Working With a Consultant Compared to an Agency
An SEO consultant and an SEO agency solve different problems based on capacity and structure. Ivan Sp notes that consultants suit diagnosis and strategy while agencies handle high-volume content production. Cost follows structure because a consultant has no overhead to carry.
When an Agency Is the Better Choice
An agency fits three situations well. A business needing several specialties under one roof, covering SEO, paid media, design, and development, gets that coverage more easily from a team. A business needing high-volume content production beyond what one person can write needs the headcount. A business wanting a vendor relationship with account management layers built in usually prefers the agency structure.
Anyone in those three situations should hire an agency. Naming that plainly costs nothing and saves both sides a poor engagement.
Differences Between Consultants and Agencies
Four differences matter most when comparing the models:
| Factor | Working with Ivan Sp | Typical agency model |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | The person who builds the strategy also executes it. | A senior strategist sells the account, and junior staff usually handle daily work. |
| Attention | Experience since 2005, applied to your site by the person who did the audit. | Account managers carry several clients at once. |
| Tooling | Tools and automation built for your specific business. | Off-the-shelf packages applied consistently across clients. |
| Follow-through | Involvement continues through implementation. | Strategy is often delivered as a report for someone else to apply. |
Consultant and Agency Cost Differences
Consultant pricing carries no overhead for offices, sales teams, or project management layers. The difference is structural rather than a discount, and it is why a fixed-price audit package can start well below a monthly agency retainer.
Agency retainers in Vancouver commonly start between $1,500 and $3,000 per month for basic packages, and scale beyond $5,000 for comprehensive work.
Limitations of Consultants and Agencies
One consultant has one person’s capacity. A project needing 200 blog posts in a quarter, or simultaneous SEO, paid media, and a website rebuild, exceeds what a single practitioner can deliver well.
Where that is the requirement, the right answer is an agency, and saying so early is more useful than accepting the work and underdelivering. Fixed-price scopes are published on the SEO packages and pricing page so the comparison can be made directly.
Choosing Between a Consultant and an Agency
Ivan Sp suggests four questions that settle the choice quickly.
- Write down every discipline the work needs, as separate lines.
- Mark which ones have to happen at the same time rather than in sequence.
- Estimate the monthly volume of deliverables the work requires.
- Ask how long the business can operate if the provider is unavailable for a month.
More than one line marked as simultaneous points at an agency. A low tolerance on the final question points the same way, whatever the price difference.
What This Looks Like Six Months In
Consider a marketing director who hired on price and now needs content, technical work, and paid media running at once. One person is delivering all three in sequence.
She needs the programme to move. Explaining to a board that the cheaper option is taking three times as long is a conversation nobody wants twice.
Ivan Sp says so on the first call instead. Where a programme needs parallel specialists, an agency is the better fit and recommending one costs less than underdelivering.
Exceptions to the Consultant and Agency Comparison
Does your project need one practitioner or several working at once?
- The usual advice
- Choose a consultant to save money, since a consultant costs less than an agency.
- What holds up in practice
- Cost follows structure rather than quality. A consultant is cheaper because there is no overhead to carry. The correct question is whether one person’s capacity fits the work.
Picture a business choosing a consultant on price for a programme needing content, technical work, and paid media running in parallel. The saving is real.
One person cannot run three disciplines simultaneously. The programme slows to sequential delivery, and the saving is spent several times over in elapsed time.
I say so before the engagement rather than during it. Where a project needs parallel specialists, an agency is the better fit.
Choosing on price rather than on fit produces a slower programme that costs less per month and more per outcome.
Hiring the wrong model costs you a quarter before anyone admits it, and the monthly saving never covers that.
Five Common Assumptions About Consultants and Agencies
Which of these has driven your thinking so far?
