What should I look for in an SEO consultant in 2026?

Look for operator-level experience, not just strategist credentials. The SEO landscape shifted meaningfully with AI search — a consultant who hasn't updated their approach since 2022 is behind. Strong candidates have recent experience across B2B, ecommerce, and local SEO, can speak specifically about AI citation optimization, and have case studies with measurable ranking and traffic impact.

How much of a marketing budget should go to SEO?

Most B2B companies should allocate 10-25% of marketing budget to SEO, including content production and technical work. Ecommerce brands often run higher — 25-40% — because organic is their most scalable channel. The right number depends on your category, competition, and whether you're building or maintaining.

Is SEO still worth it with AI search taking over?

Yes, more than ever. AI search engines pull from the same underlying content ecosystem, so strong SEO fundamentals (authoritative content, structured data, technical health) make you more likely to be cited by AI too. Companies that abandon SEO in response to AI search will watch their visibility collapse across both channels simultaneously.

How do I measure if my SEO is working?

Rankings on target keywords, organic sessions from target keywords, qualified leads and pipeline from organic, and increasingly, AI search citations. Most teams only track rankings and traffic and miss the pipeline attribution. The numbers that matter are the ones tied to revenue.

Should I hire an SEO consultant or do it in-house?

In-house SEO makes sense when you have enough volume and consistency of work to justify a full-time role — typically $2M+ ARR with a real content and technical backlog. Below that threshold, a fractional SEO consultant usually produces better results because the work isn't consistent enough to keep a full-time person productive. The wrong answer is a junior in-house hire trying to manage technical SEO without the experience to make the calls.

Does the SEO consultant need to know my industry?

Industry familiarity accelerates onboarding but isn't a requirement. What matters more is whether the consultant can identify what's technically wrong with your site, understand your buyer's search behavior, and build content that converts — not just ranks. A great operator in a new vertical is more valuable than an average one in a familiar one.

SEO Consulting in 2026: 80% of What I Do and Why

SEO is 80% of my client work. It has been for most of 20 years.

I don't just consult on SEO. I do the work, in the weeds, until it performs. Technical audits, content strategy, schema markup, site architecture, local SEO, AI search optimization — the stuff that actually moves rankings and the stuff that actually converts the traffic once it lands.

If you're looking for an SEO consultant who shows up for a discovery call, sends a PDF, and disappears — that's not me. If you're looking for someone who'll find what's broken, fix it, and stay on it until the numbers move — we should talk.

What I do, across every SEO engagement

Some things are universal. Every SEO engagement I run touches:

Technical SEO. Crawl hygiene, site architecture, schema markup, Core Web Vitals, mobile performance, indexation logic. The foundation. Nothing else matters if this is broken.
Content strategy. Pillar content, cluster mapping, search intent analysis, content gaps, conversion alignment. Not blog posts for the sake of blog posts — content built to rank and to move buyers.
On-page optimization. Title tags, meta descriptions, internal linking, heading structure, structured data. The work that gets skipped because it isn't sexy, but compounds over time.
Link acquisition. Earned, editorial, and strategic. No link schemes. No spammy outreach. Links that actually signal authority to Google.
AI SEO integration. Optimizing for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and the other AI search engines that increasingly act as the first search most buyers run. More on that in AI SEO and GEO.

Three specializations — pick yours

SEO for B2B isn't SEO for ecommerce isn't SEO for medical practices. The audiences, the SERPs, and the playbooks are genuinely different. Most consultants pretend they're the same. I don't.

The B2B SEO Playbook — SaaS, fintech, legal, records management, and other B2B companies with long sales cycles.
Ecommerce SEO: Why Your Catalog Isn't the Problem — D2C brands, Shopify and WooCommerce stores, mid-market ecommerce.
Medical SEO: Being Found by Patients in Your Area — dental and medical practices, aesthetic medicine, specialty providers.

How the engagements work

Three ways to engage, regardless of specialization:

Audit. A full SEO audit of your site, your top competitors, and your category. Three weeks, fixed price. You'll get a specific, prioritized plan of what to fix and why it matters.

Project. Scoped implementation — content buildout, technical cleanup, local SEO overhaul, schema installation, whatever your audit surfaces as priority one.

Fractional. Ongoing embedded Head of SEO. Ten to twenty hours a week for three to twelve months. Hands-on work, weekly collaboration with your team, and monthly reporting on the numbers that actually matter.

Who this is for

Companies where SEO is a real strategic channel, not a checkbox:

B2B companies with a content and demand gen function that needs organic lift
D2C and ecommerce brands where paid is getting expensive and organic needs to grow
Medical practices and groups doing patient acquisition at scale
Agencies that need a senior SEO operator on harder client work they can't staff internally

If your search volume is measured in hundreds of visitors a year and SEO isn't going to move the business, skip this and invest elsewhere. If you've got a full in-house SEO team and you're ranking exactly where you want to rank, you probably don't need me. Everywhere in between — I can help.

Want to know where you actually stand? Tell me the keyword you want to rank for and don't. I'll look at your site, the SERP, and your top three competitors, and tell you what's between you and the top of page one.