The Best SEO Consultant In 2026: 8 Picks, How To Hire One, And The AI Models Behind My Own SEO

The best SEO consultant for most business owners is me, Julian Goldie, and the easiest way to start is a free SEO strategy session.

I am being straight with you that this is my own list on my own site, so I have ranked myself first.

The other seven entries are well-known independent SEO consultants, and I have only included facts about them that I could verify publicly.

An SEO consultant is an expert you hire to diagnose your website, set your search strategy and tell you what to fix first, so you get more of the right visitors from Google and from AI answers.

This post explains what a consultant does, ranks the eight I would look at, shows you how to hire one safely and covers how AI is changing the job.

Near the end, I also show you the AI models I actually use for SEO and how they score on GoldieBench, because that is the question people ask me next.

The best SEO consultant picks at a glance

I ranked on four things, which were a public track record you can check, a clear speciality, a low-risk first step and whether they talk about AI search.

I did not rank on price, because I could not verify public prices and I will not invent them.

What an SEO consultant does

Google's own guide on whether you need an SEO lists the services an SEO may provide.

They review your site's content and structure.

They give technical advice on hosting, redirects, error pages and JavaScript.

They help with content development and keyword research, and they can train your team.

They bring expertise for specific markets and regions.

They now also help you optimise for generative AI, which Google lists as a service in its own right.

SEO consultant vs SEO agency

My own setup covers both, because the strategy session is consulting and Goldie Agency is the execution team.

The 8 best SEO consultants, explained

1. Julian Goldie and Goldie Agency

This is my own entry, so weigh it with that in mind.

I started with a cryptocurrency website while travelling in Asia, and it got zero Google traffic for months.

I learned link building to fix that, it worked on my own affiliate sites, and I realised I could sell it as a service.

I started Goldie Agency completely solo, and it is now a 7-figure SEO and link-building agency with 70+ people in Bangkok.

AI runs roughly 80% of our internal operations, and I run this site and others with AI agents I supervise.

You can start with a free strategy session, and experienced SEOs can join my SEO Elite Circle mastermind.

You can read more about me on my GoldieBench about page.

2. Aleyda Solis (Orainti)

Aleyda Solis founded the boutique SEO consultancy Orainti.

She runs Crawling Mondays, the #SEOFOMO newsletter and the free LearningSEO.io roadmap, and she was named European Search Personality in 2018.

Her recent episodes cover AI search roadmaps and measuring AI search visibility.

3. Glenn Gabe (G-Squared Interactive)

Glenn Gabe's firm offers algorithm update recovery, technical audits, migration support and training.

He has published analysis on his blog since 2006, and he shares core update notes while updates roll out.

4. Marie Haynes (Marie Haynes Consulting)

Marie Haynes Consulting has helped businesses with Google's algorithms since 2008.

Marie is known for Google updates, penalties and Google's quality guidelines, and she maintains a public Google update timeline.

5. Kevin Indig (Growth Memo)

Kevin Indig has been an independent growth advisor to fast-growing startups since mid-2022.

He previously led SEO and growth work at Shopify, G2 and Atlassian, and he writes the Growth Memo newsletter.

6. Cyrus Shepard (Zyppy SEO)

Cyrus Shepard founded Zyppy SEO after working as an SEO at Moz.

Zyppy lists B2B SaaS, tech companies and later-stage startups among its best-fit clients, and he created the Zyppy List directory.

7. Barry Adams (Polemic Digital)

Barry Adams founded Polemic Digital in 2014 as a specialist SEO consultancy for news publishers.

He has practised SEO since 1998 and writes the SEO for Google News newsletter.

8. Jason Barnard (Kalicube)

Jason Barnard, known as "The Brand SERP Guy", founded Kalicube.

He focuses on brand search results, Knowledge Panels and how AI assistants describe a brand.

If you want a wider list of people to learn from rather than hire, read my best SEO professionals post.

Which SEO consultant fits which business

A local service business usually needs calls and bookings from nearby customers, so it needs a strategy plus a team to execute content and links.

An ecommerce store needs category and product pages to rank, which usually means a strategist and implementation help.

