No-Nonsense SEO Consulting & Training
Let’s startAbout Me
Hello, I’m Michael Gordon.
I’m a highly experienced and dedicated SEO consultant & trainer based in the Toronto area. I provide customized SEO services tailored to your business’s goals, needs and budget.
You won’t encounter any ‘big agency’ nonsense here. On the contrary, you’ll get real accountability from a consultant who genuinely cares about your success like a true partner, not a vendor.
SEO isn’t just a full-time career for me, it’s an obsession. The only thing I’m even more obsessive about is the level of service that I provide to my clients. Their happiness means everything to me.
Thankfully, my proven, no-nonsense approach to SEO gets results.
My Approach to SEO
Implementing a well-devised SEO strategy can do wonders for most businesses: higher search engine rankings, more and better-targeted traffic, better leads and more sales.
Given that SEO touches upon so many aspects of most businesses, I take a holistic approach to SEO and seek to gain an understanding of your overall business: your goals & challenges, target audience, business model, product & service strategy, and more.
SEO Process Overview
Step 1: Research & Analysis
As an SEO consultant and trainer, I thoroughly research and analyze your website for:
- technical issues that prevent Google from displaying your website pages in their search results
- strategic gaps that are hurting your website’s ability to rank well and/or get clicked on by searchers, and…
- usability issues that prevent your site from ‘converting’ as well as it could – meaning I’ll help to get more of your visitors to take the actions you desire once they arrive at your site e.g. buying your product/service, submitting a form, phoning you, etc.
Step 2: Documented Action Plan
I then provide a comprehensive, custom-tailored strategy that details exactly what changes you need to make to your website and online marketing to get better search engine rankings, more targeted traffic, and more conversions.
Step 3: Implementation
You can then either implement my recommendations by yourself with my guidance, or I can take care of the implementation for you.
Step 4: Training (Optional)
After the core implementation is complete, I can provide remote SEO training to key members of your web team, enabling them to create search-optimized content on their own, quickly and effectively (optional, based on your available time and interest).
Build a Solid Foundation
I’ll build a solid SEO foundation for your website based on fundamental strategies and best practices.
Don’t Forget The Audience
I’ll optimize your website for both search engines and your audience. This is what your audience wants, and it’s what Google wants and rewards.
‘White Hat’ SEO Only – No Nonsense
I use current, advanced ‘white hat’ SEO methodologies only (i.e. those that comply with Google’s guidelines). No outdated tactics or ‘black hat’ nonsense that can get your site in trouble.
Well-Documented, Comprehensive Analyses
All of my SEO analyses are extremely thorough, and supported by clean, understandable, well-documented deliverables.
Custom-Tailored Solutions
The SEO solutions I provide are all completely customized to meet your business’s specific goals, needs and budget.
Unmatched Personal Service
I provide a level of personal service that I honestly think you’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
Unwavering Honesty and Integrity
I’ll be 100% honest with you at all times and in every way.
If I don’t think I can help you, I’ll tell you. If I don’t feel confident about the ROI that you can achieve from SEO, I’ll tell you.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a budget of $5,000 or $50,000. I’ll tell you what I truly believe just the same.
Exceptional Value and High ROI
If we work together, I’m going to give you 100% – nothing less. I strive to give each and every client outstanding value that delivers meaningful and measurable ROI.
But it’s not all me, it’s a joint effort. There’s no doubt that great working relationships have been a major factor in my clients’ SEO successes to date.
That said, if I don’t feel highly confident that we can achieve worthwhile results together, then I won’t take on your project.
Obsessive Commitment to Client Satisfaction
As mentioned earlier, I’m obsessive about the level of service that I provide to my clients, and their happiness really does mean everything to me.
My Services
Below is a summary of the SEO services that I most commonly provide to my clients.
The specific services that I recommend for each prospective client are all tied together into a cohesive SEO proposal that is tailored to each business’s goals, needs and budget.
Discovery
What are your business’s goals & challenges? Who is your target audience and what are their interests? What is your business model / revenue model? What is your product & service strategy?
Discovery is the first step in the overall SEO process, and is all about getting to know your business.
In particular, it is a consultation with you to better understand and/or define your business strategy, which will form the foundation of your SEO strategy.
Keyword Research & Analysis
Keyword research & analysis is a fundamental part of online marketing. Your content may be compelling, but are you using the words your target audience is actually interested in and actively searching for?
Furthermore, you need to consider your competition. Which keywords can you realistically rank well for? Which ones don’t you have a chance at?
I provide an in-depth and actionable analysis that shows you exactly which terms to focus on (and which ones to avoid) for highly targeted, maximum potential traffic from the search engines.
