Sit. Stay. Rank.

I’m Zach Karl, a Kansas City-based freelance SEO consultant with 10+ years of experience helping brands grow their visibility in search and turn it into real business outcomes. Search Dog Consulting exists for brands that want honest, common sense SEO and are tired of working with partners that look busy but are really just chasing their own tails.

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Freelance SEO Services

Whether you need a one-time engagement to audit your website or an ongoing partner to run your SEO program, there’s a clear way to work together.

Every project includes a kickoff meeting to align on your goals and a presentation meeting to walk through findings and recommendations so you’re never left wondering what you paid for.

Comprehensive SEO Strategy: Not sure where your SEO stands or where to focus first? A comprehensive strategy engagement covers your technical health, content opportunities, local presence (if applicable), and competitive positioning in one complete package. You walk away with a prioritized roadmap so every decision after it has a foundation behind it.
Technical SEO: Technical issues are often the invisible ceiling on your SEO performance. If your site has crawlability problems, structural issues, or Core Web Vitals holding it back, no amount of content optimization will get you where you want to go.
Content SEO: Content without strategy is just noise, especially in the age of AI and LLMs. A content SEO engagement identifies the topics and keywords most likely to drive qualified traffic, identifies what’s underperforming and why, and spotlights opportunities to optimize existing pages across your funnel to better match what your audience is actually searching for.
Local SEO: For businesses that depend on local customers, visibility in local search and the map pack is non-negotiable. A local SEO project includes audits of your current presence to identify gaps, and optimizations of your listings so the right people can find you.
SEO Site Migrations: A site migration done wrong can erase years of organic progress overnight. I provide full planning and oversight before, during, and after the migration so your search presence comes through intact.
Analytics Configuration: Bad data makes every other decision harder. An analytics configuration engagement makes sure your tracking is accurate, your goals are set up correctly, and you’re measuring what actually matters before any SEO work begins.

Every retainer engagement follows a clear structure so you always know what phase we’re in and what’s happening with your organic search.

Onboarding and Strategy: Before any ongoing work begins, we start with a structured audit and research phase covering your technical health, content, analytics setup, and keyword opportunities. This establishes your baseline, surfaces quick wins, and produces the roadmap that guides everything that follows. This phase is scoped and priced separately from the monthly retainer.
Campaign Management: Ongoing execution guided by your roadmap. This includes on-page optimization, content development, technical maintenance, and any other work scoped to your specific goals. Your roadmap is a living document and we adjust as results come in and priorities shift.
Monthly Reporting: A clear report every month that shows what moved, what didn’t, and what we’re doing about it. No vanity metrics, no padding.

Hourly work is a good fit for:

One-off strategy or consulting calls
Reviewing work done by another vendor or in-house team
Technical SEO questions during a build or redesign
Implementation support for teams who have a plan but need extra hands executing
Anything outside the scope of an existing retainer

Why Search Dog

SEO gets a bad reputation because a lot of SEO professionals do it poorly. They deliver automated analytics reports without insights, website crawls dressed up as audits, vanity metrics disconnected from business goals. Today, many of those same experts are trying to sell you on spending more of your money on their “100% guaranteed GEO and LLM optimization service” despite never figuring out good SEO in the first place.

At Search Dog Consulting, I do things differently. I believe in being upfront about exactly what you need to meet your business goals, what you can expect when you work with me, and how much it’s going to cost. When you work with me, you’re not getting handed off to an associate-level specialist or a virtual assistant, and you’re not being fed strategies generated by AI without any oversight or critical thought. You’re working directly with me, someone who’s been in the weeds of SEO long enough to know that shortcuts don’t compound but honest strategy does.

I’m Zach Karl

I started Search Dog Consulting in 2026 because after a decade in SEO, I wanted to do the work on my own terms. Full ownership over the strategy, the client relationships, and the outcomes.

My career has taken a deliberately unconventional path through the industry.

I started as a copywriter at a health sciences agency, which taught me two of the most valuable skills I have as an SEO: how to research and how to write.
From there I moved in-house to be a one-person marketing department, where I taught myself SEO, paid search, email, social, design, and development all at once. While my knowledge across channels and skills grew tenfold, I was truly a master of none.
For the last 6+ years, I’ve narrowed my focus on SEO at a KC search marketing agency. While running the digital marketing department, I built and implemented SEO strategies for clients across a wide range of industries and learned what moves the needle for businesses of different sizes and stages of growth.

What all of that means in practice is that I don’t approach SEO in a silo. I understand how it connects to the broader marketing funnel and I know how to work alongside developers, paid media teams, and stakeholders without anyone needing a translator.

The other member of Search Dog Consulting is Simpson, a deaf rescue pit-cur-lab-pointer mix and my best friend. He doesn’t do much SEO but he has strong opinions about when we go on walks. The brand is as much his as it is mine.

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