Hire an SEO content strategist
One person who decides what your site should publish, writes or edits it, and answers for the result. Here is what the role involves, when it is the right hire, and how I do it.
What does an SEO content strategist do?
An SEO content strategist decides what a website should publish, in what order, and how the pages connect, so content earns search traffic and turns it into customers. The role sits between a technical SEO specialist and a writer, and a good strategist can do the writing and editing too.
When should you hire a strategist instead of an agency or a tool?
Hire a strategist when content is the lever and you want one accountable owner for it. The table shows where each option fits.
| Option | What you get | Fits when | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| An SEO tool | Data: keyword lists, rankings, site crawls. | You have someone in-house who knows what to do with the data. | Tools report problems; they do not decide or fix anything. |
| A freelance writer | Pages, written to a brief. | You already know what to publish and need hands to write it. | Someone still has to decide what gets written, and why. |
| An SEO agency | A team covering technical SEO, links, content, and reporting. | You need many channels managed at once and have the budget for it. | You may never talk to the person doing the work. |
| An SEO content strategist | The plan, the pages, and the editing, from one person. | Content is the lever, and you want one accountable owner. | One person's capacity; not a replacement for a full technical team. |
What should you ask before hiring one?
Six questions separate a strategist from a salesperson. Here is what a good answer sounds like.
Can I see work with the client named?
Good answer: Named clients who will stand behind it, or an honest "not yet". Anonymous "Fortune 500" logos are a warning sign.
How do you decide what gets published?
Good answer: A process you can follow: research into what people search and what the business knows, before anything is written.
Do you publish AI drafts as they are?
Good answer: A clear no, and a description of what the editing actually involves.
How do you check facts?
Good answer: Claims traced to primary sources. Anything untraceable gets cut.
What will you not promise?
Good answer: Specific rankings, traffic, or AI citations. Anyone who guarantees those is guessing.
What do I own at the end?
Good answer: Everything: the plan, the pages, and the markup, on your site, in your accounts.
How do I work?
I work in three layers, always in the same order: research the entities and plan the pages first, draft with AI for speed, then edit every page by hand before anything is published. You work with me directly, from the first call to the last edit. The whole process is documented on the Entity-First Method page.
- Staff writer at SOFREP, reaching 2M+ monthly readers
- Editor at Stoute Web Solutions
- 6+ years in SEO content strategy and writing
- Certified in prompt engineering (DeepLearning.AI, Udemy)
Hiring questions, answered
People ask me these questions before they hire me, so here are the plain answers.
My starting prices are published: topical maps from $950, content audits from $750, and local SEO clusters from $1,800. The free audit tells you which starting point fits your site.
Yes. I am based in Portland, Oregon. Local SEO and web design are Oregon-focused, but content strategy, editing, and topical authority work is delivered to clients anywhere in the US.
Both, depending on the service. A topical map is the plan on its own. A local SEO cluster includes the drafting and the full editorial pass. AI content humanization is the editing on its own.
Technical and on-page fixes can show within weeks as Google recrawls. A new cluster usually takes three to six months to mature. I set milestones up front and never promise specific rankings.
Get a free 15-minute audit of your top 3 ranking gaps
The free audit is a quick teardown of where you are leaking rankings and the first cluster I would build. No pitch deck, no obligation.
Reply guaranteed within 24 hours.