A SaaS company needs pages that bring in sign-ups, so a SaaS-focused consultant like Cyrus Shepard or a growth advisor like Kevin Indig is a natural fit.

A large site that dropped after an update needs a recovery specialist, which is where Glenn Gabe and Marie Haynes come in.

A news publisher depends on Google News and Discover, so Barry Adams is the obvious specialist.

A founder whose brand search results look weak or wrong should look at Jason Barnard's Brand SERP work.

A brand that needs senior direction across all of this, including AI search, is a good fit for Aleyda Solis.

If you want one call that gives you a plan and a team that can carry it out with AI, that is the gap I fill.

The point is simple, because the best SEO consultant for you is the one whose speciality matches the problem you actually have.

Hiring a brilliant news SEO to fix a local plumber's website is a waste of both people's time.

How to hire an SEO consultant safely

First, write down the one outcome you want, such as more local leads or recovering from an update.

Second, shortlist two or three consultants whose speciality matches that problem.

Third, give read-only Search Console access during the audit, which is what Google recommends.

Fourth, ask every consultant the same questions so you can compare them fairly.

Fifth, agree the deliverables, the timeline and the success measure in writing.

Sixth, check progress monthly in your own Search Console rather than only in their reports.

Questions to ask before you hire

Ask to see examples of past work and success stories.

Ask whether they follow Google Search Essentials.

Ask what results to expect, on what timeline, and how success will be measured.

Ask about their experience in your industry and your country.

Ask how they will communicate and whether they will explain every change.

Ask where they use AI and what a human checks before anything goes live.

Typical engagement types

I have left prices out on purpose, because consultants rarely publish them and I would rather say nothing than guess.

Red flags to walk away from

Walk away from anyone who guarantees a number one ranking, because Google says nobody can guarantee that.

Walk away from anyone who claims a special relationship with Google or a priority submission.

Be wary of unsolicited emails offering to fix your SEO.

Be wary of anyone who is secretive about the changes they make.

Walk away from link schemes and mass-produced pages, which break Google's spam policies.

How AI changes SEO consulting

AI has made the repetitive parts of SEO much cheaper, from research and briefs to drafts, schema and reporting.

That moves the value of a consultant towards strategy, judgement and quality control.

It also adds a new job, because Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity now cite sources in their answers, and a good consultant plans for those citations as well as rankings.

The danger is the lazy version, where chatbot output is pasted onto a site at scale with nobody checking it.

That is why I always ask a consultant what a human reviews before anything goes live.

The AI models I use for SEO, with real GoldieBench scores

This section is about the tools behind my own SEO rather than about any consultant.

An SEO consultant is a person, so none of the consultants above has a GoldieBench score, and neither do I.

What the board can show you is how the AI models I lean on for SEO work perform on real one-shot builds.

GoldieBench scores each model's rendered builds from 0 to 10, such as pages, games, simulations and visuals, so it measures building ability rather than SEO writing directly.

I still find it a useful proxy, because a model that can plan and build a complex page in one shot usually handles structured SEO pages well too.

DeepSeek V4 is in my SEO videos too, and both DeepSeek V4 Flash and DeepSeek V4 Pro have pages on the board, but they are not yet scored, so I am not giving them a number.

If you want the free and offline options, the local models board ranks the models you can run on your own machine.

My honest advice is that the model matters less than the process around it.

A strong model with no strategy and no human review still produces forgettable pages, while an average model fed with real experience and checked by a person can rank.

That is exactly why the best SEO consultant in the AI era is someone who can direct these models, not someone who ignores them.

Also On Our Network

• Agent Operatorsthe operator's guide to hiring an SEO consultant
• AI Income Deskwhich SEO consultant fits your type of business
• AI Tool Verdictmy ranked SEO consultant verdict with a criteria table
• agentos.guidewhere an SEO consultant fits when AI agents run your SEO
• agentos.guideJulian's Claude AI SEO guide on agentos.guide

Match the specialist to your problem, keep a human on final review, and if you want a plan plus a team that executes with AI, book the free call with the person I would pick as the best SEO consultant.