Help the right customers find you in Google — and know it's working.
45 minutes · Google Meet · free Health Check included
An SEO consultant helps a small business get found by the people already searching for what it does — on Google Search and on Maps — and sets up the tracking to show whether it's working. That's what I do as a freelance SEO consultant: based in Melbourne, working with small businesses across Australia, and the person you talk to is the person doing the work.
// Recognition
Usually because something underneath the surface has quietly stopped working — or because an agency told you that you "need SEO" without anyone explaining what that actually means. It tends to look like one of these:
Terms that used to bring people in have quietly dropped, and nobody can tell you why or what to do about it.
The Google Business Profile hasn't been touched in two years, and competitors are now showing above you in local Maps results.
Analytics either isn't installed, or the figures have looked the same for so long that nobody believes them anymore.
It shouldn't take a digital-marketing background to know what's going on. Someone who can plainly tell you what's working, what isn't, and what's worth fixing first — and then set the measurement up cleanly so you can see for yourself going forward — is usually enough.
// Before anything
Before any SEO or analytics work begins, this is the kind of thing I'm looking at. The checklist is here so you can see the craft up front — not because you're expected to action any of it yourself.
Can Google see you? Is Google Search Console verified, and is it actually seeing the site?
Is Bing set up too? Bing Webmaster Tools is a precondition for showing up in ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot's answers, not just Bing's own results.
Is tracking firing? Is conversion tracking firing on every form submission, every phone-click, every "book a call" button — or is the business flying blind on which channels are bringing in real enquiries?
Can Google parse it? Are the meta titles, page headings, and URL structures plain enough that Google can parse what each page is actually about?
Any hidden traps? Are there crawler-blocking redirect chains, broken canonical tags, or duplicate-content traps quietly costing visibility?
Ranking for your name? Is the site indexed and ranking for its own business name — the absolute baseline before any harder ranking work matters?
Is your Maps profile right? Is the Google Business Profile complete, with the right opening hours, categories, and recent posts? On Maps, is it showing above competitors locally?
Any schema gaps? Are there schema markup gaps that could earn the site rich-results visibility (reviews, FAQs, local business info) without changing a word of content?
The free Basic Digital Health Check covers the public side of all of these. The deeper checks — the ones that need account access — are part of the In-Depth version.
// The work itself
Good SEO is the foundation the rest of your digital marketing builds on — paid search, paid social, AI search and web design all work better when the search and measurement layer underneath them is right. So this is what I set up first, before anything else can be honestly judged.
Rankings for the terms that matter, indexation health, a technical-health snapshot, and a plain-language read of what's working and what isn't.
The terms your customers actually search for — and which page should rank for each — so the site is aimed at real buyers, not a guess.
Set up properly and optimised for the searches people actually use to find businesses like yours locally, with reviews and posts kept current. For most small businesses, this is where local enquiries come from.
Site speed, crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals, redirects and canonical hygiene — the plumbing that decides whether Google can rank the site at all.
Headings, meta titles and descriptions, internal linking, schema markup, image alt text — the structure that makes the difference between Google guessing what a page is about and knowing.
I'll tell you what's worth writing, who it's for, and how to structure it. The writing itself stays with you or your writer — I'll review.
One conversion event firing cleanly across Google, Meta and your own analytics — GA4, or privacy-first Plausible if you'd rather keep Google off your site — plus Search Console and Bing, so you (and increasingly ChatGPT and Copilot) can see what's working.
What changed, what mattered, what didn't. No vanity metrics — I don't report "domain authority" scores from third-party tools, because in my experience they rarely translate to real enquiries.
GA4 (full setup, custom events, conversion goals, audiences, cross-domain tracking) · Google Tag Manager (containers, tags/triggers/variables, server-side GTM when conversion attribution warrants the upgrade) · Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools + IndexNow (verification, sitemaps, monitoring, indexation, manual-action surveillance) · Plausible (privacy-first alternative for clients who want it) · schema.org markup (structured data so Google can show your business cleanly) · Lighthouse + Core Web Vitals (technical health, page-speed trends) · Google Business Profile (dashboard + Maps for local visibility). All set up cleanly, all reported on in plain language.
// How I work
When you hire me, you're hiring one SEO consultant for the whole job: the audit, the fixes, your Google Business Profile, the tracking and the reports. You talk to me, I do the work, and you always know who to ask.
You work directly with me — one person, start to finish. You'll always know exactly who's doing the work, because it's me.— Nathan Schram · SEO consultant, Melbourne
An agency suits businesses that need large-scale output across a big team. A consultant suits businesses that want direct access, plain answers, and someone who'll tell them when something isn't worth doing. Ongoing work is month-to-month by default, and I take on a limited number of clients at a time.
// Local & small business
Most of my SEO work is for small businesses that want to be found by nearby customers — not to outrank national brands on the broadest, most contested terms. Two things do the heavy lifting there:
Small-business SEO. Aimed at the searches your actual customers use — not vanity head terms. The goal is enquiries from people ready to buy, not traffic for its own sake.
Local SEO & Google Business Profile. The local pack, Google Maps and your Business Profile are their own focus — I cover them in depth on the dedicated Local SEO page (linked below).
