Hiring a WordPress SEO specialist: what they do, what it costs and when you can do without

A WordPress SEO specialist makes sure your WordPress site gets found in Google. The average hourly rate for SEO providers is about $111, and ongoing work typically runs from about $500 to well over $3,000 a month. For part of that work you really need them. For another part you pay a person for something software now does on its own every week.

This article helps you choose. You read what a specialist does, what it costs, what to ask up front and which part you can do without.

What exactly does a WordPress SEO specialist do?

Their work falls into four parts.

1. Getting the technical side in order

This is one-time work, or work that comes back once a year.

• Checking that Google is allowed to and able to read the site
• Configuring the SEO plugin properly: sitemap, which pages are and are not in Google
• Setting up redirects for old URLs
• Improving speed: images, caching, heavy plugins
• Reviewing structured data: the code that tells Google what is on a page

Knowledge of WordPress itself matters here. A specialist who knows how your theme or page builder works solves in an hour what takes someone else a day.

2. Deciding the structure

Which pages do you need? One per service, one per service area? How do they connect? This is thinking work. It needs someone who understands your business and your market.

3. The recurring work

This is the bulk of the hours.

• Writing and updating titles and meta descriptions
• Adding internal links
• Filling in alt text
• Sharpening existing copy
• Reviewing the numbers every month and writing a report

4. Off the site

Getting mentions and links from other sites. Your Google Business Profile. Sometimes advice on reviews.

What does it cost?

Type	Price	Suited for
Hourly rate	About $111 on average	One-off jobs, an audit
One-time project	Most often $2,501 to $5,000	A site with a backlog
Freelancer per month	About $1,349 on average	Ongoing, small to mid-size site
Agency per month	About $3,209 on average	Ongoing, with a team
Most common retainer	$501 to $1,000 a month	Ongoing, limited hours

The figures come from Ahrefs’ SEO pricing survey of 439 SEO providers. It is an older survey, so treat the amounts as a floor rather than today’s going rate. Averages hide a wide spread: local providers often charge less, and agencies in competitive markets charge far more. How those amounts are built up is in SEO pricing per month.

Six questions to ask up front

1. Do you work in WordPress yourself, or do you hand it off? Some specialists deliver a list for your developer. Then you pay twice.

2. Which plugins and themes do you have experience with? Ask about yours: Yoast or Rank Math, Elementor or Divi, WooCommerce. What matters with a page builder is in Elementor and SEO.

3. How many pages do you change per month? Hours say little. This number says a lot.

4. Do I see for every change what was there before and what is there now? If not, you cannot check and cannot go back.

5. How do you measure whether it works? The right answer is clicks and inquiries per page, four weeks after the change.

6. What are the contract terms? A three-month trial period is reasonable. A one-year contract from day one is not.

Which part can you do without a specialist?

Let us go through the four parts once more, this time with the question: does a person need to do this?

Part of the work	Person needed?	Alternative
Technical setup	Yes, once	A scan finds the errors, a person fixes them
Deciding the structure	Yes	Your own knowledge of your customers helps most here
Recurring work	No, not anymore	Software that scans, picks and applies
Off the site	Yes	Your own network, or a specialist

The recurring work is where most of the monthly hours go. It is also the part that is easiest to automate. It follows fixed rules, you can measure it and a mistake can be undone.

Take a solar panel installer in Fresno with a 46-page WordPress site. A freelancer at $900 a month handles roughly eight pages in eight hours. Software applies up to twenty improvements a month, up to five every Monday, and measures per page what it delivered after four weeks.

The freelancer, on the other hand, realizes there should be a page about home batteries, because no local competitor has one yet. Software does not see that on its own.

The combination we recommend

For most small business WordPress sites, this works best.

A specialist once, for a few half-days. Have them review the technical side and help you think through the structure. Which pages are you missing? Count on five to fifteen hours, roughly $550 to $1,700 at the average rate.

Then software for the weekly work. It keeps titles, descriptions, links and alt text up to date.

A few hours of specialist time once a year. To check that the direction is still right.

That way you pay a person for the thinking and leave the rest to software. Over a year that costs thousands of dollars less than an ongoing hourly retainer.

How does that software work on WordPress?

Here is how GreatCompany does it. You install a plugin and connect it with one button. No WordPress password goes into GreatCompany.

GreatCompany scans your pages every week. Every Monday it applies up to five improvements: titles, meta descriptions, internal links and alt text. It writes them into the fields of your existing SEO plugin. Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress and All in One SEO are supported.

You choose per item whether it goes automatically or comes to you first. The title and description of your homepage always come to you first. You can undo every change with one click.

If you have a question about your site, you ask your SEO assistant in the chat. It knows your pages, your numbers from Google and what changed in recent weeks. See the AI SEO assistant.

Which other plugins with AI exist is compared in AI plugins for WordPress SEO. Read the whole story on automating SEO and what you keep.

When do you hire a specialist on an ongoing basis?

You run a store with many products. Filters, variations and categories create problems that need custom work. Also read WooCommerce SEO.

You are in a tough market. Mortgages, law, insurance. A tidy site alone does not win there.

You are rebuilding. A new theme, a new structure or a move to another domain.

You suddenly lost a lot of traffic. Then you want someone who finds out why.

In those cases a specialist is worth the money. Let them do what only they can do, and leave the basic work to software. Looking for an agency? See outsourcing SEO.

Prefer to try it yourself first?

That works too. The order is in WordPress SEO: five settings you get right once and four tasks that keep coming back. The two-hour weekly rhythm is in the DIY SEO plan.

First know what needs doing on your WordPress site

Before you hire anyone, you want to know how much work there is. GreatCompany is opening in the US soon. Join the waitlist and your free report will show which errors we find and which we can fix for you. With that list you have a better conversation with any specialist. Want to hand off the weekly work right away? Read how to automate WordPress SEO.