About Ivan Sp

Q: Is this an agency or one person?

One person. Ivan Sp does the work, and this site is written in the first person because that is accurate. Where a project needs several specialists in parallel, an agency is the better fit and this page says so.

A one-person consultancy that writes we on its own website is the credibility defect this practice charges to remove. Ivan Sp is an SEO and AI search consultant based in Vancouver, British Columbia, working with clients across Canada and the United States as a fractional SEO consultant, a consulting advisor to in-house teams, or a project-based specialist. Search work since 2005 across more than 100 websites and more than 20 industries sits behind the practice.

Ivan Sp Background

I graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2004 with a degree in Computer Science, and have worked in SEO since then. The combination of formal software training and two decades of search work is unusual in this field, and it decides how the work gets done.

Most consultants describe a workflow. I build the software that runs it. Keyword data collection, content generation at scale, internal link discovery, log file analysis, and custom reporting all run through code rather than through manual repetition.

Ivan Sp Credentials

Education: University of British Columbia, Computer Science, 2004
Certifications: Google Analytics 4 Certified. Google Ads Search, Display, and Measurement Certified. SEMrush Technical SEO Certified. SEMrush Keyword Research Certified. HubSpot SEO II Certified.
Technical stack: PHP, MySQL, Python, BigQuery, the OpenAI API, and Google’s own APIs
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Clients across Canada and the United States.
Communities: IMG community member. Webmaster World Forums contributor.

Industries Ivan Sp Serves

Client work spans more than 20 industries. Search fundamentals stay consistent across all of them, and competitive dynamics, user intent, and content strategy differ sharply by sector.

Sectors with the deepest engagement history are e-commerce, SaaS and software, dental practices, mortgage brokers, car dealerships, home renovation, property management, electricians, alarm systems, storage companies, education, sales consulting, financial services, and local services.

Ivan Sp Working Philosophy

Links do make a difference, but if we have to participate in the link building rat race, that usually means we haven’t done enough on-page SEO. Most of the time Google is showing us its cards. The most important information we need to rank for a keyword is already visible in the SERPs.

Every documented client result on this site was earned without purchased links. Industry reading comes from the IMG community, Webmaster World Forums, SEO Intelligence Agency, SEO Fight Club, Marie Haynes, SEO by the Sea, Search Engine Land, and Craig Campbell.

The Trust Pages in Detail

I keep the material a buyer checks before hiring on separate, linkable pages.

The Facts Behind This Practice

Name: Ivan Sp, working as Metrics Rule.
Role: SEO and AI search consultant.
Based: Vancouver, British Columbia, serving Canada and the United States remotely.
Education: University of British Columbia, Computer Science, 2004.
Experience: Since 2005, more than one hundred websites, more than twenty industries.
Technical stack: PHP, MySQL, Python, BigQuery, the OpenAI API, and Google APIs.
Tooling: Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, GA4, Google Tag Manager, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Certifications: GA4, Google Ads Search, Display and Measurement, SEMrush Technical SEO and Keyword Research, and HubSpot SEO II.
What is never claimed: A team, an agency, or any credential that cannot be verified.

Five Things Worth Checking About Any Consultant

Which of these do you want to know before hiring anyone?

I publish the answers to four questions most consultancy sites leave open.

Commonly assumed	What actually holds
Whether it is a team or a person.	A solo practice and an agency solve different problems. The honest answer changes which one you should hire.
Whether the credentials can be verified.	Named certifications with issuing bodies can be checked. A claim of expertise with no issuer cannot.
What the practice refuses to do.	A provider who accepts everything either has no boundaries or is not telling you where they are.
Whether results carry names or numbers.	Named clients with vague figures persuade less than anonymous clients with specific, verifiable ones.
Whether anything is promised in advance.	Nobody controls search rankings. A promised position is a claim about something the provider does not decide.

You are about to trust somebody with the traffic your business runs on. Every question above is one you should ask of anyone you shortlist, including this practice.

Where the Standard Consultancy About Page Breaks Down

How many consultancy websites have you read that turned out to be one person?

The usual advice: Write in the plural, since we reads as more established than I and clients prefer working with a team.
What holds up in practice: A reader can tell. A one-person practice writing we has made its first claim a false one, on the page where trust is established. Every later claim is read against that.

Picture a solo consultant whose site says our team throughout. The work is good and the language is standard practice.

A prospective client on the first call meets one person. Nothing else was misleading, and the opening impression is now that the site overstated something.

Ivan Sp writes in the first person and names the practice as one person’s work. Whatever is lost in perceived scale is returned in not having to manage the reveal.