For the map-pack and Maps side, there's a dedicated local SEO consultant service for Melbourne businesses — or the plain-English guide to local SEO for Melbourne businesses. If you'd rather start with a read on where you stand than commit to the work, that's the SEO audit.
// What I don't do
Honest scope. The work below isn't a refusal — it's a stay-in-lane discipline that keeps quality high on what I do build.
If a project sits outside the default scope and there's a real reason to do it, ask anyway. The honest discipline applies on both sides: you have to agree to the scope, and I have to be confident I can deliver it to a standard worth my name. If I'm not, the honest answer is no — and I'll point you toward someone who can take it on if I know one.
// Fit
// Best for
// Skip if
// Recent SEO work
// Mobile wellness service
A mobile IV business working in Victoria and Western Australia. I built its new website, help people find it on Google and in AI tools like ChatGPT, and run its Google ads.
// Animal rescue charity
A volunteer-run animal rescue. I built the website it uses today, and I'm building its new one.
// My own software studio
My own small software studio. I designed and built its website, and I keep it running and easy to find on Google and in AI tools.
// Pricing
Here's how the money usually works, in plain numbers. Most SEO work with me takes one of three shapes:
// Audit
A clear picture of where you stand, with recommendations you can act on yourself or pass to another provider — the full detail is on the SEO audit page. Free as the Basic Digital Health Check on every call; the In-Depth version starts at $300, when you want the login-data depth — rankings, tracking and your Google Business Profile checked against your actual accounts, not just what's public.
Free or from $300
// Sprint
Around two weeks of audit, then six to ten weeks of shipping the technical fixes, cleaning up the Google Business Profile, getting the measurement layer in place, and a 30-day window to see it working before the next decision. Project-based, quoted to scope after the call.
Quoted to scope
// Ongoing
Monthly cadence: review what's happening, prioritise the next round of work, ship it, report in plain language. Suits businesses in competitive local markets or with a real content cadence. From around $1,000/month, quoted to your scope — see Looked After.
From ~$1,000/mo
ACNC-registered charities: 25% off. Single ABN-lookup verification at intake — same rate that runs across every NSD service.
Comparing quotes? My plain-English guide to what SEO costs in Australia explains what a typical quote includes and what to ask before you sign.
45 minutes · Google Meet · no obligation
// Pacing
SEO is slow-burn work that compounds. The honest timing:
data flowing within 24–48 hours of setup.
typically show Search Console impact within 2–4 weeks once Google re-crawls.
(titles, headings, internal linking, schema) — usually 4–8 weeks for Google to re-evaluate.
tends to show meaningful results in 3–6 months, not weeks.
Two fully-resourced quarters of disciplined SEO work plus a clean analytics layer will, in my experience, outperform a year of haphazard experimentation. Anyone selling faster results than that is either lucky or not telling the full story.
// Shipping
Before any SEO or analytics engagement is called shipped, it has to pass the same four checks — no engagement is signed off until they do:
Google can read it. Google can see and read the site cleanly, with no crawl-blocking traps in the way.
Tracking fires cleanly. Conversion tracking is firing on every real enquiry — forms, phone-clicks, booking buttons.
Maps profile is right. The Google Business Profile is set up properly, with the right categories, hours, and posts.
Baseline captured. The starting picture is recorded, so future change can actually be measured against it.
Search Console snapshot (top 20 ranking queries · click-through rate · impression trend) · GA4 (or Plausible) baseline (organic traffic · conversion rates · funnel completion) · Lighthouse SEO score ≥95 on homepage + 2–3 key inner pages · Core Web Vitals all green against Google's published "Good" thresholds (LCP < 2.5s · INP < 200ms · CLS < 0.1) · Bing Webmaster Tools indexation snapshot · schema markup audit across all indexed pages.
Ongoing monthly reporting (when you stay on for ongoing monthly care): ranking + impression + click trends for tracked queries, organic sessions + conversions, Core Web Vitals trend, Bing indexation drift, plus a plain-language note on what changed, what's working, what's not, and what's planned next.
// Journey
A plain-English audit that shows whether SEO and analytics is actually the right next investment. Sometimes it isn't — a business with no organic search problem doesn't need SEO; a fundamentally unclear offer won't be saved by it. You get a solid base to start from instead of guessing, and the PDF is yours to keep, whether you work with me afterwards or not.
If it is the right next step, the next move is either straight into the implementation sprint — or a Strategic Digital Roadmap first, when the broader digital direction needs clarity before touching the search and measurement layer.
Once the foundation has shipped, ongoing monthly care covers what comes after — monthly tracking, content strategy iteration, technical SEO maintenance, analytics updates as the business and the measurement landscape shift. The project stands on its own without it.
// FAQ
// Start
Thinking about SEO for your business? Book a 45-minute call. I'll run a free Basic Digital Health Check on your site beforehand and walk you through it on the call — so the conversation starts from a clear picture of where you stand in search today, not a blank page.
45 minutes · Google Meet · no obligation
Every call ends with one — a plain-English read on where you stand in search today. No charge, no catch.
The PDF is yours to keep regardless.
// Last updated: 1 October 2026