I meet these assumptions whenever the comparison comes up.
| Commonly assumed | What actually holds |
|---|---|
| A consultant is a cheaper agency. | The models differ structurally rather than in quality tier. A consultant carries no overhead and no parallel capacity. |
| An agency means more people on your account. | An agency means more people available. How many work on your account depends on what you are paying for. |
| A consultant is riskier because there is no cover. | True, and it is worth weighing. A consultant is a single point of failure, and an agency has continuity a solo practice cannot. |
| Agencies give the work to juniors. | Sometimes, and often appropriately. The question worth asking is who specifically will do your work, not whether juniors exist. |
| You have to choose one for everything. | Many businesses use a consultant for diagnosis and strategy, and an agency or in-house team for volume delivery. |
The wrong model does not fail loudly. It underdelivers slowly, and the reason is usually structural rather than anything either side did badly.
A Worked Example: Matching Model to Project
Consider four projects assessed for fit. The assessment below is illustrative, written to show how the choice is made. No client engagement is described here.
| Project | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnose why traffic fell | Consultant | One practitioner, deep, and fast |
| 200 blog posts in a quarter | Agency | Volume needs parallel writers |
| Build a programmatic system | Consultant | One person who can both plan and build it |
| SEO, paid media, and a rebuild at once | Agency | Three disciplines running simultaneously |
| Ongoing technical oversight | Either | Depends on continuity requirements |
Rows two and four count against a consultant. Recommending against yourself once is cheaper than underdelivering for a quarter.
Choosing a consultant for a parallel programme is hiring one excellent chef for a banquet. The food is superb and it arrives one course at a time.
The final row is open. Continuity risk is real, and a business that cannot tolerate a single point of failure should weigh it heavily.
How to Decide Between a Consultant and an Agency
I suggest working through the questions below before shortlisting anyone.
- Write down whether the work is one discipline or several running at once.
- Estimate the volume, since volume is what one person’s capacity actually limits.
- Decide how much continuity risk the business can tolerate.
- Ask any agency who specifically will do the work, by name and seniority.
- Ask any consultant what happens if they are unavailable for a month.
- Compare the monthly figure against elapsed time to outcome rather than against each other.
- Ask both for a written scope with an exclusion list.
- Treat any promised ranking from either as a reason to stop.
- Consider using both, with a consultant for diagnosis and an agency for volume.
- Decide on fit rather than on the smaller number.
How a Consultant or Agency Engagement Is Scoped
What This Practice Is and Is Not Suited To
- Suited to
- Diagnosis, strategy, technical work, and building systems that run afterwards.
- Suited to
- Businesses wanting one accountable practitioner rather than an account team.
- Not suited to
- High-volume content production needing several writers in parallel.
- Not suited to
- Programmes running several disciplines simultaneously.
- Not suited to
- Organisations that cannot tolerate a single point of failure.
- Honest limitation
- One person has one person’s capacity, which no process changes.
- How this gets decided
- On the first call, before any scope is written.
Consultant and Agency Tools and Primary Sources
The references below cover what to expect from any provider. Each opens in a new tab.
- Google guidance on hiring an SEO sets out what Google itself recommends asking any provider before hiring.
- Google Search Central documentation is the reference either model should be working against.
- Google Search Console is where you can verify any figure either model reports.
- Search Quality Rater Guidelines describes the standards content work from either model is assessed against.
Common Questions About Consultants and Agencies
Is a consultant always cheaper than an agency?
Not always. A consultant costs less per hour of senior attention, and a large implementation project can still total more than a small retainer. Comparing scope matters more than comparing rates.
Can a consultant work alongside my existing agency?
Yes. A common arrangement is strategy and technical direction from a consultant with execution handled by an existing team or agency.
What happens if my needs outgrow one consultant?
Where capacity is the constraint, that gets said. Advisory engagements exist partly so an in-house team can absorb volume the consultant should not.
Can a consultant and an agency work together?
Frequently, and it is often the right answer. A consultant handling diagnosis and strategy alongside an agency or in-house team handling volume delivery uses each for what it does well.