A site that describes a business one way and a first call that reveals another is easy to avoid. Recovering from one is much harder.

You will find out how big this practice is on the first call. Reading it here first costs you nothing and saves the conversation.

A Worked Example: What to Check Before Hiring

Consider four claims a consultancy site might make. The assessment below is illustrative, written to show what a buyer can verify. No specific provider is described here.

Claim on the site	Can a buyer verify it	How
Certified in a named programme by a named issuer	Yes	Check the issuer’s own directory
Working in SEO since 2005	Partly	Professional profiles and published work history
Trusted by hundreds of businesses	No	No issuer, no register, no record
A promised first page ranking	No, and nobody can deliver it	Rankings are not controlled by any provider
Anonymous case study with a specific figure	Partly	The figure can be produced in the client’s own account
Named client with a vague figure	Partly	The name is checkable and the figure is not

I write this page so every row above lands in the first column. Rows three and four are the ones worth walking away from.

Hiring a consultant on unverifiable claims is buying a used car on the seller’s word about the mileage. Everything may be true and nothing is checkable.

The final two rows are worth reading together. A specific number in an anonymous case is more checkable than a name attached to a vague one.

How Companies Work With Ivan Sp as a Fractional SEO Consultant

Ivan Sp is open to fractional and consulting engagements. A fractional engagement places Ivan Sp as the part-time SEO lead of a company that does not need, or is not ready to hire, a full-time SEO. A consulting engagement supports a marketing team or developer already in place, with audits, strategy, and review. Both run on the monthly SEO retainer. One-time work runs as fixed-price packages or a scoped project.

How Ivan Sp Engagements Run

Every engagement opens with a diagnosis, because a solution sold before the problem is understood is a guess. The three stages and what each produces sit on the page covering how an engagement works from diagnosis to build.

How an Ivan Sp Engagement Starts

I begin every engagement the same way, regardless of what was discussed on the first call.

Book a free thirty-minute consultation, which carries no obligation.
Describe the problem as the business experiences it, rather than in SEO terms.
Grant read access to Search Console and analytics, so the diagnosis works on real data.
Receive an assessment of where the site stands, including where nothing is wrong.
Agree the scope in writing before any work starts, including what is excluded.
Run the diagnosis first, since a solution proposed before a diagnosis is a guess.
Review the findings together, ordered by commercial exposure rather than by severity label.
Decide what to build from the findings rather than from a standard service list.
Agree how the work will be verified before it begins.
Report against the agreed measure, including the months where nothing improved.

How an Ivan Sp Engagement Is Scoped

How Engagements Are Structured

Engagement types: Fixed-price packages, project work, and fractional retainers.
How work is scoped: After a diagnosis, rather than from a standard service list.
Where pricing is published: On the packages pages, for the fixed-price tiers.
What consulting work costs: Quoted after a scoping call, since scope varies with the diagnosis.
What is always included: A written scope, including an explicit list of exclusions.
What is never included: A ranking promise, a traffic promise, or a purchased link.
Who this suits: Businesses wanting one accountable practitioner rather than an account team.
Who it does not suit: Programmes needing several specialists working in parallel.

Tools and Primary Sources

The references below are the tools and standards this practice works against. Each opens in a new tab.

Google Search Central documentation is the primary reference behind every technical recommendation made here.
Search Quality Rater Guidelines describes the quality standards content work is assessed against.
Google Search Console is where the figures in any report can be verified by the client directly.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the crawler used on every technical audit.
LinkedIn profile carries the professional history described on this page.

Check the Claims on This Page

I suggest running the same verification you should run on any provider.

Take one certification named on this page and search for it on the issuer’s own site.
Open the LinkedIn profile linked above and compare it against the history stated here.
Read the page listing what this practice refuses to do.
Ask on the first call for a figure from a case study, and where it can be verified.

A provider who cannot answer the fourth question is describing something they cannot show you. Apply the same four checks to everyone you shortlist.

Common Questions About Ivan Sp

Do you work alone or with a team?

Ivan Sp works directly with clients as an independent consultant. The person who builds the strategy also executes it, which is the main structural difference from an agency engagement.

What size of business do you work with?

Engagements run from local businesses buying a fixed-price package through to in-house marketing teams needing programmatic systems and custom tooling. Site size matters more than company size.

Do you take clients outside Canada?

Yes. Clients across Canada and the United States are served remotely, and Vancouver clients can meet in person when a project calls for it.

Is this an agency or one person?

One person. I do the work, and this site is written in the first person because that is accurate. Where a project needs several specialists in parallel, an agency is the better fit and this page says so.