When working on client projects, it’s very important to have clear ideas and a methodology for managing SEO consulting that allows us to approach the work with order and confidence.
There are different types of projects, with different needs and requirements, but even so, we can establish a series of steps, or roadmap, to manage our SEO consulting work from the beginning.
1 – Initial Consultation
In most cases, the client identifies a need regarding their project and seeks professionals to address it. This need is usually related, to a greater or lesser extent, to website traffic and conversions.
In the initial consultation, we will listen to the client, review the project, and begin to outline some lines of action to achieve the desired objectives.
This initial audit can be of two types:
One-time service
Start of ongoing service
Sometimes, we may provide a one-time consulting service and end up providing other services, or even an ongoing consulting service.
This point is sensitive. Sometimes, both the initial consulting service and the audit will be part of a medium-term SEO project. In that case, they may not be charged separately, but rather included in the contracted package.
Ideally, the value of both the consulting service and the audit should be clear, and if the SEO work ends there, charge for it.
In any case, this part of management is closely related to what makes us feel most comfortable.
2 – Project Audit
This point is important, as it will lay the groundwork for both the planning of the work to be performed and the agreement with the client, as well as for the subsequent execution of that work.
To conduct a functional audit, it’s a good idea to start by getting a bird’s-eye view of the project and then delve into more specific aspects later.
In an audit, we can differentiate the following steps:
2.1 – Briefing
When we begin working with a client, it’s very useful to have some initial information that allows us to get a sense of the situation and gain some perspective on the type of work we need to tackle. This is the first contact with the client. At this stage, we should obtain information such as:
.The project’s business model, as well as its differentiating factors.
The parts of the website, or URLs that generate the most performance.
We must know if the website has had prior SEO work.
It will be important to know the SEO reports, as well as Web Analytics reports, if available.
The SEO investment made on the website.
We must know the people involved in managing the website, so we know who we need to coordinate with.
It is important to know the importance of SEO in the project.
Finally, we must understand the objectives of the SEO strategy that was developed.
For this step, it can be very useful to send a form to the client so they can provide us with the necessary information.
2.2 – Forecasting
Once we have completed the briefing and have the necessary information, it is necessary to conduct a forecast analysis to align the client’s perspectives with the reality and potential we see in the project.
This involves a visibility and profitability study based on the search volumes for the main keywords. To do this, using the information from the briefing, we will find the following:
Keywords that define the business and their traffic volume.
Users who click on organic results (from Ahrefs). This is important because the different types of results will determine the visibility and interaction of this type of information. Visibility will be a correction percentage that we must include in the study.
Once we have this information, we can estimate traffic by applying the following formula:
Estimated Monthly Traffic = (KW1 x %Visibility) + (KW2 x %Visibility) + (KWN x %Visibility)
Now we must estimate the number of sales. For this, we will base our estimates on traffic obtained and the conversion rate. This percentage varies depending on many factors. As an approximate value, we can use 0.5%.
With this information, we’ll obtain the estimated number of sales. If we calculate it based on the average price of our products, we obtain the estimated revenue via SEO.
3.1 – Website Audit
3.1 – Website Audit
Let’s dive right into the audit. On this topic, there’s an article on this blog about how to perform an SEO audit in 7 steps.
The audit should provide a diagnosis to identify any deficiencies or potential improvements the website has.
The result of the audit will be a document that will include the analysis of crawling, indexing, content, On-Page SEO, popularity, architecture and internal linking, WPO, etc.
This document is extremely valuable, and if our SEO work ends with its delivery, we should consider invoicing the client based on all the contributions it provides.
In this diagnostic document, it may be advisable to include some general recommendations for website improvement, to anticipate where the work would go if the consulting service were to continue.
3 – Competitor Analysis
A very important part of initial studies is the competitor analysis. This phase of the consultancy is usually carried out at the beginning, as it will provide valuable information about the state of the sector and some actions to consider.
3.1 – Identify types of competition
First, it’s important to understand the activities of the different projects that offer services or products related to ours. This is especially true for those with the greatest visibility in the SERPs. Organization types include wholesalers, retailers, B2B, B2C, marketplaces, public and private sectors, local businesses, etc. This will give us an idea of the ecosystem we should operate in.
It’s also very important to know the type of website and the type of URLs these companies have in the top positions of the SERP. This will give us very useful information about the search intent Google identifies for a given keyword.
This isn’t the same as if a search for a keyword we’re interested in shows blog posts, Local Packs, Google Shopping items, or product category pages. This analysis is crucial, as it will inform us about the type of results we should try to position.
3.2 – Off-Page Analysis
Another important aspect related to competitor analysis is analyzing their link profile. Using tools like Ahrefs, we can obtain all of a website’s external links. From this set of links, we can gain useful industry insights, such as:
Porcentaje enlaces Follow / NoFollowFollow/NoFollow link percentage
Tipos de texto anclaAnchor text types
Formato del enlace (texto, imagen…)Link format (text, image, etc.)
Tipo de web de origen (blog, prensa, foro, página…)Type of source website (blog, press, forum, website, etc.)
We should take this information into account when creating our own link profile. Starting by replicating something that already works is usually a good first step in SEO.
Next, we should try to replicate these links, but not all of them. A website is likely to have hundreds or thousands of links, some of them low-quality or even toxic, so we should know how to prioritize those that interest us most.
