An SEO specialist is someone who brings a website more traffic from organic search: they audit the site, fix technical errors, research keywords, prepare content, build links and measure what it all delivered. In 2026 that means not only traffic from Google but also from the answers in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. My name is RNDr. Milan Fraňo, PhD., I’m Head of SEO and co-founder of WooAcademy in Bratislava, and in this article you’ll find out what an SEO specialist does, what I actually do for clients, and seven fails I’ve seen others make that you should avoid, whether you do SEO or buy it.
- SEO + GEO: Google and AI answers
- Audits, technical SEO, content, links, local SEO
- I don’t guarantee position one in Google
- Bratislava and online
- Updated 3 Oct 2026
SEO specialists and SEO consultants have been popping up like mushrooms after the rain lately. And since ChatGPT arrived, we’ve also got AI SEO experts. If you agree with the claim in the image below, close this page right now. If you don’t, read on to see who an SEO specialist is, what they do and what exactly I do.
[image seo-povera-na-facebooku.png] The argument of someone who presumably knows SEO and is selling a domain that will guarantee you first place in Google because it’s listed in the DMOZ directory. Complete nonsense.
What is an SEO specialist: a definition
An SEO specialist is someone who carries out search engine optimization and improves how pages rank in internet search engines. Put simply, it’s someone who brings in more traffic from organic, meaning unpaid, search. The purpose of hiring an SEO specialist is the same as with other specialists (social, PPC, graphic designer, web editor): to increase a company’s revenue and, above all, its profit. Rankings and traffic are only the path to that, not the goal.
In 2026 one thing has been added: customers no longer ask only Google. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, and those recommend a company straight away. That’s why a good SEO specialist today also deals with whether and how AI models mention you. What SEO is as a whole is covered in the article What is SEO and AI SEO.
SEO specialist, SEO consultant or SEO agency
These terms get mixed up, so let’s be clear.
| Who | What they do | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| SEO specialist | Does the SEO hands-on: audits, fixes, writes briefs, handles technical work, content and links. | You don’t have your own team and want someone to do it all. |
| SEO consultant | Advises and sets the direction: what to do, in what order and why. Your developer, copywriter or marketer does the implementation. | You have a team, but it lacks experience or needs a second opinion. |
| SEO agency | A company with several people. The advantage is capacity; the downside is often that you never talk to an actual specialist, only to an account manager. | A large website, several markets, you need capacity (see FAIL no. 4). |
I do both, as a specialist and as a consultant. It depends on whether the client has their own team or needs me to do everything. What it looks like as a service is on the SEO agency Milan Fraňo page, and as a consultation on the SEO consultation page.
Modern SEO in 2026
SEO today is far more complex than in the past, and it stopped being just about HTML tags and keyword stuffing a long time ago. There are many SEO factors and SEO myths an SEO specialist has to deal with, which means they need a wide range of skills. It’s a journey towards understanding what potential customers are looking for, what type of content best matches a keyword and how to create content that Google considers relevant.
What has changed the most in recent years:
- AI answers right in the results. Google shows AI Overviews and AI Mode, and when an AI answer appears, people click on the results less. So a ranking isn’t enough; you need to be in that answer too.
- ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini as search engines. They have their own crawlers that visit your website, and most of them don’t run JavaScript. What they can’t see in the HTML doesn’t exist for them. More in the article GEO: why ChatGPT doesn’t recommend you even though your SEO is good.
- Site speed isn’t a bonus. Core Web Vitals are in Search Console, and a slow website loses rankings and conversions.
- Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Google and AI models want to know who stands behind the content and whether they know what they’re talking about. An anonymous article by “admin” is out of luck these days.
That’s why I now call what I do SEO + GEO. It’s the same craft, just for more search engines at once.
What an SEO specialist should know
SEO isn’t a narrow specialization, and the best SEO specialists master many different skills across online marketing. I personally got into SEO through building websites, and I still build websites that gain good rankings and organic traffic very quickly. An SEO specialist should be able to:
Data and strategy
Carry out keyword research and find opportunities in it for the client. Propose an SEO strategy and tactics. Report on and analyze data from Google Analytics 4, Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Read the server access log, which shows what Googlebot and AI bots are doing and what Analytics can’t see.
Technical and web
Uncover the errors that prevent better rankings (SEO audit). Know how technical SEO affects rankings: indexing, crawl budget, canonical URLs, redirects, structured data. Understand speed and Core Web Vitals. At least a basic knowledge of HTML and of the steps in building a website. Use Google Tag Manager, Marketing Miner, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs and other tools.