Analytics
Analytics tools such as Google Analytics provide a wealth of data about the traffic that your website receives. But the data itself provides only limited value.
The real value of analytics is derived from knowing how to interpret this data to gain meaningful insights into your visitors’ behavior that you can take action on.
The analytics reports and analysis I provide do exactly this.
Search Engine Rankings
Search engine rankings are only part of the picture in SEO. But let’s face it: rankings matter. If you want to be found, you need to be visible.
The ranking reports I provide reveal much more than just the position in Google where your website is found for its target keywords.
Your rankings are integrated into our keyword research & analysis in a way that offers far more insight than just standalone ranking reports.
SEO Site Audit
Having a website that meets both the technical needs of search engines and the usability needs of your audience is critical to successful SEO.
My SEO site audit provides a thorough, custom-tailored assessment of your website. Literally dozens of SEO factors are assessed and documented in an easy to follow, prioritized action plan.
The audit includes everything that matters for building a rock-solid SEO strategy that your audience will appreciate and the search engines will love!
On-Page Optimization
Appropriate use of keywords in your content and in your title tags / meta tags is a major factor in both the visitor experience and search engine rankings.
While inadequate use of keywords can significantly limit the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, over-use of keywords will surely kill it. Thus, the right balance must be struck.
Done right, on-page optimization results in content that is more relevant to both search engines and to your target audience, multiplying your opportunities for increased visibility and higher quality traffic.
Link-Building Strategy
Inbound links from other websites carry more weight than any other factors when it comes to SEO. But it isn’t so much the quantity of links that matters (far from it), it’s the quality of these links.
One well-placed, contextually relevant link from a trusted, high authority site can give you a far greater SEO boost than 1,000 links of mediocre quality (and poor quality links can actually hurt your SEO).
However, obtaining quality links is a grind for most marketing folks. But it doesn’t have to be. I’ll show you how to attract high quality links in a way that is a natural extension of your marketing efforts – and I’ll even get you started by generating some of these high-value links for you.
Usability & Conversion
Gaining visibility in the search engines – and getting searchers to click through to your website once it’s found in the search engine results pages – are the critical first two measures of any successful SEO initiative.
But it’s not enough. Once visitors arrive at your site from the search engines, are they taking the actions you desire – like opting in to your newsletter, requesting a product demo, or contacting you?
If your site isn’t converting visitors into qualified leads, then all the traffic in the world is meaningless.
I’ll identify specific opportunities for usability improvement that can transform your conversion rates.
Local Search Optimization
Is your website aiming to reach an audience that is located in a specific city or neighbourhood close to your place of business?
Whether you have a physical business location that your customers come to, or you’re a service provider that visits its customers at their location, optimizing your site for local keyword searches can be key to both the quantity and quality of traffic you receive from Google.
But how do you optimize your site for local searches? The devil’s in the details. I can guide you through.
Website Redesign & Migration Consulting
Are you going through a website redesign? Or a migration to a new domain, CMS or web host? The earlier you get your SEO guy or gal involved, the better.
Why? Your new site may look beautiful on the outside, but the reality is that most web designers and developers unwittingly leave their site’s SEO in worse shape after a redesign and/or migration, not better shape.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. With proper early-stage planning, analysis and guidance, you can not only maintain your site’s SEO, but actually take it to new heights.
Desktop and Mobile Optimization
Google’s mobile-first indexing means the smartphone version of a website is used as the primary benchmark for indexing and ranking, rather than the desktop version.
But optimization of your website for both mobile and desktop is essential both for your users and for SEO.
How do you optimize for desktop and mobile devices? How do Google’s guidelines differ between the two? How do you measure performance on desktop vs. mobile?
Our deep-dive has you covered.
International and Multilingual SEO
Does your website cater to – or are you considering catering to – a target audience located in multiple countries? Or that speaks more than one language?
If so then you need to prepare your website for what is widely considered by SEO industry professionals and Google themselves to be one of the most technically complex areas of SEO.
Translation, localization, implementation of proper location & language tags, domain structure and app/plugin decisions… ok, enough said.
Fear not. I’ll guide you and your design/development team through the process to achieve a multi-country and/or multilingual site that will be intuitive and optimized for all: your users, Google, and your website admins.
Competitor Analysis
Are your competitors outranking you in the search engines, generating more leads and making more sales?
My competitive analysis will reveal the strategies of your top online competitors. You can then leverage this intelligence within your own strategy to better compete.
Learn what they’re doing differently, what’s working, and what’s not. Discover and fill any gaps in your own strategies and take advantage of the gaps in their strategies to gain market share.
