How to hire an SEO specialist
for a small business (2026)

What the job pays

O*NET's occupation for this work is Search Marketing Strategists (13-1161.01), whose reported titles include SEO Strategist and SEO Consultant. BLS publishes wages at the parent occupation, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists (SOC 13-1161), so the table is for that wider group.

The six largest metros by employment in this occupation, with the median in each: New York $100,520; Los Angeles $82,990; Boston $102,390; Chicago $80,400; San Francisco $123,250; Washington $87,160.

Data: BLS OEWS May 2025 (released 2026-05-15); O*NET 31.0 (August 2026). Last updated 2026-09-17.

What does an SEO specialist actually do all day?

O*NET rates each task for Search Marketing Strategists on a 1 to 5 importance scale. The top of the list, with its rating and then the plain version for a business with a website and a few locations:

Two things the list does not name that the job now includes: keeping your Google Business Profile right for every location (hours, phone, categories, photos, a reply to every review), and tracking which AI answers name you and which name your competitor for the questions your customers ask.

What should you look for?

Someone who can open your site in the interview and tell you three things to fix, in counts, in ten minutes. Someone who has managed Business Profiles for more than one location, lived through a Google penalty or a site migration, and reads a crawl and a Search Console export without help.

Listen for how they talk about results. A good specialist names the number you already watch (calls, forms, bookings) and will not promise a ranking, because nobody controls one.

How do you write the posting?

Name every location. Name your website platform (Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, or whatever it is), and whether the person edits it directly or through your developer. Say the goal as a number you track: calls a week, forms a month, bookings. Say whether the job includes running Google Ads; if it does, say so, because it is a different skill and a separate budget. Put a salary range in; the price of every option below is measured against it.

Five interview questions, and what a good answer sounds like

1. "Open our site. What would you fix first, and which fix needs my developer?" Specific pages, specific problems, and an honest line between what they can stage themselves and what touches redirects or hosting.
2. "One of our locations shows the wrong Sunday hours on Google. How would you have found that, and how do you fix it?" They check every listing against your site on a schedule, propose the corrected value, and change nothing without your yes.
3. "A vendor says we need a special AI file to show up in AI answers. Do we?" No. Google's own guidance says no new files or markup are needed; what earns a mention is a clear page, an accurate listing and a real answer to a real question.
4. "What will you show me on the first Friday, and from which tools?" Clicks and impressions from Search Console, calls and directions from your Business Profile, leads from your analytics, each a number you can open yourself.
5. "How would you write a page for our second location so it is not the first page with the town swapped?" The address, the staff, the parking, the neighborhoods served, the questions that location's customers ask. If none of that exists, they say the page should not be written yet.

How much does it cost to hire one?

An employee costs more than the salary. In June 2026 wages and salaries were 70.0% of what private employers paid per hour worked and benefits the other 30.0%, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' count (Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, released 2026-09-09, read 2026-09-17). At that split, a specialist hired at the $78,760 median implies about $112,500 a year in total cost, and a first SEO hire at the 25th percentile, $58,350, about $83,400.

A survey of 439 SEO providers by Ahrefs (updated August 2024) found freelancers averaging $1,348.63 a month and $71.59 an hour, agencies $3,209 a month and $98.90 an hour, and consultants $3,250 a month and $171.18 an hour; 63% of providers charged between $500 and $5,000 a month. The survey is two years old, so treat it as the shape of the market rather than this month's price, and ask any quote what the month contains: pages written, listings managed, who touches the site.

Allying's price for this job is 30% of the salary you post, billed monthly, with a floor of $1,500 a month. At the $78,760 median that is $23,628 a year, or $1,969 a month, for the job held: the crawl and its fixes, the pages, the listings, the Friday counts and the named person who reads the work. A posting at the 25th percentile, $58,350, works out to $1,459, so the floor applies there. The exact figure is in your proposal before you decide.

What should the first week produce?

Ask for these five things by the end of week one. All can be made from what is public about your business.

• A crawl of your site with a fix list, summarized in counts you can feel ("41 pages return a 404 from your own menu"), the first ten fixes written out and ready to stage.
• An audit of your Google Business Profile for every location against what your site says, every discrepancy listed with the corrected value drafted.
• Ten drafts of the location or service pages you do not own yet, each with a real reason it is about that place.
• A check of which AI answers name you, and which name a competitor, for 20 to 50 questions your customers ask, with dated transcripts.
• A dry run of the Friday report, from public data, so you can see the rhythm before you agree to anything.

Ask how much of this they could start from what is public today, and what would still be waiting on your logins.

When should you not hire an SEO specialist?

• When the site is about to be rebuilt. Do the rebuild first, or hire for the migration as a project.
• When you need leads this month. Search takes months to move; paid search is faster, and it is a different job.
• When you have one location, a five-page site and a Business Profile that is already right. A one-time audit may be all you need.
• When you sell something nobody searches for yet. A new category needs demand before it needs rankings.
• When someone promises page one in 30 days. That is not a hire, that is a warning.

How Allying does this job

Allying fills the SEO specialist posting you wrote: the technical health of your site as search engines see it; edits to existing pages, staged in your own CMS; new service, location and hyperlocal pages in your voice from your own facts; keyword research and a rolling content plan tied to the goal in your posting; your Google Business Profile across every location; which AI answers cite you, tracked over time; and a dated change log with the read-back for every change.

Week one is made from what is public, before any conversation: the crawl with its fix list, the Business Profile audit across every location, ten hyperlocal page drafts, the answer-engine visibility check with dated transcripts, and the Friday report as a dry run. Nothing is published in week one. After that, nothing goes live on your site or a listing without your yes; a redirect, a robots rule or anything touching more than twenty pages always needs it; nothing is spent in your name; no ranking is promised, and every number in a report comes from your own tools. Every action sits in a ledger you can read, with a daily note and a Friday report.

The work is done with AI and overseen by a named specialist who answers for it.

Mae Santos, Allying's co-founder, is the person you talk to; write to hello@allying.com and she answers. The work is reviewed before it reaches you.

What Allying refuses on this job

• Pushing any change to your live site, robots file, sitemap, redirects, canonicals or structured data without the approval your agreement requires. Changes are staged; you publish, or approve the publish on a card.
• Touching DNS, hosting, your domain, SSL or a migration on its own. These are proposed with a plan and done only with you or your developer.
• Creating, buying or soliciting reviews with a required sentiment, or using AI-written reviews. Real customers leave reviews, asked unconditionally.
• Suppressing negative reviews by false legal threats or false reports, or by gating who is asked. You decide how to answer a bad review, and it stays up.
• Creating Business Profile listings for places that do not exist. Every listing is a real location you confirm.
• Buying links or joining link schemes. Links are earned or they are not there.

Questions owners ask

Related pages

What this job costs with Allying, and the other ways of getting it done, with every figure sourced and dated.

• Pricing: the share of the posted salary, job by job
• Allying vs hiring an employee
• Allying vs a marketing agency
• Allying vs freelancers
• Allying vs doing it yourself
• Every hiring guide

Guides for owners

• How Google picks a local business
• What small businesses pay in 2026
• How to write a job posting that fills