Content, links and risks
Get keywords into the website (on-page SEO). Create content for SEO, in other words advanced copywriting. Acquire and manage backlinks. Know the principles of YouTube SEO and local SEO in Google Business Profile. Understand how AI models choose their sources (GEO). And above all, assess the risks of changing a site’s structure, domain or links, because these can help a website or hurt it.
What I actually do for clients
This is my job description. Not theory, but the things I do every week. Prices and scope are on the search engine optimization page.
1
SEO audit
I go through the website from a technical, content and link perspective. The output isn’t an 80-page PDF export from a tool, but a list of problems ranked by how much they cost you. Often the biggest problem is trivial (see FAIL no. 1).
2
Technical SEO and speed
Indexing, crawl budget, redirects, duplicates, canonical URLs, structured data, sitemaps. Plus speed, especially WordPress and WooCommerce, because that’s what I build websites on too.
3
Keywords and strategy
I find out what your customers actually search for, where you have an opportunity and where it makes no sense to fight. The result is a plan: which pages and articles to create, in what order and what to expect from them.
4
On-page and content
Site structure, headings, category and product copy, articles, internal linking. I write it myself or prepare briefs for a copywriter. If an article doesn’t perform, I expand or rewrite it rather than leaving it hanging there.
5
Link building without spam
Links from relevant websites, PR articles, directories that make sense, partner websites. No packages of a hundred links for €500 (see FAIL no. 3).
6
GEO: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity
I prepare the website so that AI crawlers can read it and its content has a chance of being cited. From the access log I can tell which AI bots visit the site and what they got. I measure AI visibility realistically, because monitoring mentions in AI isn’t the same as Google rankings.
7
Migrations, redesigns, new websites
This is where you can lose in a day what took years to build. I prepare a redirect map, check the structural changes and, after launch, monitor whether Google has picked everything up. And because I came to SEO through building websites, I build websites that are fast and indexable from day one.
8
Local SEO, consulting, training
Local SEO for businesses that sell in a specific city (see below). And if you have your own team, I set the direction, check the outputs and teach your people how to do it.
What working with me looks like
1
Initial conversation. You tell me what you sell, to whom and what you expect from SEO. I look at the website, your competitors and the Search Console data.
2
Estimating the potential. I’ll tell you straight whether SEO makes sense for you and how long it will take to see results. If it doesn’t, I’ll tell you right away and you’ll save money.
3
Audit and priority plan. What to fix right away, what in a month and what not to bother with at all.
4
Implementation. Either I do it, or your team does it based on my briefs and I check the work.
5
Measurement and reporting. Search Console, GA4 and conversions. Not “we went up for 47 keywords”, but how many enquiries and orders came from organic search and from AI.
6
What I need from you. Read access to Search Console and GA4, ideally one day of access logs, and a person who can tell which orders were good ones.
SEO specialist in Bratislava: local SEO
Local SEO is optimization for searches with local intent, where it’s not just the website that decides, but above all the Google Business Profile and the local pack with the map above the results. Hairdresser Petržalka, accountant Bratislava, bike repair near me. It makes sense for restaurants, service businesses, medical practices, tradespeople, lawyers, accountants and online stores with a pick-up point. WooAcademy is based in Bratislava at Bradáčova 7 in Petržalka, where I hold in-person consultations and training; for clients outside Bratislava I work online, and it makes no difference to the SEO.
Google Business Profile
The right categories, services, opening hours, photos, posts. Most businesses have their profile 30% filled in and wonder why Google doesn’t show them.
The same details everywhere
Your name, address and phone number must be the same on the website, in the profile and in directories. Three different addresses in three places mean Google isn’t sure where you actually are. The same goes for AI models.
Reviews
How to get them legitimately and how to respond to them. AI models now read reviews too, when someone types into ChatGPT “recommend a good accountant in Bratislava”.
Local pages and links
A page for each service and location where it makes sense, with its own content. Local media, associations, partners, events.
Structured data
LocalBusiness schema, so that Google and AI know exactly who you are, where you are and what you do.
A local FAIL
Twenty subpages for SEO Bratislava, SEO Petržalka, SEO Ružinov, SEO Trnava with identical text where only the city name changes. Google calls these doorway pages and doesn’t like them. Better one solid page than twenty copies.
