Tom Dehnel - SEO + AI Search Consultant

SEO and AI Search Consulting, straight from San Francisco.

Results, not reports

You don’t need to “do SEO”. You need to see business growth you can show off to your boss, board, or investors.

We saw consistent month-over-month growth…Tom seamlessly integrated into our team, effectively partnering cross-functionally with team members and with senior leadership to evolve our strategy. I will work with Tom again and again, he is truly the best when it comes to SEO!

- Lauren Sheppard, Content Marketing at Okta

My solution

I’ll find the highest ROI work we can do together and we’ll focus on that. Past clients include Goldman Sachs, Okta, Current, a16z portcos, Amplitude, AT&T, and Asurion.

If you talk to other SEO consultants or SEO agencies about what makes them different, they’ll usually say it’s their “process”, or they do a 1000+ item SEO audit, or something else that’s all about them.

But your company has unique customers and unique challenges when it comes to internal teams and resources. So you can’t just check off boxes and do “best practices” because you’ll waste time and money that way.

Instead, you want to get results like this:

Or this:

Or this:

You can contact me via LinkedIn, or read more about my approach below.

We’ll focus on what’s special

I’ll learn what’s special about your brand, help you create content you’re proud to share, and tap into new markets with search.

I’m not going to have you create a bunch of useless blog posts. Instead we’ll design a content calendar to deliver information that your customers are craving, and we’ll add some secret sauce to make sure that content gets seen in Search and AI results, and drives engagement, pipeline, and revenue.

Tom is an absolute pro. He’s been able to work super closely with our team in a way that’s allowed us to learn from his absolutely comprehensive knowledge of the SEO space. From audits to project management to content strategy Tom as helped set us up for long-term strategic success on the SEO front - a big contrast from some of the more “growth hacky SEO” pitches I’ve received over the years. On top of that, he’s been total pleasure to work with - I can’t recommend highly enough - seriously, reach out it’s the least I can do…

- Adam Hadi, VP Marketing at Current

If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority

No time-wasting. Lots of SEO companies will do an audit and give you a hundred SEO factors to work on. Is all that really necessary? Is it having a business impact? I’ll focus on the key SEO factors that make a difference, and let your dev team focus on the million other things they have on their plate.

No emergencies

I can almost always find quick wins for you. But the bulk of the results are going to come over time. Don’t even start an SEO program unless you can commit to a 12-18 month time horizon for maximum ROI.

We’ll make something great

Agencies will charge you a lot of money to run you through their “process”. That means you get the same deliverables as all their other clients.

But if you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll get the same results as everyone else. That’s no way to compete, and your boss won’t be happy if your SEO program doesn’t deliver results.

When I consult, my job is to make sure we’re working on the unique mix of SEO activities that will help you win. Not just rank for some arbitrary number of keywords.

Optimize for keywords that drive growth

Let’s find out how target market is searching today, and where your competitors are beating you. Then we’ll craft a custom strategy to target the clicks that are most likely to drive revenue.

I hired Tom for a 1-year engagement to improve SEO at Amplitude. With Tom’s strategy and consultation, we:
• Increased blog organic sessions 57% YOY
• Increased organic non-branded clicks 56% YOY
• Developed an aggressive and scalable SEO content strategy that saw Amplitude improve critical keyword rankings each month

Tom doesn’t just have the top SEO chops out there. He’s also a delight to work with. I look forward to working with Tom again and again.

- Mallory Busch, Content Marketing at Amplitude

Create truly useful content

Why bother creating another 800 word blog post if it’s not driving your business?

The Google of today is making standard keyword research obsolete. A good SEO consultant should be able to help create written content that fully captures the theme and intent of your target topic, and positions you as the market leader.

Technical SEO audits

I think it’s a mistake to recommend a Technical Audit every time. But if there are issues that are hurting Google’s ability to crawl and index your site, that’s low-hanging fruit that needs to be fixed.

Whether it’s problems with page speed, site architecture, navigation structure, sitemaps, or meta tags, my technical SEO audits will help your dev team focus on the issues that need to be fixed now.

Link building is the hardest thing to get right in SEO. I have lots of experience and successful case studies where I’ve been able to help brands earn links from the web’s most authoritative sites.

Tom made me money and helped new customers find me. I have an extensive background in SEO, but I knew that Tom didn’t look at SEO from a typical jargon-plagued ‘playbook’ mentality. I wanted to see how he would approach my opportunity. He leveraged his vast domain knowledge and his business instincts to help me formulate an SEO plan that helps passively grow my business month after month.”

- Max Augliere, founder spearfishingri.com

Let’s Chat

Thinking about SEO as a set of best practices will lead to failure. Instead, let’s have a conversation so I can help you understand the key factors to focus on for your unique business and goals.

Contact Me to Work Together