The SEO work that does not fit a package

Why this page exists

My two packaged services answer most requests, and there are deliberately few of them. The 90 day Organic Visibility Diagnostic when the question is about visibility, measurable conversions with GA4 and GTM when it is about whether the numbers can be trusted.

But requests regularly arrive that fit neither. Someone already knows what is blocking them and wants an answer on that one point. A team wants to learn rather than delegate. A redesign is coming and nobody knows where to start.

This page lists that work, with its real scope and a straight list of what I do not do.

What I do

Targeted audits

A targeted audit answers a question you have already identified. It does not sweep the whole site, it digs into one point.

• Internal linking audit. Which pages receive no links, which ones hoard them, and in what order to fix it. On a site that already has content, this is almost always the highest return available.
• Cannibalisation audit. Two pages targeting the same query split the clicks instead of adding them up. The detection work is done by crossing queries and pages in Search Console, and I set out the method in an article on SEO cannibalisation.
• Technical audit before a redesign. What must be kept, what must be redirected, and what must absolutely not be carried into the new version. A redesign is where most visibility is lost, and almost always by omission.
• Measurement audit. Do your conversions actually report? I test each one in real conditions rather than reading a configuration. The cookie side runs on my own Cookie Audit extension, which timestamps whatever is placed before consent.

Systems

This is the part I enjoy most, and the part that leaves the most behind. An audit goes stale, a system keeps working once I am gone.

• A documented measurement plan. Which conversions matter, how they are named, who checks them and how often. One page, not ten. The consent side often runs on my free Clear Cookie plugin when the site is on WordPress.
• Editorial structure. The topic architecture, the pillar pages that carry authority, and the linking rules that make every new piece strengthen the earlier ones instead of sitting beside them.
• Reusable page templates. A template that already carries what matters, so quality no longer depends on how alert whoever publishes happens to be that day.
• A monitoring dashboard. The few indicators worth looking at each month, and above all the ones to ignore.

Ongoing advice

A regular call, over an agreed period, to make decisions rather than produce.

The most common format is monthly: we look at what moved, we pick the next priority, and I answer the questions that came up in between. It suits organisations with someone in house who can execute, but who lack an outside view to settle the arbitrations.

It is not a block of hours. If a month calls for nothing, we do not meet and I do not invoice.

Coaching and skills transfer

Training someone in your team costs less, over time, than keeping me. I say so plainly because it is true, and because the engagements where a team learns are the only ones whose effect lasts.

• Working sessions on your own site. No textbook cases: we open your Search Console, your pages, your numbers.
• Getting to grips with measurement. Google Tag Manager, GA4, reading the reports. The page on understanding Google Tag Manager gives a sense of the level of detail.
• Content review before publication. You write, I read with the eyes of both the engine and the reader, and I return a list of corrections with the reason behind each.

What I do not do, and why

This list matters as much as the previous one. It saves you asking for something I will decline, and it tells you what I am accountable for.

I do not buy links. Buying links goes against Google’s published rules on link spam, and the risk lands on the client’s site, not the supplier’s. I build authority another way: internal linking, content worth citing, real relationships.

I do not write your content. I build the strategy, the page plans, the briefs and the linking. The writing stays with you, because your subject matter expertise will always produce a better text than mine, and because a fully outsourced site eventually shows it, to readers as much as to search engines.

I do not promise rankings. Nobody controls Google’s results. What I can commit to is a scope of work, a deadline and a set of deliverables.

I do not work on open ended hourly retainers. A written scope protects both sides, and I have watched too many engagements drift for want of that limit at the start.

How it works

One. You describe your situation, in writing or in a thirty minute call. Free, with no obligation to continue.

Two. I tell you plainly whether your need belongs to one of the two packaged services, to something on this page, or to somebody other than me. The third case does happen, and it is far better that it happens at this point.

Three. If we continue, I send a written scope with a firm price and a deadline. Neither moves afterwards.

Four. We work. You get what was promised, plus a handover that lets you carry on without me.

A note on prices

You will not find a rate on this page, and that is deliberate.

The two packaged services carry a published price because their scope is the same from one client to the next. That is not the case here: a linking audit on a forty page site and on a four thousand page site take neither the same time nor carry the same value. Quoting a starting figure I would then have to revise upwards would waste everybody’s time.

What I do commit to: a firm price before we start, and no change to it afterwards.