You've decided the search problem needs fixing. Now you're comparing two very different quotes: a consultant charging by the hour, and an agency retainer at a few thousand a month. Both promise the same outcome. They are not the same thing.
We run an agency, so you know where we sit. But the consultant is the right call more often than agencies admit, and we'd rather tell you when that's you than win a retainer that doesn't fit.
What a consultant is good at
A good independent SEO consultant in Melbourne typically charges by the hour or by defined project, with rates that vary widely with seniority. For that you get one senior brain, direct access, and no account layer.
The consultant is the right choice when:
- You need a diagnosis, not a department. An audit, a migration review, a second opinion on your current provider. Defined start, defined end
- You have someone in-house to do the work. The consultant sets direction; your marketing person or developer executes. If nobody in your business can implement, the audit becomes a PDF that sits in a drawer
- The site is small and the market is local. A single-location clinic competing in one suburb doesn't need a four-person retainer
The trade-off is capacity. One person can't write your content, fix your site speed, build your citations, and track your AI visibility in the same month. When consultants get busy, your work waits. When they take holidays, everything waits.
What an agency is good at
Agency retainers in Australia typically run from the low thousands to $10,000+ a month depending on scope. Ours sit between $2,000 and $10,000+, and the numbers are on the page because we think hiding them is a sales tactic, not a service.
The agency is the right choice when:
- Search is a channel, not a project. You want rankings held and grown month over month, and nobody internal owns it
- The work spans disciplines. Content, technical fixes, local presence, digital PR, and now AI visibility. That's several skill sets, not one
- You want it handled. You get a monthly report you can read in five minutes, and the rest happens without you
The trade-off is the machine. At large agencies you're paying for account managers, office towers, and process. Your retainer funds the layer between you and the person doing the work. That layer is why two agencies quoting the same scope can be thousands apart.
The question that decides it
Not consultant or agency. The real question: who is going to do the work?
If you have execution capacity in-house, hire a consultant to point it in the right direction. If you don't, hire a team that executes, and make sure the people you meet are the people who do the work. Ask that question directly in the first call. The answer tells you most of what you need to know.
Not consultant or agency. Who is going to do the work?
One more thing the comparison misses
Most consultant-versus-agency advice was written when search meant Google. It doesn't anymore. Your customers now ask ChatGPT what to buy, read AI Overviews instead of clicking, and check Perplexity for comparisons. Our Australian AI Visibility Index found businesses appearing in roughly 5% of cost-related AI answers. The other 95% of the time, someone else got recommended.
Whoever you hire, consultant or agency, ask them what they're doing about AI visibility. If the answer is a blank look, keep interviewing.
Where we fit
GOJI runs Search + AI Visibility retainers from $2,000 to $10,000+ a month, ex GST. Small senior team, no account layer, pricing on the page. We handle Google and the AI answer engines together, because your customers stopped separating them.
The way we keep a small team senior: we built our own systems to run the repetitive work. Rank capture, AI answer monitoring, report assembly, the checks that have to happen every month whether anyone remembers or not: those run automatically, and a human reviews the output before it reaches you. The hours we don't spend on admin are the hours you get on strategy and on the phone.
If a consultant is the better fit for your situation, we'll say so on the first call. No follow-up sales sequence either way. And if you've settled on an agency and are now comparing them, our guide to choosing an SEO agency covers costs, red flags, and the questions to ask.
Tell us what's going on. We'll tell you what we'd do and what it costs.
FAQ
Should I hire an SEO consultant or an SEO agency?
Hire a consultant when you need a diagnosis (an audit, a migration review, a second opinion) and you have someone in-house to implement. Hire an agency when search is an ongoing channel, nobody internal owns it, and the work spans content, technical, local presence, and AI visibility. The deciding question is who will do the work.
How much does an SEO consultant cost in Melbourne?
Consultants typically charge by the hour or per defined project, and rates vary widely with seniority. Agency retainers in Australia typically run from the low thousands to $10,000+ a month. GOJI's Search + AI Visibility retainers run $2,000 to $10,000+ a month, ex GST.
What should I ask before hiring an SEO consultant or agency?
Ask who will do the work and whether you can meet them, what the first 90 days look like specifically, and what they're doing about AI visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Vague answers on any of the three predict a vague engagement.