How I became an SEO specialist
SEO isn’t a field taught at university, really not, not even at the various media studies faculties. My RNDr. and PhD. degrees didn’t give me SEO, but they taught me to work with data, test hypotheses and not believe anything I haven’t verified. My path to learning is similar to other SEO specialists’: I optimized my own websites and projects, took various international SEO courses, both paid and free, worked in marketing agencies (most recently as Account & Sales Director at a Google Partner agency), work every day on optimizing client and in-house projects, keep learning non-stop and follow trends in SEO and now in AI search too, and I test things on my own websites before I recommend them to a client.
If you’re successful and can bring organic results to clients from different segments, you can call yourself an SEO specialist. I’ve become a recognized SEO specialist, and besides client work I’m a lecturer of accredited SEO courses.
What I can teach you about SEO
One-to-one or corporate training, online and in Bratislava:
- One-to-one SEO training: all of SEO for your website, 4 hours or a full day
- Corporate SEO training: a full-day workshop for your team on your website
- Keyword research training: the output is your own keyword research
- AI SEO and GEO training: AI-assisted articles that rank and that AI cites
- Accredited SEO course with a final exam
- Building a website on WordPress: so the site is ready for SEO from the start
An SEO specialist’s responsibility for their work
As in any field, an SEO specialist should take responsibility for their actions and optimization steps. Right at the start they should be able to estimate the potential and decide whether it makes sense for the client to invest money in SEO at all. Not just make excuses about COVID, AI, competitors and cold weather. And if they break something, they should take responsibility for it and try to repair the damage.
SEO specialist fails I’ve seen
Clients mostly come to me only after a bad experience with SEO: they paid another company thousands of euros and got no results. I’ve been building websites and doing optimization for quite a while now, on many projects across different segments, for both domestic and international companies, so I’ve come across every level of amateurism, from no-name self-proclaimed specialists to the most upmarket agencies. Without naming specific cases, here are the fails to avoid if you want to be a good SEO specialist or choose one well.
1. Indexing blocked
Websites have an option to turn off indexing, which adds <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> to the header and User-agent: * / Disallow: / to the robots.txt file. It’s up to the search engine whether it respects or ignores this tag, but in general your website won’t show up in Google. And watch out: a Disallow on the whole site now also blocks AI crawlers, so even ChatGPT won’t find you.
FAIL: A client paid a big company for an SEO service for a year, and after a year they weren’t showing up anywhere for any keywords. What was the problem? Something trivial: indexing was blocked. A year of paying and no results. A single check in Search Console would have revealed it. How to check is in the article Google isn’t indexing my website.
2. SEO articles without structure or measurement
In SEO, articles are very good for capturing new keywords and gaining relevant rankings. But SEO articles need a certain structure and quality, and an SEO specialist should track performance metrics and respond to them, for example by expanding the content. Content is one of the key strategies in SEO.
FAIL: A client paid for SEO articles a few sentences long, with no structure, no SEO markup, no internal links and no depth. They were essentially PR pieces summarizing a few facts in a handful of sentences. Six articles a month did help the agency’s profits, but from those roughly 80 articles the client got no more than 20 organic visits in a year. I consider that a waste of both time and money.
3. Buying spammy backlinks
Getting backlinks (link building) is one of the basic practices in SEO, and links are still one of the top factors because they build a domain’s trustworthiness (metrics like DA or DR are only estimates by tools, not by Google). But sometimes they can hurt you and make your website drop in the results.
FAIL: Paying for backlinks is normal. But paying for links generated in online games, in a player profile that contains 200 other websites besides your link, is pointless. One client paid the price for exactly that: they got roughly 100 links a month fairly cheaply (around €500), but the SEO benefit was zero, even negative.
4. Price and trustworthiness
In Slovakia, price is often the deciding factor and the quality of work takes a back seat. Price is often linked to a company’s trustworthiness too, and since specialists in Slovakia know each other well, some interesting situations happen.
FAIL: A client contacted me directly (through SEO, via the keyword “SEO services”). I sent them a quote. A few days later a no-name person contacted me saying he wanted SEO services for his client. By coincidence, he asked me to quote for the same client. A week later a fellow SEO specialist told me the merry-go-round went even further: the client had asked at least two other agencies for quotes, one of which asked me directly and the other asked the person who then asked me, so a commission through two middlemen. The client got three different prices, while in every case the work would have been done by one person. It would only have been a matter of time before he found out. Tip: always ask who exactly will work on your website, and insist on talking to them.
