Freelance SEO Services for WordPress Websites: What the Job Should Include

Freelance SEO services for WordPress websites are hard to compare because two freelancers can quote for the same site and describe completely different jobs. One means “I will send you a report”. The other means “I will log in and change your templates, plugins and pages”. Both call it WordPress SEO.

I have worked in SEO and digital marketing for more than 16 years, much of it on WordPress, and most quote confusion I see comes from the same gap: nobody wrote down what each part of the job includes, who does it and how you know it is finished. This article gives you a ten-line scope checklist to send to every freelancer you are considering. When the quotes come back in the same shape, the comparison takes minutes.

If you want the wider view of what WordPress SEO work covers, my article on what should be in a WordPress SEO services scope goes through the scope items. Here the focus is narrower: how to make a freelancer’s quote specific enough to check.

Advise or implement: the question that changes every quote

The biggest difference between two quotes is rarely the rate. It is whether the freelancer will make the changes or only recommend them.

Google’s page on hiring an SEO lists the services an SEO may offer, from “Review of your site content or structure” and “Technical advice on website development” to “Content development” and “Keyword research”. Some of those end in a document. Others end in changes on your live site. A freelancer who implements will quote more hours, but you won’t pay a developer to do the same work again later.

Neither model is wrong. Advice-only work suits a business with a developer on hand. Implementation suits a small team where nobody else will touch the theme or the plugin settings. What you can’t compare is a quote that mixes both without saying which is which.

For every line in the scope, ask the freelancer to mark one of three options:

• Advise: a written finding and a fix your team or developer applies.
• Implement: the freelancer makes the change, then records it.
• Not included: stated, so you aren’t surprised later.

The ten-line scope for freelance SEO services for WordPress websites

Here is the checklist I would send. It covers a typical WordPress site with an SEO plugin, a theme and a handful of other plugins. A shop on WooCommerce adds product and filter pages to lines 2 and 3, but the shape stays the same.

A few lines need more explanation.

Line 2 is where a lot of WordPress problems hide: tag archives, attachment pages, internal search results and staging copies that Google can see. My list of 15 technical fixes for WordPress in priority order covers the usual suspects, so I won’t repeat them here. What matters for the quote is that the freelancer names the URL groups they will check.

Line 6 should name pages or a page count. “On-page optimisation” with no pages attached can mean five pages or five hundred.

Line 8 is where quotes go vague most often. A caching plugin is not speed work. Ask for the templates they will measure (home page, a post, a category page, a product page if you sell) and the figures they will report before and after.

Line 9 is often left out completely. If your project changes any URL, a redirect map belongs in the scope from day one.

The WordPress access a freelancer actually needs

On WordPress, access decides what a freelancer can do, and what they can break. WordPress has built-in roles, and its documentation on roles and capabilities describes them in one line each. An Administrator is “somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site”. An Editor is “somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users”. An Author “can publish and manage their own posts”. The same documentation advises: “Only grant the capabilities required for the tasks the role is intended to perform.”

In practice:

• Advice-only work often needs no WordPress login at all. Search Console access, a crawl and a look at the public site cover most of lines 2 to 8.
• Page edits and internal links (lines 6 and 7) are Editor work.
• Plugin settings, theme templates and redirects (lines 3, 4, 8 and 9) need an Administrator account, because they change site settings rather than content.

Whatever the role, the freelancer gets their own named account, never your login. When the work ends, you delete it.

How to check the work without being an SEO

A scope with a “done means” column gives you something to check. You don’t need technical skills for most of it.

1. Ask for the change log. Every change, with a date, the page or setting and a reason. Google’s hiring page says that an SEO with FTP access to your server “should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site”. The same applies to anyone with a WordPress login.
2. Spot-check pages in Search Console. The URL Inspection tool “provides information about Google’s indexed version of a specific page”, and its live test checks the current version of a page for indexing issues and structured data. Pick two or three pages from the change log and look.
3. Compare against the baseline. Line 10 gives you the starting figures. Without them, nobody can tell you later whether the work helped.

One honest limit: a page that passes every check can still take time to be recrawled, and Search Console’s help page says that requesting indexing “does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google Index.” Good work removes obstacles. It doesn’t control Google’s timetable.

If a line in the quote has no way for you to see that it was done, it isn’t a scope line yet.

What should stay out of a freelance WordPress SEO quote

Some work sits next to SEO and often gets bundled into it. It may be worth paying for. It just shouldn’t hide inside an SEO price, because you can’t compare two quotes when one includes it and the other doesn’t.

If a freelancer insists on a bundle, ask for the hours behind each part. If they can’t split it, you can’t judge it.

Comparing two freelance quotes line by line

Once both freelancers reply on the same ten lines, lay the quotes side by side. You will usually find one of three things.

• Different lines marked “implement”. The cheaper quote often advises where the dearer one implements. Add your developer’s time to the cheaper quote before you compare totals.
• A line missing. Usually line 9 (redirects) or line 10 (baseline and handover). Ask whether it is excluded or forgotten.
• Hours that look too small. Five minutes per page for “page edits” means titles only, not copy. Ask what the hours cover.

For the contract terms that sit around the scope (ownership, timesheets, notice and handover) see my article on red flags and contract terms when hiring an SEO freelancer.

Freelance SEO services for WordPress websites: when a freelancer fits

A freelancer is a good fit when the job is well defined: an audit, a set of fixes, a migration, or a few hours a month on top of a team that already publishes. Google’s own hiring page is also clear that you are responsible for the actions of anyone you hire, so a single person with Administrator access needs the safeguards above.

A freelancer is a weaker fit when you need daily content production, design and development, and SEO all at once. That is a team’s workload, and splitting it across one person usually means some lines get done badly.

How I quote WordPress work

I charge by the hour, with no fixed packages, and I quote WordPress work in lines like the ones above, each marked advise or implement, with the hours behind it. For most sites the first step is a WordPress SEO audit, which covers lines 2 to 5 and ends in a ranked fix list your developer can use, or that I implement. Ongoing WordPress SEO consulting picks up the lines that need doing after that. My background and certifications are on my profile page.

If you already have a developer you trust, I will tell you which lines they can handle without me.

FAQ

What should SEO services for a WordPress website include?

At minimum: access and backups, an indexing review, template and plugin checks, a page map, page edits, internal links, speed measured per template, redirects if URLs change, and a baseline with a change log. Each line should say whether the freelancer advises or implements, and what “done” means.

Do WordPress SEO services need Administrator access?

Only for work that changes settings: SEO plugin configuration, theme templates and redirects. Page edits and internal links can be done with an Editor account, and advice-only work often needs no WordPress login at all. Always create a named account and remove it when the work ends.

How do I compare two freelance WordPress SEO quotes?

Send both freelancers the same scope lines and ask them to mark each one advise, implement or not included, with hours. Then add your developer’s time to any quote that advises where the other implements, and ask about any line that is missing.

Should plugin updates and maintenance be part of a WordPress SEO quote?

They can be done by the same person, but they are maintenance, not SEO. Price them as a separate line so you can compare SEO work like for like, and so you know what you are paying for each month.