SEO consultant or SEO company: which to hire.
Hire an SEO consultant when you need advice and someone on your side can make the changes. Hire an SEO company when you want the changes made for you every month: the pages, the code behind them and your Google Business Profile. If nobody on your team edits the website, choose the second.
Google’s own hiring advice speaks of hiring “a company or person” and puts the same questions to both. This guide is written by an SEO company in Ottawa, so check it against the sources at the bottom.
On this page
What an SEO consultant does, and what an SEO company does
Both sell from the same list. Google’s page on hiring an SEO says “Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:”
- Review of your site content or structure
- Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
- Content development
- Management of online business development campaigns
- Keyword research
- SEO training
- Expertise in specific markets and geographies
- Optimizing for generative AI
For a local business, that list lands on three things. The code: hosting, redirects, error pages and scripts. The words: which searches each page answers, and how well. And the map: your Google Business Profile, where the map results come from.
The labels describe who carries the list out. A consultant is often hired for judgement: an audit, a plan, training for your staff, a second opinion before a redesign. What you receive is a recommendation, and somebody still has to make the change. An SEO company is hired to make the changes, month after month, and to report what changed.
The words are used loosely. Some consultants make every change themselves, and some companies pass the work to a subcontractor. Ask rather than assume.
Why who makes the changes matters more than the label
A recommendation changes nothing in Google until it is on the live site. An audit naming twenty fixes is worth the fixes that ship, and a monthly report is worth the work it lists.
Google puts the responsibility on you either way: “Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to ‘help’ you.” It adds that anyone with access to your server “should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.”
The Business Profile is where this bites a service business. A consultant who reviews only the website leaves the map results untouched, and those come from the profile. Whoever you hire, ask who will keep it current each month, and read what Google Business Profile management involves before you decide.
How much an SEO consultant costs, against a monthly plan
We found no published survey of Ottawa SEO rates, so the figures here come from a wider poll. Ahrefs, which sells SEO software, polled 439 SEO providers for a post last updated on 2024-08-15. The post does not name its currency.
- Consultants most often charged $100 to $150 an hour. Agencies and freelancers most often charged $75 to $100.
- In the United States and Canada together, 66.7% charged $75 to $200 an hour.
- Consultancies on a monthly retainer averaged $3,250 a month and agencies $3,209, on Ahrefs’ method of taking the top of each price band.
So a consultant is not the cheap option. By the hour, the consultants in that poll charged more than the agencies did.
Our Hosting + SEO plan is $299 CAD a month, with hosting inside that figure and the SEO portion month-to-month, as our pricing page showed on 2026-11-05. That is about two to three hours at the consultant rate Ahrefs found most often, before any currency conversion. The plan covers on-page and technical SEO, local search and the map pack, Business Profile management, local citations, and a monthly ranking report.
Three hours of a senior consultant can still be the better buy when the question is narrow: a site move, a sudden drop, a second opinion on a quote. Our guide to what SEO costs in Ottawa explains the monthly number line by line.
How to choose between an SEO consultant and an SEO company
Answer these four first.
- Who on your side can change the website? If someone can, a consultant's plan will get carried out. If nobody can, hire someone who makes the changes as well as suggesting them.
- Is this one question, or work that comes back every month? A migration, a redesign or a sudden drop is a project with an end. New pages, the profile, reviews and the monthly report come back every month.
- Who looks after the Business Profile? The map results for a local search come from it, so it needs a named person whichever you choose.
- Do you take work in Gatineau? Ask who writes and checks the French pages. A review of your English pages does not cover them.
For the French side, our guide to SEO for small business covers what Google asks of a French version of a page.
How to check either one before you sign
The same checks apply to a consultant and a company, and Google’s hiring page supplies most of them.
- Ask what their advice rests on. Google suggests asking: “Do they cite official Google documentation as supporting evidence for their recommendations?”
- Walk away from a promised position. In Google’s words, “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
- Refuse any deal that needs a link back to them: “You should never have to link to an SEO.”
- Be wary of a plan nobody will explain. Google says to be careful “if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.”
- Keep the domain, the Business Profile and Search Console in your own name.
Our guide on how to choose an SEO company has the full set of interview questions, with what a good answer sounds like.
Which one Velogics is
We are a company, and a small one. The person on your scoping call is one of the people doing the work, and nothing is passed to a subcontractor. Our longer answer to “agency or freelancer?” is in the FAQ on our Ottawa SEO services page.
If a consultant suits you better, the checks above still apply, and they are worth putting to us too.
To talk it through, phone +1 (613) 383-5521 and our AI receptionist will find a time.
Questions people ask next about SEO consultants.
1What does an SEO consultant do?
An SEO consultant reviews your website and tells you what to change. Google's list of what SEOs, agencies and consultants offer covers a review of the content and structure, technical advice on hosting, redirects, error pages and JavaScript, keyword research, content, training, knowledge of a market, and optimizing for generative AI. Some consultants make the changes themselves; others hand the list to your web developer. Ask which before you sign.
2How much does an SEO service cost?
Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers, on a page last updated 2024-08-15 that names no currency, and put the average hourly rate at $111, with local SEO averaging $1,557 a month. Ours is $299 CAD a month on the Hosting + SEO plan, published on our pricing page, with hosting inside that figure and the SEO portion month-to-month.
3Is an SEO consultant cheaper than an SEO company?
Not by the hour, in the one large poll we found. Ahrefs reported that consultants most often charged $100 to $150 an hour, against $75 to $100 for agencies and freelancers. A consultant can still cost less in total, because you buy hours rather than a month, as long as someone on your side does the work those hours produce.
4Can ChatGPT do SEO instead of a consultant?
It can draft, and it cannot check itself. Google's guidance on generative AI content says these tools help with research and structure, and that “It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing.”
It also warns that generating many pages without adding value for users may break its spam policy on scaled content abuse. Someone who knows your business still reviews every page.
5When is the best time to hire an SEO consultant?
Before a redesign or a new site. Google's hiring page says “a great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign (the earlier, the better), or planning to launch a new site.” The pages are then planned for search from the first draft instead of fixed after launch. If a redesign is coming, our guide to what a website redesign costs covers the other half of the budget.
6Should an SEO consultant have access to my Google accounts?
Only the access the job needs, and never ownership. For an audit, Google's advice is to “only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don't grant them write access).” For ongoing work, add the person as a user under your own account, so removing them is one step when the work ends. The domain, the Business Profile and Search Console stay in your name.
Where this comes from
Every passage was read on its publisher's page on 2026-11-05. Google edits its help pages and Ahrefs updates its post, so the wording and figures can change. Nothing here is drawn from any client's account.
Google Search Central
- Do you need an SEO?
Read 2026-11-05, last updated 2026-06-05. Source of the list of services, hiring “a company or person”, the responsibility and FTP sentences, the redesign sentence, read-only Search Console access for an audit, and the checks on documentation, guaranteed rankings and links.
- Google Search's guidance on using generative AI content on your website
Read 2026-11-05, last updated 2026-10-01. Quoted for “It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content”, and the source of the scaled content abuse warning.
Rates, and our own pricing
- Ahrefs: SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? 439 People Polled
By Joshua Hardwick, updated 2024-08-15 on the page, read 2026-11-05. A poll of 439 SEO providers worldwide. Figures carry “$” and no currency is named. Its monthly averages assume each respondent charges the top of their price band.
- Our pricing page
/pricing, read 2026-11-05: the Hosting + SEO plan at $299 CAD a month, hosting included, “The SEO portion is month-to-month”, and the plan's line items.