Why a website does not rank
When a site brings in no traffic, the cause almost always comes down to one of these four situations. They call for different work and different budgets, which is why the diagnosis comes before anything else.
Google cannot see everything
Whole pages stay out of the index: blocked by the robots file, invisible in the internal linking, rendered by JavaScript the crawler does not run, or buried among thousands of automatically generated URLs.
Pages compete with each other
Several pages target the same keywords. Google picks one, rarely the one you would have chosen, and the others cancel each other out. It happens a lot after a redesign or when a blog has grown without a plan.
The content misses the point
The page covers the right topic with the wrong intent. Someone looking for a price does not want an in-depth article, and the reverse is true too. Google measures that gap very well, and it is what separates qualified traffic from the rest.
Nothing points to you
In a market where competitors have ten years of history and hundreds of backlinks, a clean website is not enough. You need to know which queries are worth fighting for, and which ones to let go for now.
What the audit covers
It is the starting point of almost all my missions. Five areas, one report, and a list of actions ranked by expected gain and workload.
- Technical
- The technical audit itself: a full crawl of the site, index coverage in Search Console, response codes, redirects, URL structure, markup, structured data, Core Web Vitals.
- Semantic
- The keywords you already rank for without knowing it, the ones you target by mistake, and the ones nobody covers in your market.
- Content
- Page by page: what is missing, what duplicates something else, what deserves to be merged and what would be better removed.
- Authority
- Backlink profile, comparison with the sites ahead of you, and an honest estimate of the effort needed to catch up with them.
- GEO
- How your business shows up in the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and what is missing for it to be cited.
You receive the report and the action plan. They are written to be understood without me, and usable by any provider if you decide to continue with someone else.
After the audit, three paths
The report commits you to nothing. Depending on your resources and your team, what comes next takes one of these three forms.
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You implement
The plan is prioritized and detailed enough for a developer or a webmaster to follow. Many clients stop there, and that is perfectly fine.
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I implement
I apply the fixes myself, on WordPress, Shopify, PrestaShop, Wix, Webflow or a custom-built site. Every optimization goes through you before it goes live.
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We work monthly
Reserved for sites with real recurring output: a catalog that changes, content to publish, a contested market that needs monitoring.
GEO is part of the same mission
A growing share of searches no longer ends in a click, and so no longer brings organic traffic. Search engines generate the answer directly, and the only visibility left is being the cited source. The mechanisms overlap a lot with classic SEO, though not entirely.
What matters on top: a page structure a model can split cleanly, answers phrased so they can be extracted, consistent structured data, and mentions of your brand outside your own site. I cover this in the audit without billing it separately, because splitting it off would make no sense: we fix the same pages.
The field moves fast and a lot of the advice going around rests on nothing verifiable. I took the time to document the way these engines actually select their sources, separating what is established from what is still guesswork.
Two areas where the work changes in nature
The principles apply everywhere, their application much less so. Two situations call for trade-offs you will not meet anywhere else.
Online stores
A catalog creates URLs nobody asked for, and you have to decide which ones Google is allowed to see. The SEO of an online store largely comes down to that decision.
How much an SEO consultant costs
The question always comes first, so I might as well answer it straight away. These are independent consultant rates: for the same work, an SEO agency charges more, because it has a structure to carry.
Audit and implementation
| Site size | Audit only, all taxes included | Audit + fixes applied, all taxes included |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 50 pages showcase site, tradesperson, firm, local SME | €690 | €1,290 |
| 50 to 300 pages SME with an active blog, small e-commerce | from €1,190 | from €1,890 |
| 300 to 1,500 pages established e-commerce, catalog site | from €1,990 | on quote |
| Larger, multilingual or multi-site | on quote | on quote |
Content and follow-up
| Optimized article, 1,000 to 1,500 words | €125 |
|---|---|
| Pillar article, 2,000 words or more | €245 |
| Quarterly follow-up rankings, Search Console, Core Web Vitals, report | €290 / quarter |
| Monthly support e-commerce, contested market, ongoing production | €990 / month |
| Consulting session, 2 hours minimum | €60 / hour |
All prices shown include all taxes: VAT does not apply (article 293 B of the French General Tax Code). Nothing is added to the amount shown.
Frequently asked questions
How long does an SEO audit take?
Allow one week for a site of up to 50 pages, from the moment I have access to Search Console and to the analytics tool. For a catalog of several thousand URLs, two to three weeks.
The time goes mostly into the crawl and cross-checking the data. The report itself is quick to write once the problems are identified.
Which CMS do you work with?
WordPress, Shopify, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Wix and Webflow for the most common ones. On these platforms I work in the interface, with the plugins and page templates.
I also develop in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL, so a custom site or a less common framework is no problem. That is often where fixes are quickest to apply.
Do you work remotely?
Yes, and that is how almost all missions run. An audit, a technical fix or a piece of writing does not require being on site.
I am based in the Nord department of northern France and can travel within Hauts-de-France for a kick-off meeting. Everywhere else in France, everything happens by video call and in writing.
What if nobody on our side can apply the recommendations?
That is the most common case, and it is why the “audit + fixes applied” package exists. I take care of the fixes and you approve them before they go live.
If you have a regular provider, the report is written so they can follow it without me. I can also brief them on a video call, which is often an hour well spent.
Do you do link building?
I audit your backlink profile and tell you where you stand compared with the sites ahead of you. I do not sell link packages.
In most local markets and for most small stores, content and technical work bring more results for the same budget. When authority really is the blocking factor, I tell you, and we discuss an acquisition strategy rather than buying in bulk.
Can you guarantee the top spot?
No, and be wary of anyone who promises it: no serious SEO expert would. Rankings depend on Google's algorithm, on what your competitors do and on how queries evolve, three things no provider controls.
What I commit to: a reasoned diagnosis, fixes that are actually applied, and a before-and-after measurement on the same queries. If nothing moves, you will see it in the follow-up report as clearly as I do.
Should we rebuild the site or optimize it?
The audit settles that question, and the answer is “optimize” more often than people expect. A redesign resets a history that has value, and many sites lose rankings, and therefore revenue, when they switch versions.
A redesign makes sense when the structure itself prevents progress: unmanageable URLs, technology that blocks indexing, no way to add pages. In that case I also handle the migration, and the redirect plan is prepared before launch. That is what made it possible, on a redesign with a domain change, to keep the rankings of twenty-five years of archives.