ask how you get from there to leads and sales.
3. Who carries out the technical work and who writes the content? It should be written in the quote.
4. Where do the links come from? A clear answer names publications, associations, original content. An evasive answer is a warning sign.
5. Who keeps the accounts and content if we stop working together? Search Console, Analytics, tools and copy must remain in the company’s name.
6. How do you handle visibility in AI answers? It should be part of the method, not an extra.
7. When would you advise us against SEO? People who do good work can tell you when it isn’t worth it: a site that will be rebuilt in a few months, a product nobody searches for, revenue that’s needed within the quarter.

The consultant should ask you questions too: what makes your company unique, who your competitors are, how customers find you today, which products have the best margins. If the quote arrives before these questions, it was written without knowing you.

What are the red flags in an SEO offer?

The first is a ranking guarantee. Google puts it plainly: nobody can guarantee the top position in the results, and anyone who promises a particular ranking isn’t trustworthy. The other signs are just as recognisable.

Promises of page one or specific positions. Rankings also depend on competitors and on Google’s updates. You can set goals and priorities, not guarantees.

Fixed-price link packages. “50 backlinks a month” is almost always a form of paid links, which the spam policies prohibit. The risk is a drop in visibility that then has to be recovered.

Special relationships with Google. Nobody has a fast lane in the organic results. Paid ads are something else and are kept separate from organic search.

Unsolicited emails promising to “fix your SEO”. Google explicitly advises treating them with suspicion.

Reports showing only rankings for keywords chosen by the consultant. It’s easy to climb for searches nobody makes. The keywords to monitor are agreed together, starting from the ones that bring in customers.

Reluctance to explain the method. If you can’t understand what will be done and why, the problem isn’t your technical knowledge.

Mass-generated content without review. Artificial intelligence is a useful tool, but publishing hundreds of generated pages to capture searches, with no added value, is a practice Google treats as spam.

How much does SEO consultancy cost in Italy?

There’s no national price list, and we haven’t found any recent, independent Italian surveys on prices. The most widely cited structured data is an Ahrefs survey of 439 SEO service providers, updated in August 2024 and referring mainly to the international market, in dollars. It’s useful for understanding proportions, not for setting a price in Italy:

• the average monthly retainer is around 2,900 dollars, with agencies at around 3,200 and freelancers at around 1,350;
• the most common monthly bracket is between 501 and 1,000 dollars, and around two providers in three charge less than 2,000;
• the average hourly rate is around 111 dollars, with almost half of providers between 75 and 200;
• local SEO costs on average about half as much as SEO with broader goals.

To get your bearings on the Italian market, the table below gives indicative ranges, not a price list: they help you tell whether a quote is out of proportion, one way or the other. They are not Digital Runner’s prices.

Item	Indicative range (excluding VAT)	What it depends on
Hourly or daily consultancy	From around 50 to 150 euros an hour	Experience, specialisation, city
One-off technical audit	From a few hundred euros for a small site to several thousand for e-commerce and large sites	Number of pages, technical complexity, depth of the recommendations
Keyword research and content plan	From a few hundred to a few thousand euros	Number of products and services, languages, markets
Ongoing monthly work	From a few hundred euros to several thousand a month	How much content, how much technical work, whether links and digital PR are included

Even more than the number, what matters is what’s included. Two retainers of 1,000 euros a month can buy very different things: one includes four pieces of content written after an interview, technical work and a reporting call; the other an automated report and a few tweaks to meta tags.

How to compare two quotes

A made-up example, purely for illustration. Quote A costs 600 euros a month and includes an automated report, optimisation of 5 existing pages and “link building”. Quote B costs 1,400 euros a month and includes an initial audit, two new pieces of content a month written after an interview, up to 8 hours of technical work, a monthly call and digital PR activity with the publications named one by one.

To compare them, turn them into quantities: how many new pages, how many updated pages, how many technical hours, which links and from where, how much of a person’s time each month. Often the cheaper quote turns out to be more expensive per unit of real work, or it includes risky activities such as packaged links.

