What to Deliver in an SEO Strategy Session
Clients are paying for clarity. They want to leave the session knowing what's wrong, what to fix first, and roughly how long it will take to see results. Structure your sessions so they consistently deliver those three things.
Before the Session: Preparation
Collect information at booking. Set up intake questions that clients answer when they book. At minimum, collect the website URL, primary business goals, target audience, top competitors, and their biggest SEO concern or question. This lets you arrive at the session prepared instead of spending the first 20 minutes gathering basic facts.
Talkspresso lets you attach intake questions directly to your service offering. Clients fill them out when they book and pay. Their answers are waiting for you before the session starts.
Run your tools before you join the call. Crawl the site with Screaming Frog. Pull their keyword rankings in Ahrefs or SEMrush. Review their Search Console performance report if they've granted access. Note the top issues you want to cover. You should walk into every session with a clear agenda driven by real data.
Prepare a screen-share structure. Know which tabs you'll have open and roughly what order you'll cover things. This keeps sessions moving and makes you look sharp.
During the Session: Structure That Works
A well-run 60-minute SEO strategy session follows a consistent arc.
Minutes 0-5: Align on goals and agenda.
Start by confirming what the client most wants out of the session. What are they trying to accomplish? Are they trying to grow organic traffic, rank for specific terms, fix a technical problem, or build a content strategy? Their answer may adjust your emphasis for the rest of the call.
Minutes 5-35: Live site review and screen share.
This is the core of the session. Share your screen and walk the client through your findings. Open the actual tools, show the actual data, and explain what you're seeing in plain language.
For most strategy sessions, this means covering:
- Traffic overview. Pull up their Search Console or analytics. Show them how organic traffic has trended, which pages are driving the most traffic, and where they're losing impressions or clicks.
- Top keyword rankings. Show them where they rank, how much search volume exists for those terms, and which competitors are beating them.
- Quick-win opportunities. Identify the 3 to 5 changes that could move the needle fastest. These might be title tag improvements, internal linking gaps, pages ranking on page 2 that need a push, or content pages targeting low-competition keywords with good search volume.
- Technical issues. If you found crawl errors, broken links, slow load times, or indexation problems, show them. Walk through Screaming Frog output, PageSpeed Insights results, or Search Console coverage reports so they can see the issues with their own eyes.
Minutes 35-50: Roadmap and prioritization.
This is where the session becomes a strategy session rather than just an audit walkthrough. Synthesize everything you've shown them into a prioritized roadmap. What are the top priorities for the next 30 days? The next 90 days? What's a longer-term investment?
Be specific and concrete. "Fix 42 broken internal links Screaming Frog flagged" is actionable. "Improve site architecture" is not. "Write 8 articles targeting these three topic clusters" is actionable. "Create more content" is not.
Minutes 50-60: Questions and next steps.
Leave the last 10 minutes for the client's questions and to confirm next steps. Clarify anything that wasn't clear, give them your honest opinion on what will have the biggest impact, and let them know what working with you further could look like (if they're a fit for a retainer or follow-up session).
After the Session: Follow-Up
Send a recap within 24 hours. Even a brief message confirming the top action items reinforces the value of the session and keeps clients from losing momentum.
Share the recording. Clients absorb maybe 30 to 40 percent of a live session. The recording lets them rewatch specific sections when they're ready to implement. Talkspresso records sessions automatically and generates an AI summary with key takeaways and action items, so your client has a written reference without you writing a separate document.
Plant the seed for next steps. Not every client will be ready for a retainer, but many will want a follow-up session in a month to review progress. Mention it naturally at the end of the recap: "Happy to do a check-in session in 30 days to see how the initial changes are performing."
How to Price Paid SEO Strategy Sessions
Pricing depends on your experience, the complexity of the session, and your target market. The ranges below reflect what the market supports in 2026.
| Experience Level | Rate Per Hour | Notes |
|---|
| 1-3 years | $150-200 | Generalist SEO, small business clients |
| 3-7 years | $200-350 | Niche focus, SaaS or ecommerce experience |
| 7+ years or deep niche | $350-500+ | Enterprise, technical SEO, high-stakes verticals |
A few principles worth following:
Price on outcomes, not time. An hour with you might identify an issue that's been costing a client thousands of dollars in lost organic traffic. Your price should reflect the value of that insight, not just the calendar hour. Clients who understand their SEO problems are usually willing to pay well to solve them.
Don't underprice to win clients. Discounting your rate to land your first few clients trains the market to expect low prices and attracts clients who don't value your time. Offer a short free intake call (15 minutes) where you ask a few diagnostic questions and show a glimpse of your thinking, then transition to a paid strategy session for the full work.
Offer a bundle for recurring clients. A package of four monthly strategy sessions at a slight discount (say, $900 instead of $1,000) creates predictable revenue and gives clients a structure to stay consistent with their SEO.
Anchor against alternatives. An SEO agency retainer starts at $2,000 to $5,000 per month. A full-time SEO hire is $60,000 to $90,000 per year plus benefits. A 60-minute session at $250 that gives a business owner a clear roadmap is an obvious value at that comparison.
The right tools make sessions more credible, more visual, and more actionable. Here's what to have open.
Ahrefs or SEMrush. These are the workhorses for keyword research, competitive analysis, and backlink audits. Site Explorer (Ahrefs) and Domain Overview (SEMrush) give clients an immediate picture of where their site stands organically. The Content Gap and Keyword Gap tools are especially powerful when screen-shared because clients can see what their competitors are ranking for that they're missing.
Google Search Console. Free, authoritative, and owned by the client. Walking them through their Performance report (queries, pages, impressions, clicks, CTR, average position) is often the most eye-opening part of a session. Most business owners have Search Console set up but have never actually looked at it. Showing them what it reveals makes you immediately indispensable.
