Consulting
Four ways to work with me, and what each one costs
Every engagement starts the same way: a short call, then usually an audit, because I will not recommend spending money on a site I have not measured. After that it depends on whether you want me to do the work or check somebody else's.
Audit
$499 one-off
Anyone who wants to know what is wrong before spending on a fix.
- A crawl of the site with every technical fault listed and ranked by what it costs you
- Google Business Profile assessment against the categories and attributes your competitors use
- Map rankings measured on a grid around your address, not a single check from my desk
- Keyword and competitor analysis with the queries you can realistically win
- A prioritised fix list your own developer can work from
Advisory
From $499 per month
You have someone in-house or an agency, and you want a second opinion that is not selling you anything.
- A monthly review of what was done and what moved
- Direct access for the questions that come up between reviews
- Briefs your team can build from, written to be handed over
- An independent read on any proposal you are given
Retainer
$750 to $1,500 per month
One location or several, and nobody in-house who owns search.
- The search side of the business run for you, profile and site both
- Content written and published on an agreed cadence
- Reviews, citations and the local signals that decide map placement
- A monthly report that names what changed, in plain language
Full programme
$2,500 per month
Established operators who want search, paid ads and the follow-up in one place.
- Everything in the retainer
- Google Ads built and managed against a measured market size, not a guessed budget
- Call tracking so you can see which enquiry came from where
- Missed-call follow-up so the leads you paid for do not go unanswered
What happens in the first month
Week one is measurement. I crawl the site, pull whatever history exists in Search Console and Analytics, measure your map rankings on a grid rather than from one spot, and read the competitors who are beating you. Most of what I find is boring and fixable. Occasionally something big turns up, like a page blocked from indexing for two years, and the rest of the plan changes shape around it.
Week two is the decision. I bring you a list of fixes ranked by what each one is likely to be worth against what it will take. That ranking is the only honest version of the 80/20 rule applied to search. You veto the ones you do not want. This is the step most agencies skip, and skipping it is how people end up paying for a blog nobody asked for while the contact page still has the wrong phone number on it. If you are still weighing a consultant against an agency, I have set out both sides, including the cases where the agency is the better buy.
Weeks three and four are work. Profile and technical fixes first, because they are quick and they compound. Content after, once we agree what it is for.
What I need from you
- Admin access to the Google Business Profile, the website and the analytics. Not a screenshot of them.
- Half an hour a month, for the report call. More in the first month.
- An honest answer about what you sell and what you want more of. "More leads" is not one, because the leads you do not want cost you time too.
- Permission to say no to things. If I bring you a fix and you veto it, I need that on the record so neither of us is confused in month four.
What that has produced so far, with the numbers and the dates, is on the results page. If your business is in one of the six fields I have written up, the industry pages say what is usually wrong in each.
What I will not do
I do not buy links, and I will not place one on a site that sells them. I do not write fake reviews or "manage" real ones by hiding the bad ones, which is against Google's rules and against my interest in staying in this business. I do not bill for a report nobody reads. And I will not take on a client whose site I do not think I can improve, which costs me the work and is still the right call.
The scope behind the prices
All figures are Canadian dollars, plus HST. There is no minimum term beyond the month you are in, and no setup fee. What the prices assume:
- Who implements. On the audit, you do, or your developer does. On a retainer, I implement everything I can reach with the access you give me, and anything needing a developer is briefed and handed over rather than marked up.
- Content. Retainer prices include writing on an agreed cadence, usually two pieces a month. Photography, video and design are not included and I will tell you when they are worth buying.
- Ad spend is separate. The $2,500 programme is the management fee. What you spend with Google is yours, paid on your own card, in your own account.
- Your accounts stay yours. Everything is created in your name. If we stop, nothing switches off and nothing needs to be handed back.
- One month's notice, either direction. I would rather lose a client in month three than keep one who is not getting value out of it.
How this differs from Georgian Bay SEO
Both are me, and the about page has the background. Georgian Bay SEO is the business: it holds the contracts, sends the invoices, and it is where the managed local work lives for businesses around Collingwood, Blue Mountain, Wasaga Beach and Simcoe County. If you want somebody to run your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your local pages month after month, that is the agency side and it is built for it.
This site is the advisory and consulting side, and it is not limited to one region. It is where you hire the judgment rather than the execution: an audit, a second opinion, a plan your own team builds, or a retainer for a business nowhere near Georgian Bay. Same person, same prices, same invoice at the end.
If you are a local business within an hour of Collingwood, start on the agency site, because everything there is shaped for exactly that. If you are anywhere else, or you want a person rather than a service, start here.
If you are comparing me to an agency
An agency gives you capacity: several people, cover when one is away, and a process that does not depend on one person's week. That is real and it matters at a certain size. What you give up is that the person who sold you the work is rarely the person doing it, and the work drifts toward whatever is easy to report.
What I give you is that the diagnosis and the work are the same head. What you give up is scale, and my holidays. Pick on that basis, not on price, because the price difference between a good consultant and a mediocre agency is much smaller than the outcome difference.
Questions people ask before hiring me
- Can I start with the audit and decide later?
- That is the normal path and it is why the audit is priced to stand alone. You get the findings, the prioritised list and the raw data. Some people take it to their own developer and never hire me again, which is a good outcome for both of us.
- Is there a contract?
- A one page agreement, month to month, thirty days notice either way. I do not use twelve month lock-ins. If the work is not earning its keep you should be able to stop, and if you can stop I have to keep proving it is worth it.
- Who owns the work?
- You do. Accounts are created in your name, content is yours, and if we part company nothing gets switched off. Agencies that hold a client’s Google Business Profile hostage are common enough that this is worth putting in writing.
- What if I already have someone doing SEO?
- Then advisory is usually the fit. I review what is being done, tell you what I would change, and your person does the work. It costs less than replacing them and it often works better, because they know your business and I know search.
- Do you guarantee rankings?
- No, and neither can anybody else. Google does not sell that and it does not take instruction. What I guarantee is that you will know what was done, what it cost, and what changed, every month, including the months where the answer is not much.
Tell me the site and the problem
Fifteen minutes is enough for me to say whether this is worth either of our time, and roughly what it would cost. If the answer is that you do not need me, that is a fine answer.