Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
The SEO with a 64 mobile Lighthouse score is a real problem and Lily Ray can see it
An SEO consulting practice has the most visible marketing problem in any specialty: you can be technically audited from a Chrome devtools panel in 30 seconds by anyone considering hiring you. The economics are decided by which engagement signs: a $5k one-off audit, a $5k a month retainer, or a $15k a month fractional-head-of-SEO arrangement with a multi-month runway. The consultants who consistently sign the second and third one have a Core-Web-Vitals-passing site with valid schema markup (the bare minimum credibility bar), a case-study library that names actual ranking lift ('moved from page 3 average position 24 to page 1 average position 4 on 47 commercial-intent keywords in 9 months, organic revenue up 2.3x') rather than 'rankings improved', a Substack or newsletter with a distinctive POV on whichever Google update is hottest, and a presence at BrightonSEO, MozCon, or SMX that means something. The SEO market is loud, BrightEdge and the mid-tier agencies are spending hard on PPC, and the buyers (e-commerce founders, SaaS heads of growth, enterprise marketing directors) check your own site's Lighthouse and your own internal-link graph before the discovery call. Half of SEO consultant sites fail the audit they'd run on a client. Yes, this is mortifying. It's also fixable.
Good SEO consultant marketing is three things, in this order: a passing technical audit on your own site (mobile Lighthouse 90+, Core Web Vitals all green, valid Person and LocalBusiness schema, a healthy internal-link graph, no canonical-tag mistakes) because the buyer literally runs Lighthouse on you before the call, a case-study library that names cleared, dollar-quantified lift (commercial-intent-keyword movement, organic-revenue contribution, SERP-feature wins) rather than 'rankings improved', and a thought-leadership rhythm (two LinkedIn-or-X posts a week, a Substack post a fortnight, a BrightonSEO or SMX talk a year) that names your distinctive POV on whichever Google update is hottest. The SEO market is a technical-credibility market plus a personal-brand market; the consultants who run their own site to client-grade standards and publish a real POV win retainers from the consultants who optimise everyone's site except their own.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the specialty you actually want more of (technical SEO vs content SEO vs local vs e-commerce vs enterprise vs international) and the engagement model that pays best (fractional head of SEO vs monthly retainer vs audit-only vs project). Briefs the other agents so the case studies, the LinkedIn-and-Substack thought-leadership, the conference-talk pages, and the credential shelf all push toward the $12-15k a month fractional-head-of-SEO retainer rather than the $5k one-off audit.
Imports your existing site (almost certainly a Webflow or Astro build you haven't touched in 14 months) and runs a full technical-SEO remediation on day one because your own site is the audit the buyer is about to run. Ships a case-study page for every fractional or retainer engagement (brief, work, cleared dollar-quantified lift, cleared testimonial) with valid Article and Person schema, plus a credential shelf with SEMrush Academy, Moz Academy, Google certifications, BrightonSEO/MozCon/SMX talks, and every current engagement. Mobile Lighthouse 95+ on your own site within the first fortnight.
The thing you'd usually be paid to do, but for your own site: Core Web Vitals remediation, internal-link-graph rebuild, schema-markup validation, canonical-tag audit, page-speed work, and specialty-plus-city keyword optimisation ('technical SEO consultant Sydney', 'e-commerce SEO Melbourne', 'fractional head of SEO Brisbane'). Auto-applies the low-risk fixes. Yes, the irony is acknowledged; the point is your own site finally passes the audit a buyer will run.
Launches Google Ads on engagement-model queries ('fractional head of SEO [city]', 'technical SEO audit [city]', 'e-commerce SEO consultant [city]', 'enterprise SEO consultant'). Loads 'cheap SEO', 'guaranteed first-page rankings', 'link buying', 'PBN', and 'free SEO audit' as negatives so the wrong buyers (and the wrong-tactic-shoppers) self-deselect. Switches Meta off because SEO buying happens on LinkedIn, Google, and X, not on a Facebook feed.
Turns every audit reflection, every Google-update take, every BrightonSEO-talk write-up, and every Search Console pattern into a LinkedIn or X (or Bluesky) post in your real accounts: a 48-hour-after-update take with real GSC data, a teardown of a competitor's programmatic-SEO mistake, a thank-you to a panel you spoke on, a thread on a specific schema-markup edge case. Posts twice a week from the audit notes you'd otherwise never share. Builds the Aleyda-Solis-Cyrus-Shepard-Lily-Ray credibility shelf at a fraction of the time investment.
Drafts the Substack long-form pieces that catch SaaS heads of growth and e-commerce founders at the 'do we hire a fractional head of SEO or an agency' stage: 'the 47 commercial-intent keywords to audit before a fractional pitch', 'why most e-commerce sites lose 18% of impressions on Google core updates', 'programmatic SEO without thin content: the bottom-of-funnel comparison-page playbook', 'fractional head of SEO vs enterprise SEO agency: a real-numbers comparison'. Two long-form pieces a month plus the Google-update takes within 48 hours of every named update.
Your first 30 days.
- Your own site passing the audit a buyer will run: mobile Lighthouse 95+, Core Web Vitals green, valid schema
- Three SEO case-study pages indexed, each with cleared dollar-quantified lift and cleared testimonial
- Annual plan focused on lifting average retainer past $10k a month, delivered by Sam
- Credential shelf (SEMrush Academy, Moz Academy, Google certifications, conference talks, current engagements) visible on every page
- LinkedIn + X cadence at two distinctive-POV posts a week from your real audits
- Substack rhythm at one long-form a fortnight, plus 48-hour takes on every named Google update
- Specialty-plus-city service pages live for technical, content, e-commerce and fractional-head-of-SEO offers
- Google Ads live on engagement-model queries with cheap-SEO and guaranteed-rankings negatives loaded
SEO consultants get the briefs their own sites and their own thought-leadership signal for, which is a particularly painful loop because the buyer can technically audit you in 30 seconds. A site that scores 64 on mobile Lighthouse, has invalid LocalBusiness schema, and a Substack with three posts signals 'SEO who can't fix their own site' and the SaaS head of growth hires the consultant whose own site passes. A site at 98 mobile Lighthouse with valid schema, three case studies with cleared dollar-quantified lift, and a 48-hour take on the last Google update signals 'this is who we hire for the fractional engagement' and the retainers follow.
Yes, this is marketing software pitching marketing to SEOs. The tension is honest and worth naming: you optimise sites for clients, this runs marketing for your own practice (and yes, it'll also optimise your own site, with you in the driver's seat for every change). Agencies are too dear, plus the optics of an SEMrush-Academy-certified SEO hiring BrightEdge to write their blog are bad. Tools you already pay for, but you never get to your own audit. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the case studies, draft the LinkedIn-and-Substack POV pieces, run the fractional-head-of-SEO ads, and fix your own Core Web Vitals. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop being the SEO whose Lighthouse score is a discovery-call objection.