What to Expect from a Real SEO Expert: A Candid Guide for Founders, CMOs, and Agencies

If you’ve ever hired an SEO agency and walked away wondering where your traffic went—or worse, where your budget went—you’re not alone.

Over the past few months, I’ve had conversations with founders, CMOs, in-house marketers, and agency owners all facing the same reality: they need SEO help, but they’re tired of “deliverables” that don’t deliver. They don’t want monthly PDFs. They want results.

This post is for you.

Whether you’re running a fast-moving ecom brand, a B2B SaaS startup, or a global lead-gen operation, here’s a brutally honest look at what an experienced SEO consultant actually does—and how to know you’re talking to one.

You can hire me right now via my freelancer page on Upwork or set up a 30-minute call with me via Calendly.

1. I Don’t Sell SEO Magic. I Sell SEO Work.

There’s no SEO wand. No secret plugin. No backdoor handshake with Google.

What there is—is work. The real kind: audits, redirects, rewrites, crawl maps, Core Web Vitals fixes, schema injection, content restructuring, internal linking strategy, backlink cleanup, thin content expansion, URL consolidation, and sometimes talking devs off a cliff when they want to relaunch everything mid-core update.

You don’t need more tools. You need someone who knows how to use the ones you already have: Google Search Console, GA4, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and your CMS.

2. Crawl Before You Rank. Literally.

Before your content can rank, it needs to be crawlable. Seems obvious, but you'd be shocked how often JavaScript-heavy builds, blocked robots.txt files, or overengineered navigation nukes a site’s ability to get indexed.

Especially with modern frameworks like Blazor, React, or Angular, I work directly with dev teams to make sure Googlebot isn’t getting stuck in the mud.

3. Google Is Not Your Adversary. It’s Your Mirror.

This is an analogy I use often: Google is like a mirror that reflects the quality of your site back to the world. If your content is thin, your markup is broken, or your UX is slow—it reflects that. You’re not being punished. You’re being honestly evaluated at scale.

Want better rankings? Improve the reflection.

4. Backlinks Are Not a Bandaid

Backlinks are the salt. The content and structure are the steak.

Yes, backlinks matter. But if your technical SEO is broken, or your site reads like it was written by a committee of AI interns, all the backlinks in the world won’t save you. I’ve spent countless hours cleaning up toxic link profiles and explaining to clients that they didn’t need more links—they needed to fix the mess they had.

5. Content Strategy Isn’t About Volume. It’s About Fit.

One of the most common problems I see is clients sitting on tons of content—but none of it’s structured to win. Blogs with vague titles. Collection pages with no body copy. Product pages that look like a spec sheet from 2008.

I build content strategies around:

• Search intent

• Funnel stage

• Internal link potential

• Crawl depth

• Schema compatibility

• Readability & conversion alignment

Sometimes that means rewriting. Sometimes it means deleting. Sometimes it means creating a new structure entirely.

6. Local SEO Is Not Just “Set It and Forget It”

If you’re running any kind of location-based business, your Google Business Profile is your second homepage. I’ve helped multi-location brands clean up their NAP data, recover suspended listings, and start showing up in the 3-pack again after months of invisibility.

It’s not glamorous work, but it moves the needle.

7. Every SEO Strategy Is a Diagnosis, Not a Prescription

You can't copy-paste someone else's success. What worked for an online mattress store won’t work for your custom software platform. SEO is contextual.

When I come in, I don’t bring a checklist—I bring a diagnostic mindset. What’s broken? What’s under-leveraged? What’s overdone? What does Google see when it crawls your site? That’s what matters.

8. I Use AI—But Not as a Crutch

I use ChatGPT, Bard, and other tools to assist in drafting metadata, expanding thin content, and brainstorming keyword variations—but nothing beats human judgment. AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. It speeds things up, but it doesn’t know your business like you do.

I’ve found the best approach is human-led, AI-assisted—especially for product pages, FAQs, meta descriptions, and structuring content briefs for writers.

9. If You’ve Been Burned by SEO Before, You’re Not Alone

I’ve had clients come to me after firing major agencies (yes, even Neil Patel). Why? Because they were promised rankings, but what they got was churned-out blog posts and a dashboard no one knew how to interpret.

Good SEO isn’t monthly “deliverables”—it’s performance. And performance starts with clarity, communication, and tactical execution.

Final Thoughts: SEO Isn’t Dead. But Your Old Strategy Might Be.

Search is changing. Google is changing. AI is changing how people discover things. But one thing hasn’t changed:

If you make a better site—for humans and bots—you’ll win.

If you’re ready to stop chasing tricks and start building real organic performance, let’s talk. I’m not here to manage your spreadsheets. I’m here to make your site work.

You can hire me right now via my freelancer page on Upwork or set up a 30-minute call with me via Calendly.

Glossary

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The practice of improving a website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services via Google and other search engines.

GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
The latest version of Google Analytics, providing better insights into user behavior and events across websites and apps.

Google Search Console (GSC)
A free tool that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s presence in Google Search results.

Schema Markup
Structured data code (in JSON-LD format) added to a website to help search engines understand content better and enable rich results.

SEMRush
A popular SEO tool for keyword research, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and competitor research.

Screaming Frog
A website crawler used for technical SEO audits, such as finding broken links, duplicate content, or missing metadata.

Core Web Vitals
A set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience, including loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

Internal Linking
Linking from one page of a website to another to help search engines understand site structure and spread page authority.

Backlink Audit
A process of analyzing the backlinks pointing to your site to identify toxic links and improve link quality and relevance.

Thin Content
Web pages with little or no value to the user, which often perform poorly in search results.

NAP (Name, Address, Phone)
Consistent local business information used for local SEO, especially critical on Google Business Profiles.

FAQ

Q: What does a real SEO expert do differently?
A true SEO expert goes beyond keyword stuffing and reports. They audit, implement, fix, and build—bridging technical SEO, content strategy, and performance tracking.

Q: Do I need backlinks to rank?
Yes—but only if your site’s content and structure are already solid. Backlinks amplify a strong foundation, not compensate for a weak one.

Q: Is SEO still worth it in the age of AI and social media?
Absolutely. SEO remains the highest-ROI channel when done right—especially with AI-enhanced tools and smarter search behavior.

Q: Can AI write all my blog content?
Not reliably. AI can assist with drafts and ideas, but human editing is essential for nuance, tone, structure, and avoiding keyword stuffing penalties.

Q: What are the biggest SEO mistakes businesses make?
Ignoring technical issues, relying only on backlinks, skipping Google Search Console setup, and overproducing thin content without strategy.