When enterprise SEO consulting beats a managed programme
Enterprise SEO fails in one of two places: nobody can execute, or nobody owns the decisions. Agencies solve the first. Consulting solves the second.
You need a consultant, not an agency, when:
- You have two or more in-house SEOs, or a content team and a developer allocation, and the work still does not ship because nobody can defend priorities in sprint planning.
- The SEO director role has been open for six months and the backlog is drifting.
- A migration, replatform or redesign is coming and the team has never done one at this scale.
- The previous agency delivered audits that nobody implemented, and the board has stopped believing the forecasts.
- You want to build the in-house function and need someone to design the operating model, hire against it and hand it over.
You need the managed programme when the honest answer to "who will implement this" is "the agency".
What's included
- Strategy and prioritisation. A prioritised backlog by template group and market, with impact ranges, dependencies and owners. Reviewed monthly, re-prioritised when product roadmaps change.
- Ticket and release review. Every SEO ticket written by your team reviewed before it enters a sprint. Every release affecting templates, canonicals, redirects, robots or sitemaps checked on staging. This is the single highest-value hour of the week.
- Stakeholder cover. Your consultant attends sprint planning, quarterly planning and the executive review. They explain trade-offs to engineering and finance so your team does not have to.
- Migration and template sign-off. URL mapping, redirect logic, hreflang, structured data and internal linking reviewed before launch, with a launch gate checklist and post-launch monitoring.
- Executive reporting. A monthly one-page report in the format described in our enterprise SEO reporting guide: shipped vs blocked, non-brand movement, pipeline range, decisions needed.
- Team development. Working sessions with your SEOs on log analysis, crawl segmentation, forecasting and ticket writing. The goal is that you need us less each quarter.
- AI search coverage. Citation share on a fixed prompt set tracked via PromptRush, and entity and content recommendations fed into the same backlog. Full programmes run through enterprise AEO and GEO services.
- Tool and platform advice. We work inside whatever you have licensed. If you are choosing, we pressure-test the shortlist; see our enterprise SEO platform comparison.
Get a free enterprise visibility check before the call
Enter your URL and we send indexation, crawl efficiency and AI citation findings for your priority templates.
How the engagement runs
- Week 1 - access and audit of the backlog. Search Console, analytics, crawl data, logs, the current ticket queue and the last three audits. We find out what was recommended, what shipped and why the gap exists.
- Weeks 2-3 - operating model. Cadence agreed (typically one sprint-planning slot, one weekly SEO working session, one monthly executive review). Ticket format and acceptance criteria template agreed with engineering. Reporting data model set up.
- Month 1 onward - run the cadence. Prioritised backlog maintained, releases reviewed, executives reported to, team coached. Quarterly re-plan against product roadmap.
- Exit or scale. Either the in-house team owns it and the retainer reduces to a monthly review, or the scope grows into a managed programme because execution capacity is the constraint after all.
Who you work with
Roman Daneghyan leads enterprise consulting engagements personally. Nine years in enterprise SEO, programmes on marketplaces to 420,000 URLs, SaaS consolidations, multi-market rollouts and migrations, and founder of PromptRush, the AI citation tracking platform used in every engagement. There is no account manager between you and the consultant, and consulting load is capped so a new client does not dilute an existing one. Results sit on our enterprise case studies page.
Enterprise SEO consulting pricing
Hourly consulting is available at $300 per hour for scoped second-opinion work, minimum 10 hours. For how these compare with an in-house hire or a managed programme, see the enterprise SEO pricing guide and in-house vs agency for enterprise SEO.
Who this is for
Strong fit
- In-house SEO teams without a senior owner.
- Companies mid-recruitment for an SEO director.
- Enterprises facing a migration.
- Teams whose agency audits never shipped.
- Marketing leaders who need someone to speak to engineering and the CFO.
Not a strong fit
- Companies with no in-house execution capacity (use the managed programme).
- Sites under 5,000 URLs with no engineering constraint (use SEO consulting services).
- Anyone looking for a one-off keyword report.
Frequently asked questions
What does an enterprise SEO consultant actually do day to day?
Reviews tickets before they enter a sprint, checks staging before releases, maintains the prioritised backlog, attends the meetings where SEO work gets deferred, and writes the executive report. Less than half the time is analysis. Most of it is making sure the right thing ships and the wrong thing does not.
How much does an enterprise SEO consultant cost?
Senior enterprise consultants charge $200 to $400 per hour, or $6,000 to $15,000 per month on retainer in 2026. A full-time enterprise SEO director costs $180,000 to $220,000 base in US markets plus 6 to 12 months to hire. Our guide to hiring an enterprise SEO consultant covers what the fee should include and the red flags.
Is this the same as your enterprise SEO services?
No. The services page describes a managed programme where we run delivery: crawl work, content operations, links, multi-market rollout. Consulting is the senior layer only, with your team executing. Many clients move from one to the other as their in-house capacity changes.
Can you work with our existing agency?
Yes, and it is common. We act as the client-side senior owner reviewing the agency's recommendations, prioritising them against the roadmap and holding them to shipped outcomes. Agencies with nothing to hide welcome it.
Do you sign NDAs and work under enterprise procurement?
Yes. We operate under MSA, NDA and DPA where required, provide security questionnaires, and invoice in USD, EUR or GBP.
Do you consult on AI search visibility as well?
Yes. Every consulting engagement includes a PromptRush citation baseline so the board's "what about ChatGPT" question has a number attached. Deeper programmes run through enterprise AEO and GEO services.
Related guides
Book an enterprise SEO consulting call
Bring the backlog and the org chart. We will tell you in 30 minutes whether the problem is ownership or capacity, and which model fixes it.