A consultant gives you one experienced person for strategy and direction, usually with your team doing the execution. An agency supplies a team that can strategise, write, build and report. Neither is better in general. The decision turns on how much hands-on work you need and how much you can manage yourself.
Need help with SEO?
Comppound runs SEO and AI search for SaaS companies. We plan what to publish, produce it with AI, and every page passes automated checks, and a person reviews samples and anything high-risk.
- Published to your site and tracked in Search Console
- One person answers for your account
- Plans from $400 a month, terms from 3 months
When a consultant fits
A consultant suits teams that already have writers and developers and need direction, an audit or a second opinion. You get senior attention and lower overhead, but capacity is limited to one person.
When an agency fits
An agency suits teams that want the work done end to end. A team can cover content, technical fixes and reporting together, at a higher price and with the risk that senior attention thins out. Ask who does the work day to day.
Questions to ask either one
- Who will actually do the work on my account?
- How will you measure results beyond traffic?
- What do you need from my team, and how often?
- What happens to the work if we stop?
Common mistakes
Choosing on price alone
The cheapest option often leaves you managing the work yourself.
Accepting guarantees of rankings
No one controls Google. Be wary of firm promises.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Many companies start with an audit and plan from a consultant and then bring in more capacity as the programme grows.
Keep reading
- SEO Retainer: A recurring monthly fee paid to an agency or consultant for ongoing SEO work, usually for a defined scope over a minimum term.
- SEO Audit: An SEO audit is a structured review of a site's crawling, indexing, content and links that ends in a prioritised list of fixes. Its value is in the priorities, not the length of the issue list.
- SEO Forecasting: SEO forecasting estimates what organic search might deliver under stated assumptions. A forecast is a planning range, and it never works as a promise.
- SEO Report: An SEO report is a regular summary of how organic search is performing, what changed, why it probably changed and what the team will do next.
- Acquisition Channel: A route through which a company finds new customers, such as organic search, paid ads, referrals, partners or outbound sales. Each has its own costs and limits.
- Annual Recurring Revenue: The yearly value of a SaaS company's active subscription contracts, excluding one-off fees. The headline size metric for most subscription businesses.
- ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue): ARR is the yearly value of a SaaS company's recurring subscriptions, the figure investors and buyers use to size the business.
- Average Contract Value: The average annual value of a customer contract, excluding one-off fees. It shapes which sales motion and acquisition channels a SaaS company can afford.