Screaming Frog. Essential for technical SEO sessions. Run a crawl before the session and screen-share the results during the call. Broken links, missing meta descriptions, duplicate title tags, redirect chains, slow pages, and crawl depth issues are all visible and easy to explain visually.
Google PageSpeed Insights. Run the client's URL live during the session. The visual scoring format makes Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) easy for non-technical clients to understand. Showing a low score and explaining what's causing it lands far better than describing it abstractly.
Google Analytics 4. Connecting SEO work to business outcomes is crucial for client buy-in. Show them how organic traffic connects to the conversions they care about: leads, purchases, signups. When clients see that ranking improvements correlate with revenue, the value of ongoing SEO work becomes concrete.
A keyword tracking spreadsheet or live dashboard. If the client has shared access to their tracking tools, show current rankings alongside targets and historical trends. This gives the session a progress-review dimension and sets up the case for follow-up sessions.
How to Get Clients Booking Paid SEO Strategy Sessions
Delivering a great session is only half the equation. You need a steady pipeline of clients to make the model sustainable.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the most effective channel for finding SEO consulting clients. Business owners, marketing directors, startup founders, and CMOs are all active there.
Optimize your profile for the client, not for yourself. Your headline should describe who you help and what result you drive: "SEO Consultant | Helping B2B SaaS Companies Grow Organic Traffic" is more compelling than "Experienced Digital Marketer."
Post consistently. Share case studies, quick SEO wins, Search Console screenshots with context, and observations about what's working in your niche. Posting three to five times per week builds a following of exactly the people who need your services.
Warm outreach, not cold pitches. When you see a company with visible SEO issues, a personalized observation lands far better than a generic pitch. Point out one specific opportunity in a short message and offer to chat. Most people will at least respond to genuine insight about their own site.
Content Marketing on Your Own Site
An SEO consultant who ranks well on Google is their own best advertisement. Write targeted content for the keywords your ideal clients search: "how to improve SaaS organic traffic," "ecommerce SEO checklist," "local SEO for service businesses." Each piece demonstrates expertise and captures demand from people who are actively looking for help.
Free Mini-Audits as a Lead Magnet
A short free audit is one of the most effective ways to convert cold prospects into paying clients. Run Screaming Frog, check Search Console, note the top five issues, and send a one-page summary with a clear call to action: "Here's what I found. Want me to walk you through the full findings and a prioritized roadmap? Book a strategy session here."
Gate it with an email opt-in so you build your list simultaneously. Promote the offer in your LinkedIn bio, email signature, and every piece of content you publish.
Referrals
After a strong session, ask directly: "Do you know anyone else who's dealing with SEO challenges?" Most clients are happy to refer good consultants because it makes them look helpful to their network. Consider offering a referral credit (a discount on a future session) to encourage introductions.
Setting Up Your Booking and Payment System
Logistics matter. If a potential client has to email you to get pricing, wait for a response, negotiate a time, and then sort out payment separately, you'll lose a lot of them before they ever book.
You need a single link they can click to see your services, choose a time, pay, and get a confirmation. All of it in one flow.
Talkspresso is built for exactly this. You create your session offerings (SEO Strategy Session, Technical SEO Review, Keyword Research Session), set your prices and availability, and share your booking page. Clients book and pay in one step. When the session starts, the video call with built-in screen sharing is already there. Sessions are recorded automatically, and both you and the client get an AI-generated summary with action items afterward.
This eliminates the patchwork of Calendly for scheduling, Stripe for payments, Zoom for video, and a separate screen recorder. One platform handles everything, so you focus on the session instead of the logistics.
Scaling Beyond Individual Sessions
Once individual sessions are generating consistent revenue, natural scaling paths open up.
Group SEO workshops. Teach an SEO session to a group of 10 to 50 people at $50 to $150 per seat. One hour of your time scales across many clients simultaneously. Talkspresso supports group sessions and webinars natively, so no additional tools are needed.
Retainer packages. Once clients see results from a strategy session, many want ongoing guidance. Two 30-minute check-in sessions per month plus async support is a format that commands $500 to $2,000 per month, depending on the client and scope.
Digital products. Record a session walkthrough with commentary, add a template or checklist, and sell it as a digital product. A "Complete SEO Audit Walkthrough" video with a Screaming Frog issue checklist can sell for $49 to $199 to an audience that wants to learn from your process but isn't ready to book a session.
Getting Started This Week
You don't need a course, a speaker page, or a massive Twitter following to start running paid SEO strategy sessions. Here's the simplest path to your first booking.
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Pick your first session type. Start with a 60-minute SEO Strategy Session. It's the most universally in-demand and the easiest to deliver consistently.
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Set your price. Based on your experience, pick a number in the range above and commit to it. You can adjust after your first few sessions.
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Set up your booking page. Sign up at Talkspresso, create your service, add intake questions, and get your booking link.
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Post on LinkedIn. Announce that you're offering SEO strategy sessions. Describe what clients get, who it's for, and link to your booking page. One post is enough to get started.
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Offer two or three free mini-audits. Pick companies in your target niche with visible SEO issues, send a brief audit, and follow up with a booking link. This generates your first testimonials and gives you social proof for future clients.
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Run your first paid session. Everything else can come later. The only thing that actually matters right now is getting a paying client on a call and delivering a session they want to tell people about.
SEO expertise is genuinely hard to come by, and the businesses that need it most are willing to pay for focused, high-quality guidance. Paid SEO strategy sessions are the most direct way to convert that expertise into revenue.
Explore the full feature set on Talkspresso for Consultants, or read our platform comparison for paid video calls.
Start running paid SEO strategy sessions on Talkspresso →