Why prices vary so much

There are four main variables: the size of the site (a 20-page brochure site and an e-commerce site with 5,000 products are different jobs), the competition for the searches that matter, the amount of content to be produced, and whether the consultancy is advisory or hands-on. Languages and markets come on top: international SEO multiplies research, content and technical checks.

How long does it take to see results from SEO consultancy?

Months, not weeks. In its SEO starter guide, Google writes that some changes take effect within hours while others can take several months. In our experience, the typical sequence is this:

Period	What happens	What to measure
Months 1-2	Audit, research, first technical fixes	Indexed pages, errors resolved
Months 2-4	First content and rewritten pages	Impressions in Search Console, first rankings for less competitive searches
Months 4-9	Content and links build up	Organic clicks, leads from the pages worked on
After 9-12 months	Cumulative effect	Leads and sales from organic search, share of the main searches

Timescales shorten when the site already has authority and obvious technical problems to fix. They lengthen in highly competitive industries or with new sites. That’s why it’s useful to set intermediate indicators at the start, such as impressions and average positions for the pages worked on, rather than waiting a year to find out whether the work is paying off.

Mistakes to avoid

Choosing on the monthly price. Compare the amounts of real work: content, technical hours, links, people’s time. The fee on its own tells you nothing.

Accepting ranking guarantees. Nobody can guarantee the top position. Anyone who does is selling something else, or using risky practices.

Leaving the accounts with the supplier. Search Console, Google Analytics, tools and content must be in the company’s name, with the consultant as a user.

Buying the audit and leaving it in a drawer. An audit with nobody to act on it is just a cost. Before signing, decide who will apply the recommendations.

Measuring rankings only. Rankings are a means. The goals are qualified visits, leads and sales.

Treating GEO as a separate service. Visibility in AI answers rests on the same foundations as SEO. If a quote sells it separately with promises of citation, ask what’s different about the work.

Checklist before signing

• The quote lists audit, keywords, content, technical work, links, reports and AI visibility, or explains why something is missing.
• It states who does what: consultant, in-house team, developer.
• There are measurable intermediate goals for the first 3-6 months.
• The sources of links are described and there are no fixed-number packages.
• The accounts stay with the company.
• There’s a named contact you talk to every month.
• The report connects organic traffic to leads and sales.

Want to know what kind of SEO consultancy your website needs?

We start from Search Console and your competitors: we look at how people find you today, which problems are holding the site back and which searches are worth the work. If SEO isn’t the priority, we’ll tell you. If it is, we organise the work in periodic packages covering technical work, content, digital PR and visibility in AI answers: you can see how we work on our SEO and GEO service page.

You can book a call with Federico or write to us via the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between an SEO consultant and an SEO agency?

A freelance consultant works alone, usually with a direct relationship and lower costs, and suits small sites or advisory consultancy. An agency brings together several skills, such as technical work, content, development and digital PR, and is better suited when ongoing hands-on work is needed. Either way, what matters is knowing who looks after the project day to day.

How much does an SEO audit cost?

It depends on the size and complexity of the site. In Italy, for a small site prices start at a few hundred euros, while for an e-commerce site or a site with thousands of pages they reach several thousand. More than the price, what matters is that the audit sets out priorities in order of impact and who needs to apply them.

Can SEO consultancy guarantee page one on Google?

No. Google says so in its guide for people choosing an SEO: nobody can guarantee the top position. A serious consultant sets goals, priorities and indicators to measure, not guaranteed rankings.

How long does SEO consultancy last?

An audit with recommendations is completed in a few weeks. Ongoing work makes sense over at least 6-12 months, because content and links produce effects that build up over time. It’s worth setting intermediate indicators so you can check progress in the first few months.

Does SEO consultancy also cover ChatGPT and AI Overviews?

It should. Visibility in AI answers rests on the same foundations as SEO: clear, crawlable pages, content based on first-hand experience, information about who the company is, mentions from authoritative sources. Ask the consultant how they measure your presence in answers for the questions in your industry.

Can I do SEO myself, without a consultant?

Yes, especially on a small site with someone in the company who has time to learn. Google’s starter guide is a good place to begin. A consultant becomes useful when technical problems exceed in-house skills or when competition for the searches is high.