5. They promise first place in Google
Promising first place is common practice all over the world. When someone promises you position one in Google, they’re probably either a fool or a fraud. The same goes for guaranteed visibility in ChatGPT: AI answers change even for the same question, so it can’t be guaranteed.
FAIL: One company in Slovakia has a product called “SEO guarantee” and “SEO guarantee trial”. It’s a one-year contract, and they guarantee you’ll be in first place in Google for a few days a month. The catch is that they choose the keywords, and it’s usually the company name. This has the hallmarks of a fraudulent sales tactic. If someone guarantees you rankings, ignore them completely. PS: The other extreme is when a client tells you: “Start working on it, I want to be first with my whole online store, second place doesn’t interest me, I’ll pay once I’m in first place, I’ll check it on my phone.”
6. “I work for Google and I’ll switch you to first place”
You have no idea how often I’ve heard the line: “I work at Google, I have access and I’ll switch you to first place there, but don’t tell anyone, it’s secret.” I’ve heard the equivalent of this blatant nonsense countless times from various specialists offering their services to me or my clients. A person like that isn’t an SEO specialist, they’re a fraud. Usually what they mean is that they’re a Google Certified Photographer (just like me), but that doesn’t mean we work at Google or for Google. Our terms of use explicitly forbid us from misleading customers this way. You won’t gain rankings from it.
7. AI articles in bulk and fake case studies
The novelty of recent years: “We’ll generate 100 SEO articles a month for you with AI.” It sounds cheap and efficient, but Google penalizes mass-generated content without added value (it calls this scaled content abuse), and AI models don’t cite texts that just retell what they already know. AI is a great assistant, and I use it too, but content without your own experience, data and opinion is just more noise. Related to this are the fake case studies and growth screenshots that have flooded the internet; how to spot them is covered in the video below and in the article What honest SEO is and what dishonest SEO is.
FAQ about SEO specialists
What does an SEO specialist do?
They increase a website’s traffic from organic search: they run an SEO audit, fix technical errors, research keywords, prepare content, build backlinks and measure the results. In 2026 this also includes optimization for AI search (GEO): ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
What’s the difference between an SEO specialist and an SEO consultant?
An SEO specialist implements SEO hands-on. An SEO consultant advises, sets the strategy and priorities, and the implementation is often done by the client’s team. In practice many people do both, including me.
How long does it take for SEO results to show?
After fixing technical errors, such as blocked indexing, changes can be visible within a few weeks. For content and links, expect 3 to 6 months in a normal competitive environment, and longer in a highly competitive one. Anyone who promises you results within a week is lying.
Can an SEO specialist guarantee first place in Google?
No. Google determines the order of results and nobody outside has control over it. A first-place guarantee is a sign of a fraudulent sales tactic; it’s usually for your company name, which you rank first for anyway.
Do you also optimize for ChatGPT and AI?
Yes. GEO is part of my work: technical preparation of the website for AI crawlers, content that can be cited, access log analysis and measuring visibility in AI answers.
How much does an SEO specialist cost?
A monthly SEO partnership at WooAcademy starts at €480 per month, an SEO audit from €480, and an SEO consultation is €350 per hour. The final price depends on the size of the website, the competition and whether I do the implementation or your team does. If SEO doesn’t make sense for you, I’ll tell you on the first call.
Do you only work in Bratislava?
No. WooAcademy is based in Bratislava-Petržalka, where I hold in-person consultations and training. I work online with clients from all over Slovakia and abroad, in Slovak, Czech and English.
How do I choose an SEO specialist?
Ask who exactly will work on your website, ask to see their clients’ Search Console rather than screenshots, and run from anyone who guarantees rankings, offers a hundred links for a few hundred euros or a hundred AI articles a month.
Need an SEO audit, a consultation or local SEO in Bratislava? Email info@wooacademy.sk or call +421 940 634 491. If you want to learn SEO, choose a training course; if you need it done, take a look at WooAcademy’s marketing services.
Author: RNDr. Milan Fraňo, PhD., SEO specialist and SEO consultant from Bratislava, Head of SEO, web editor and co-founder of WooAcademy. He focuses on technical SEO, the speed of WordPress and WooCommerce websites, local SEO and GEO. Lecturer of accredited SEO courses. Article originally from 2021, fully updated on 3 October 2026.