AI
Artificial Intelligence is all the buzz these days in SEO. But how should you change your content strategy – if at all – to gain visibility in AI search results? What changes will really move the needle on your results and what is just ‘noise’ and a waste of time – and possibly even damaging to your SEO?
I’ll provide clear and actionable insights based on the specific needs of your site and business.
SEO Implementation Services
Your killer SEO strategy has been documented in an easy to follow action plan. Now it’s time to implement!
Not comfortable editing server configuration files or don’t have time to make the recommended content edits? No problem – I’ll take care of it for you.
Do you have the resources and technical know-how to implement largely on your own and just need a little guidance along the way? I can do that too.
Whatever your implementation needs, we’ll work together to get it done.
Remote SEO Training
Knowing how to apply basic day-to-day SEO best practices makes your in-house web team much more valuable to your organization.
With my remote SEO training, your company can eliminate (or at least minimize) its dependency on outside consultants for ‘routine’ SEO tasks, enabling it to create search-optimized content in a shorter time frame and with far greater effect.
Developers, designers, content creators, editors, marketers, and even CEOs will benefit. Maximize your team’s value and your ROI from SEO.
Ongoing SEO Services
My ongoing SEO services are designed to protect and continually improve your site’s usability and search engine visibility after the core SEO implementation.
My aim is to increase the volume and quality of traffic you receive through continued optimization of new and existing content, effective use of emerging SEO strategies, and appropriate adjustments based on any actionable changes to Google’s algorithm.
Flexible arrangements are available based on your needs and budget, including monthly or quarterly retainer, periodic check-ins (e.g. every 3-6 months), and specific SEO tasks.
Agency Partnership Services
Do you have an agency with clients in need of some serious SEO expertise? Let’s talk.
I partner with WordPress designers, Shopify agencies, and other digital service providers to serve as a valuable extension of their team.
Various types of arrangements can be made, including the possibility of white label opportunities for the right fit. A win-win for you and your clients.
Pricing
All pricing is customized based on each client’s particular goals, needs and budget. A typical project consists of two phases:
Phase 1: A thorough assessment and initial cleanup & optimization of your site’s fundamental SEO issues.
Note that this phase would apply to either SEO work we do on an existing site, or SEO we do on a new site i.e. if you’re going through a website redesign/rebuild and/or migration to a new CMS or web host.
In either scenario, pricing for this phase is typically in the $3,000-$7,000/month (CAD) range for one site (depending on complexity and other factors), and would typically take 6-12 months to complete. This is the ‘heavy lifting’ phase.
Phase 2: SEO maintenance and continued growth.
After the initial SEO cleanup/optimization, we ideally want to:
- maintain the integrity of the SEO cleanup/optimization we do in Phase 1
- avoid new SEO issues from arising as the site is further developed and/or new content is added
- deal with any new SEO issues that may arise
- identify and take action on any new opportunities that are uncovered that could further enhance your site’s SEO
Pricing for this phase is typically in the $2,500-$6,000/month range, and is often significantly less than it is during phase 1 (in many cases about 25% less). For example, if your phase 1 pricing is $4,000/month, the phase 2 pricing might drop to $3,000/month.
More Info
Each phase would cover whichever services are highest priority based on your particular goals, needs and budget.
You will have some flexibility to choose your budget for each phase, within ranges that we believe are reasonable for your project. The higher your budget, the more work we do each month so the faster you can expect to see results. A lower budget means a slower pace of work so results will take a little longer, but you receive the same exceptional quality of work and value and unmatched personal service.
The phase 1 work would typically require a minimum project period in the 6-12 month range, as we need enough time and budget to properly complete the initial work.
Phase 2 will typically also require a 6-12 month project period, though in some cases it may make sense to work on a month-to-month basis, cancellable anytime with a minimum 30 days notice prior to the start of the next unpaid monthly billing cycle (i.e. no long term commitments required).
Payments are typically made on either a monthly or quarterly basis.
Yes I do. For both new and existing clients who just need some guidance or advice – be it answering some burning questions or helping to devise an effective online marketing strategy – hourly consulting may be a good option.
Often a relatively small investment can help set you on the right path, saving you from making mistakes that can cost you significant time, money, and frustration.
My rate is $250/hour (CAD). If you’re a non-profit with charitable status, you may be eligible for up to a 40% discount, or as low as $150/hour.
Yes I do. While most of my clients are located in the Toronto area, many are in other parts of Canada, the US, and overseas e.g. UK, etc.
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Please fill out the form, or give me a call at 647-588-0691.
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