SEO consulting for Canberra businesses and organisations
Many organisations don't need an agency. They need an experienced person to look at the site, explain what is holding it back and write a plan their own team can carry out. That is Boltly's consulting: a written brief at every stage, from $500 a month, with no lock-in.
Updated
- PurposeWhy the site is not being found for the searches that matter, and what to do first.
- BackgroundA full crawl, search data, a competitor review and a look at how the site is built.
- RecommendationA ranked list of fixes, the person who owns each one, and how the result will be measured.
- Next stepA short call to agree the scope, then a written quote before any work starts.
the route a searcher takes to the right pagethe water axis: content that answers questions
A consultant tells you what to do. An agency does it for you.
Consulting suits organisations with people who can make changes, such as an in-house marketing team, a web developer or a digital team, but who want an experienced eye on the search side.
Advice and direction
- A full audit with findings your team can act on
- A written strategy and a ranked list of fixes
- Reviews of your team's work before it goes live
- Training for writers, marketers and developers
- Regular check-ins to measure what changed
Work done for you
- We write and publish the pages ourselves
- We manage your Google Business Profile
- We build links and handle outreach
- We make the technical fixes on your site
- Reporting on results each month
If you would rather hand the whole job over, see our local SEO for Canberra or the full SEO consulting overview.
The Commonwealth procurement threshold rose to $125,000
Under the Commonwealth Procurement Rules that took effect on 17 November 2025, the procurement threshold for non-corporate Commonwealth entities (other than for construction services) is $125,000. The Department of Finance says the rules now prioritise Australian businesses and small and medium enterprises for some procurements.
Commonwealth threshold, non-corporate entities
Boltly is a small Australian business based in Melbourne, and our published plans start at $500 a month, so an audit or a strategy with follow-up reviews sits well below that threshold. Your procurement team will know which rules apply to your organisation, and we will provide whatever quotes and documents they need.
Source: Department of Finance, Commonwealth Procurement Rules (17 November 2025) and "Procurement method" page, read 4 October 2026. General information, not procurement advice.
The Australian Government Style Manual already has a section on findable content
The Style Manual includes a section called "Findable content", with guidance on how people find information, how search engines work, keywords and on-page optimisation. A consultant helps you apply it to your own site, and fix what the guide cannot: technical problems, site structure and measurement.
How people find information
Start from the words your users actually type, not the name of the program or branch.
Understanding search engines
Make sure pages can be crawled and indexed, and that old or duplicate pages are not competing.
Keywords and search engines
Use the terms people search for in page titles, headings and addresses.
On-page optimisation
Clear titles, descriptions and headings that tell both people and search engines what the page is for.
Source: Australian Government Style Manual, Findable content section and its pages. Descriptions summarised in our words. Checked 4 October 2026.
A government town where most people work somewhere else
Government is the largest single industry in the ACT, but not most of the workforce. At the 2021 Census, Central Government Administration employed 17.1% of working ACT residents, with Defence another 5.8% and computer system design 3.6%. The rest work in health, education, trades, retail, hospitality and professional services, and the territory had 37,785 operating businesses at June 2026.
That split matters for a particular kind of Canberra business: the supplier whose revenue mostly arrives through Commonwealth contracts and panels. When an agency trims a program or a panel is refreshed, the work can stop with little warning, and a website built only to impress procurement officers brings in nothing from anyone else. If that describes you, the consulting question is which private-sector buyers, in Canberra or interstate, search for what you already do, and which two or three pages would need to exist for them to find you.
Sources: ABS Regional population 2024-25 (released 31 March 2026); ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, June 2026 (released 18 August 2026); ABS 2021 Census QuickStats, Australian Capital Territory (industry of employment). Checked 4 October 2026.
Five ways to work with a consultant
An audit is the usual starting point, because every other decision depends on it.
| Engagement | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| SEO audit | A full review of the site's technical health, content and search visibility, with ranked findings. | Anyone starting out, or unsure why traffic has dropped. |
| Strategy and roadmap | A written plan: which searches to target, which pages to build or merge, and in what order. | Teams who can do the work once they know what to do. |
| Ongoing advice | Regular sessions to review work, answer questions and adjust the plan as results come in. | In-house marketing and digital teams. |
| Team training | Practical workshops for writers, editors and developers on writing and building for search. | Organisations that publish a lot of content. |
| Migration review | A redirect plan and pre-launch checks before a new site or platform goes live. | Rebuilds and platform moves. |
If you're moving to a new site soon, our SEO migration service covers the full move.
