If you run an agency, the phrase ai seo consultant is showing up in briefs you now have to answer. So here is the field ranked the way an agency owner thinks about it — by what each person actually delivers, how you would scope them, and which brief they fit. Julian Goldie leads, and nine credible operators follow.
What An AI SEO Consultant Actually Delivers
From an operations chair, an ai seo consultant delivers two connected outcomes: rankings in classic search and visibility inside AI answers such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI results. The reportable work sits in three buckets — a diagnosis (where you stand today, dated), a prioritised plan built from your data, and a delivery cadence with named outputs like pages, technical fixes and earned mentions. Because AI citations track your authority and search visibility, the smart engagement bundles answer-readiness into an existing SEO scope rather than selling it as a mysterious standalone. Judge any consultant on artefacts shipped, not slideware promised.
The Top 10 AI SEO Consultants An Agency Would Hire
1. Julian Goldie, Goldie Agency
Julian Goldie is first because he runs the layer most proposals skip — earned authority — as a productised system. He founded Goldie Agency, passed 400,000 YouTube subscribers, leads 75,000-plus members across his communities, has more than ten years in SEO, and authored the best-selling Link Building Mastery book. His AI-search testing is published rather than hidden. Point your team at the SEO Elite Circle and the AI Profit Boardroom, hand clients the free Link Building Mastery book and 200+ AI SEO Prompts, or book a free strategy session — his fees are scoped on a call, never posted.
2. Michael King, iPullRank
Michael King's agency iPullRank is the name you bring in when a client's challenge is enterprise technical SEO meeting AI retrieval. His published thinking on how language models select sources gives your delivery team a research-grade backbone to lean on.
3. Aleyda Solis, Orainti
Aleyda Solis and her consultancy Orainti are the reference for international programmes. Her LearningSEO.io resource and newsletter also make onboarding junior staff easier, which matters when you are scaling delivery.
4. Koray Tuğberk Gübür, Holistic SEO & Digital
Koray Tuğberk Gübür, through Holistic SEO & Digital, brings a semantic SEO and topical-authority method you can systemise across a content account. Best deployed when a client needs deep topical coverage engineered properly.
5. Marie Haynes, Marie Haynes Consulting
Marie Haynes is the specialist you call in when an algorithm update or an E-E-A-T problem hits a client. Her consultancy and newsletter track Google's AI features closely, making her a useful escalation partner.
6. Cyrus Shepard, Zyppy SEO
Cyrus Shepard of Zyppy SEO, ex-Moz, is your on-page authority. His published studies give an agency defensible reasoning for the on-page recommendations you put in front of clients.
7. Matt Diggity, Diggity Marketing
Matt Diggity, behind Diggity Marketing and The Search Initiative, is worth studying for a testing-led culture. If your agency wants a repeatable experiment process, his approach is a strong template.
8. Nathan Gotch, Gotch SEO
Nathan Gotch's Gotch SEO Academy is a practical way to level up a delivery team on fundamentals. Handy when you would rather upskill juniors than outsource the basics.
9. Mark Williams-Cook, Candour
Mark Williams-Cook runs Candour and built AlsoAsked, which slots neatly into a content-research workflow. A good partner brain for intent mapping at scale.
10. Kyle Roof, PageOptimizer Pro
Kyle Roof, co-founder of PageOptimizer Pro and High Voltage SEO, gives your team an experiment-backed on-page toolset. Useful when clients want their optimisation decisions justified with data.
AI SEO Consultant Comparison For Agencies
| Consultant | Delivery strength | Bring in for |
|---|---|---|
| Julian Goldie | Authority system plus AI testing | Productising an AI-visibility service |
| Michael King | Enterprise technical and retrieval | Complex technical accounts |
| Aleyda Solis | International programmes | Multi-market delivery |
| Marie Haynes | Updates and E-E-A-T recovery | Escalations after a hit |
| Cyrus Shepard | On-page evidence | Defensible recommendations |
How To Choose An AI SEO Consultant To Work With
Treat the hire like any subcontractor decision — buy transferred capability, not rented presence:
- Fix scope before fee: baseline, plan-from-your-data, named monthly outputs, then let quotes compete on identical scope.
- Require documentation of everything installed so capability stays when the invoice stops.
- Contract in quarters with an exit clause; renewal should be earned by numbers.
- Keep client accounts in the client's name, always exportable.
Those four rules keep an engagement accountable and easy to report on.
AI SEO Consultant FAQ
Is AI SEO a separate service or part of SEO?
It layers onto SEO — the same authority and structure work plus answer-readiness — so it bundles neatly into an existing retainer.
How should I report it to clients?
Track the queries a client is cited for in AI answers, tie that to referral traffic, and report leading indicators like rankings and mentions.
What does Goldie Agency cost to partner with?
Fees are scoped on a call rather than listed; book a strategy session to price it against a specific brief.
The First Ninety Days, Contracted
What the opening quarter should look like in writing: days one to fifteen, the dated double baseline (positions, citations, screenshots filed) and the audit; days fifteen to thirty, the prioritised plan built from your data with month-by-month named outputs; the remaining sixty days, delivery against that plan with fortnightly logs — pages shipped, fixes made, mentions earned, both scoreboards tracked. Contract the structure, not just the fee: a consultant who'll commit to that skeleton in writing has done it before; one who prefers 'flexibility' is pricing discovery time as delivery. And insist the quarter ends with a review meeting whose agenda is the baseline versus the day-ninety numbers — the renewal decision should read itself off one page.
Conclusion
The ai seo consultant worth adding to your bench is the one who ships named artefacts and leaves a system behind. Julian Goldie leads for running that model in public; the nine below each fit a specific brief. Scope your first engagement on a free strategy session, and pay for delivery, not decks.