What does an SEO consultant actually do all week?
I am one, so this is written from the inside. An SEO consultant is paid to work out why a website is not bringing in customers from search, decide what to change, and either make the changes or get them made. Here is what that looks like week by week, what you should receive for your money, and how to tell a good one from a good talker.
By Muhammad Zohaib Ameer, SEO specialist · Updated November 14, 2026 · 9 min read- What: diagnose, plan, fix, measure. Everything else is a version of those four.
- Deliverables: an audit and plan, the changes themselves, links, content briefs and a monthly report in plain English.
- Difference: a consultant is one accountable person. An agency is a team. In-house is an employee. Each fits a different business.
- Cost: mine is $499 for an audit, then $799 or $1,999 a month. Others charge more or less. Compare deliverables, not titles.
Google Search Console
Google Analytics 4
Semrush
Ahrefs
Screaming FrogWhat does an SEO consultant do?
An SEO consultant finds out why a website does not get enough customers from search, plans the fixes in order of payoff, and carries them out or directs the people who do. In practice that means reading your Search Console and analytics, crawling the site, studying the competitors who outrank you, fixing technical problems, rewriting and building pages, earning links, and reporting what changed in numbers you can check. Some consultants only advise. I do the work as well, which is the version this guide describes.
What I am doing while you run your business.
| Day | What I am doing | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Search Console and analytics for every client. Which pages gained or lost clicks, which searches moved, anything that looks broken. | Problems get caught in days, not at the end of the quarter. |
| Tuesday | Hands-on fixes: titles, internal links, schema, speed items, Google Business Profile updates, redirects from last week's findings. | This is the work that moves rankings. Reports do not. |
| Wednesday | Content: briefs for new pages, edits to drafts, rewrites of pages that are close to page one. | Pages written to a brief rank. Pages written to fill a calendar do not. |
| Thursday | Links: outreach emails, checking placements that went live, reviewing sites before I pitch them, chasing editors. | Links take weeks of follow-up. Someone has to do the chasing. |
| Friday | Competitor checks, rank tracking review, recording short video updates, planning next week. | You find out what happened and why, in a form you can watch in five minutes. |
A real pattern, simplified. Urgent things, such as a site drop or a migration date, take over whatever day they land on.
The rhythm behind the week.
Read last month's numbers against the plan. Decide what gets the hours this month: usually the two or three items with the biggest likely payoff. Send the report with a short video walk-through.
Build and fix. New or rewritten pages go live, technical items get closed, the profile gets its updates. Outreach for links starts, because links take the longest to land.
Check what week 2 changed. Pages indexed? Any errors introduced? Follow up on outreach. Brief the next round of content so writing never waits on me.
Competitor review and rank check. Log every change made this month with a date. Draft next month's priorities and flag anything that needs the owner's decision.
One consultant has a fixed number of hours. That is why I take on a few clients at a time, and why volume work, such as 50 pages a month, belongs with a team.
Deliverables, and when they should arrive.
| Deliverable | When | What it should contain | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit and plan | First two to three weeks | What is wrong, in order of effect, with the fix for each item and who does it | A tool export with no priorities |
| Keyword and page map | Month 1 | Which search each page targets, and which pages are missing | A list of 500 keywords with no page next to them |
| Technical fixes | From month 1, ongoing | Changes made, where, and the before and after | Vague lines such as optimised the site |
| Pages and content | Monthly | Briefs, drafts you approve, live URLs | Articles you never saw before they went up |
| Links | Monthly | Every live URL, the site it is on, and the page it points to | A count of links with no list |
| Report | Monthly | Calls, leads or sales from organic search, rankings that matter, what was done, what is next | Traffic charts and a score out of 100 |
Three ways to buy the same work, and who each one suits.
| Consultant | Agency | In-house | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | The person you hired | A team, often with juniors doing the hands-on work | Your employee |
| Knows your site in detail | Yes, by necessity | Depends on turnover inside the team | Yes, over time |
| Capacity | Limited. A few clients at a time | High. Many pages, markets or locations at once | One person's hours, plus tools |
| Cost | Usually a monthly fee or a project price | Usually a larger retainer with a contract term | Salary, tools and training |
| Best for | Small and mid-sized businesses that want one accountable person | Large volumes of work, many locations or languages | Companies where SEO is a full-time job every day |
| Risk | They get busy or ill. Ask about cover | You may rarely speak to the people doing the work | Hard to hire well without SEO knowledge yourself |
I am a consultant in this table. If your situation is in the agency or in-house column, I will tell you so on the first call.
Three names, one question to ask.
People search for what is an SEO expert, what does an SEO consultant do, and what are SEO consulting services as if they were three different things. They are not. An expert knows the subject. A consultant sells that knowledge. Consulting services are what the consultant delivers: audits, strategy, hands-on work, links, content and reporting.
The question that matters is whether the person will do the work or only advise on it. Advice-only consulting suits a company with its own developers and writers who just need direction. Done-for-you consulting suits an owner who wants it handled. I do the second, and my SEO management page lists exactly what that covers each month.
Titles also hide experience levels. Someone can call themselves a consultant after one course. Ask what they did last month for a business like yours, and ask to see the live pages and the links. That tells you more than any certificate, including mine.
How to judge an SEO consultant in ten ticks.
Use this on anyone you are thinking of hiring, including me.
Before you hire
In the first month
Tick what is true. Five or fewer out of ten is a reason to ask harder questions.
Have me check it →SEO consultant FAQ.
What is the difference between an SEO expert and an SEO consultant?
What are SEO consulting services?
How much does an SEO consultant cost?
Do I need an SEO consultant or an agency?
How long before a consultant should show results?
I do the work myselfOne specialist. No hand-offs.
I'm Muhammad Zohaib Ameer. I have worked in SEO since 2022 for businesses in the US, UK, Canada and the UAE. I do the diagnosing, the fixing and the reporting myself, and I keep my client list short so that stays true.
“The best question to ask a consultant is not what will you do. It is what did you do last Tuesday, and for whom. The answer tells you whether they do the work or sell it.”
Muhammad Zohaib Ameer · OvaVerseSee what I would do in your first month.
Send your website. Within 48 hours you get a short recorded video audit showing the three things I would fix first, why, and what you should expect to see change.
- Personal to your site, never shared
- No sales call needed
- Reply within 24 hours
The photo on this page is a custom AI-generated illustration, not a real client or event. Diagrams and sample numbers are labelled illustrations; case study screenshots are real.