A strategy only counts once someone owns each fix
A common way for consulting to go wrong is quiet: a good report arrives, it is circulated, and six months later nothing on the site has changed because no one was given the job. In Canberra organisations the web team often sits in another branch, content changes need clearance, and the developer is booked elsewhere. So we write the strategy as an implementation register, and we ask you to fill in the owner column before the engagement closes.
| Recommendation | Owner and effort | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| Merge three overlapping program pages into one | Content lead, with a developer for the redirects. About a day of work, plus clearance time. | One URL answers the question and the old addresses 301 to it. |
| Rewrite page titles on the twenty most visited pages | Web editor. A few hours, in batches of five. | Search Console shows the new titles being picked up for those pages. |
| Remove a staging "noindex" left on a template | Developer. Minutes to fix, one release cycle to ship. | The URL Inspection tool reports the pages as indexable. |
| Track enquiry forms as key events in GA4 | Analytics or digital team. Half a day. | A test submission shows up in the GA4 report. |
If an item has no owner after two check-ins, we say so in writing and either find a smaller version your team can ship or take it off the list. If your team has no capacity at all, consulting is the wrong product, and our audit plus delivery work is the honest alternative.
From first brief to measured result
Every engagement follows the same cycle, whether it lasts two weeks or a year.
Brief
We agree the goals, the audience and what success will look like.
Audit
Crawl, search data and competitors, written up as findings.
Recommend
A ranked plan with an owner and an effort level for each fix.
Support
We review your team's changes and answer questions as they go.
Review
We measure what moved and set the next priorities.
What SEO consulting costs
Consulting is usually scoped as a one-off audit or strategy, or as a set number of advisory sessions. The schedule shows Boltly's three published monthly plans for ongoing work; one-off pieces are quoted in writing after a short scoping call.
See the pricing page for full details.
Fee schedule
No setup fee, no lock-in. Monthly plans can stop at the end of any month.
Questions Canberra teams ask before hiring a consultant
How much does an SEO consultant cost in Canberra?
It depends on the scope: a one-off audit is priced once, while ongoing advice is usually monthly. Boltly's ongoing advice follows the three published plans: Starter from $500 a month, Growth from $900 and Performance from $1,500, with no lock-in. A one-off audit or training session is quoted in writing before any work begins.
What does an SEO consultant do, and how is that different from an agency?
A consultant diagnoses problems and tells you what to do: audits, written strategy, reviews of your team's work and training. An agency carries out the work itself. It suits organisations with their own writers or developers. If a search for "SEO consultant Canberra" brought you here, decide first which of the two you need.
How do we check that an SEO consultant knows what they are doing?
Ask the questions Google itself suggests in its page on hiring an SEO: can they show previous work, do they follow Google Search Essentials, what results do they expect and over what time, how will they measure success, and will they share every change they make and the reasoning behind it. Then ask what they would look at first on your site. A good answer names specific pages and problems; a weak one talks about rankings in general. Be wary of anyone who guarantees a position, because Google says plainly that no one can guarantee the top spot.
Who is the best SEO consultant in Canberra?
No independent ranking names one, so treat anyone who claims the title with care. The question above sets out a better test for any SEO consultant in Canberra, ACT or elsewhere.
What access does a consultant need to run an audit?
For an audit we ask for read access to Google Search Console and to your GA4 property, and a public crawl of the site does the rest. Google's own advice is to grant read access to Search Console at the audit stage and not write access. Keep ownership of every account inside your organisation, add us as a user, and remove us when the engagement ends. If a previous contractor set up Search Console or Analytics under their own login, sort that out first, because you will need those properties long after any consultant has gone.
How long does SEO take to show results?
Google's SEO starter guide says some changes take effect within hours and others take several months. Technical fixes can usually be confirmed in Search Console once pages are recrawled; rankings for competitive searches take longer. The strategy sets out what to watch and when, without promising dates.
Is Canberra too small a market for SEO investment?
No. Canberra had 484,630 residents at June 2025 and the ACT 37,785 operating businesses (ABS), and many Canberra organisations serve customers across Australia. A smaller market can mean fewer competitors on a given search, which you can check by searching your own key terms.
Each question comes from Google's suggested searches or from the FAQs on pages ranking for SEO consulting in Canberra, reviewed 14 September 2026 and rechecked 4 October 2026.
Need a clear search plan?
Written brief · From $500 a month · Nothing locked in