For this task, we will select a specific number (let’s say 20 per competitor). To select these links, we will evaluate those links that are replicable among the pages with the highest Page Rank, or PA/DA.
4 – SEO Consulting: Types and Services
Once we have assessed the status of the website’s SEO, and studied the sector, the competition, and the efforts we will need to make to improve our positioning, it is essential to establish an action plan so that the needs identified in the audit can be addressed.
At this point, there are two possibilities: ongoing work or one-off services.
4.1 – Performing Ongoing Work
This is the norm, with a minimum period of 6-12 months, which is how long it takes to see results.
Even if it is ongoing work, it is important to break down the services and tasks to be performed. This is especially true because a significant portion of what we bill clients will be for tasks for which we will be intermediaries: link purchasing and possibly content writing.
To establish our consultancy’s SEO Plan, it is necessary to know our available budget and how we will distribute it. In this regard, it is important to consider the following elements:
Gastos necesario para el contenido de la webNecessary expenses for the website content
Inversión estimada en enlaces a partir de los estudios del mercado y la competencia.Estimated investment in links based on market and competitor research.
Honorarios propios. Estos se calcularán a partir de las horas que consideremos necesarias para trabajar el proyecto.Own fees. These will be calculated based on the hours we consider necessary to work on the project.
It is important to note that the hours we will dedicate to a project in the first two months will not be the same as in the following months. The work is usually concentrated at the beginning. However, it is ideal to consider an average number of hours to calculate the consulting price.
For example, for an average project:
- Consulting, €200 / month
- Planning and Monitoring
- Architecture, Technical SEO
- Content, €150 / month
- Link Building, €150 / month
Although there are more elements to consider, these are perhaps the most important when defining a budget.
4.2 – Contracting Specific Services
As a result of the initial consultation and/or audit, or at the client’s own discretion, a series of implementations or services may be provided on a specific basis.
This approach is not typical for projects seeking sustained SEO growth; rather, it is more about addressing specific deficiencies or needs.
Local SEO, which focuses on location and the Google My Business listing, typically works this way. We’ll explore this in more depth in another article.
Regarding the provision of specific services, we can find:
La propia Consultoría SEOSEO Consulting itself
Generación de ContenidosContent Generation
Campañas de LinkBuildingLink Building Campaigns
Mejora de Arquitectura y EnlazadoArchitecture and Link Improvement
SEO TécnicoTechnical SEO
As we mentioned before, when it comes to rates, we must consider both the direct costs of these services (content, links), the time it will take to manage them, and our hourly rate.
If we are commissioned for a Link Building campaign, with an investment of €300, which will take one morning (5 hours), and our hourly rate is €35, then the total cost is: €300 + (€35 x 5) = €475, which we should charge for the campaign.
It is possible that we arrived at this campaign after conducting an Initial Consulting and an Audit. We must include the cost of these services in the amount charged to the client.
5 – Service Provision Contract
This is perhaps one of the most cumbersome parts of consulting work, but it’s important not to overlook it. SEO consulting is work that involves, among others, three sensitive issues:
2 partes que se ven involucradas y tienen que colaborarTwo parties involved and who must collaborate
Una clara orientación a objetivosA clear goal-oriented approach
Un horizonte temporal a medio plazoA medium-term time horizon
These three issues must be clearly clarified, as problems can arise, and it’s good to have a reference to manage potential misunderstandings.
What happens if the client doesn’t provide us with the resources we need in the timeframe we need? What happens if the objectives aren’t met? In SEO, the heaviest workload is at the beginning of projects. What happens if the client no longer wants to continue after three months?
All of these questions must be answered, in some way, in the commercial contract we sign with the client.
6 – Establish Priorities
When conducting the audit, we will identify a series of actions to be taken to improve the website’s SEO ranking. Within these actions, we must establish priorities so that the project begins to improve quickly and effectively. To do this, we will focus on two types of priorities:
Critical priorities from the perspective of project performance
Those that will allow us to obtain results more quickly
The former are usually related to WPO, Architecture, penalties, etc., while the latter are usually related to content or linkbuilding.
7 – Action Tracking and Reporting
It is very important to keep the client informed at all times about the actions taken, as well as the impact observed on the project.
You can even consider including a certain level of detail, so that the work done can be seen at a time when the results may not yet be visible. I am referring to written texts, links obtained, etc.
For this task, we can rely on two types of tools:
Analysis and reporting tools: the most common are Google Analytics and Google Data Studio. In this case, we recommend the latter, as it is very powerful and useful, and allows you to combine data from different sources.
These are essential for project management and can also be used to present the management of these tasks to clients. Asana and Notion are examples of some of these tools.
There is one (that I know of) that includes both features (results and tasks), and I use it and really like it. It’s called SEOCrawl. I recommend you check it out.
8 – Client Communications
It is very important that the client regularly knows the status of the project. To achieve this, we must use different formats available to us:
Regular meetings. Depending on the project and the client, these may be weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. It is important to add that meeting time must be counted as chargeable work time.
Actions Implemented
Results Achieved. In this case, it is recommended to use only key KPIs and monitor the benchmark KPIs we are positioning.
9 – Possibility of Extension
As we mentioned before, SEO consulting is usually goal-oriented. It’s possible that we missed our forecasts, or that the sector turned out to be more competitive than we expected, or some other unforeseen event… In this case, we should consider negotiating an extension with the client that would allow us to continue working on the SEO and get closer to the goals we estimated at the beginning of the consultation.
