A free SEO strategy session is one of about 8 genuinely free things you can grab right now to move your SEO forward.
The question is which one to grab first.
This site exists to rank SEO resources honestly — including my own. So I applied the same ranking framework to free SEO resources and put them in order. Strategy sessions topped the list for a specific (and small) group of operators. For everyone else, a different free resource is the smarter starting point.
Here's the honest ranking — with a quick "is this you?" check for each.
🥇 If you're senior enough to use it, the #1 pick is the call. Book a free SEO strategy session with me directly. 30 minutes, no pitch. → Book it
How I ranked these
Same framework I use to rank communities on this site. Five criteria:
- Specificity — generic advice scores low; site-specific advice scores high
- Senior contact — talking to a junior scores low; talking to a senior practitioner scores high
- Speed to value — weeks-to-deliver scores low; same-day scores high
- Actionability — "interesting" scores low; "I can do this tomorrow" scores high
- Cost — all 8 below are free in dollars, but ranked by time-cost to extract value
Each resource gets a score out of 10 and a one-line "this is for you if..."
🥇 1. A free SEO strategy session — 9.4/10
What it is: a 30-minute live diagnostic call with a senior SEO — in my case, me directly.
- Specificity: 10/10 (your site, your numbers, your bottleneck)
- Senior contact: 10/10 (you're on the call with the founder)
- Speed to value: 9/10 (30 minutes, live, immediate)
- Actionability: 10/10 (specific next actions for your site)
- Cost / time: 8/10 (30 min + 5-10 days to schedule)
This is for you if: you run a B2B SaaS, ecom, agency, or service business at $500K-$50M revenue, you suspect SEO is under-performing, and you want a senior diagnosis live in 30 minutes. About 1 in 4 callers becomes a Goldie Agency client; the other 3 leave with a free senior plan.
Skip it if: you're pre-revenue (you don't need senior strategy yet), you can't articulate a bottleneck in one sentence, or you're shopping 10 agencies for free strategy as RFP fodder.
🥈 2. The free Link Building Mastery book — 8.9/10
What it is: my 200-page free book covering the full link-building system I run at Goldie Agency.
- Specificity: 6/10 (general framework, not your site)
- Senior contact: N/A — async
- Speed to value: 7/10 (4-hour read, real implementation takes weeks)
- Actionability: 9/10 (every chapter has a deployable system)
- Cost / time: 9/10 (free + 4 hours)
This is for you if: you want to learn link building properly, you're early-stage and don't need a strategy call yet, or you're going to read it before booking a call anyway (most do).
Skip it if: you already know link building and need diagnosis of YOUR site specifically — the call beats the book there.
🥉 3. The 200+ AI SEO Prompt Library — 8.6/10
What it is: a copy-paste library of 200+ ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini prompts for every SEO workflow.
- Specificity: 7/10 (universal prompts, you fill in your context)
- Speed to value: 10/10 (paste a prompt, get an output in seconds)
- Actionability: 9/10 (most prompts produce immediate output)
This is for you if: you spend more than an hour a week prompting an LLM for SEO work. The library replaces that hour with a 30-second copy-paste.
4. Google Search Console (Google itself) — 8.4/10
What it is: Google's own free tool showing how Google sees your site.
- Specificity: 10/10 (your actual GSC data)
- Senior contact: N/A
- Speed to value: 8/10 (data is there immediately, interpretation is the bottleneck)
This is for you if: you haven't set up GSC yet. Do this before any other resource on this list — without GSC there's no real diagnosis possible, even on a strategy call.
Caveat: GSC is data, not advice. You need a framework to interpret it. The free book + a strategy call are the two best ways to do that.
5. r/SEO and r/BigSEO (Reddit) — 7.3/10
What it is: the public SEO subreddits.
- Specificity: 3/10 (generic answers, low context)
- Senior contact: 4/10 (mix of beginner-to-expert)
- Speed to value: 8/10 (post a question, get answers within hours)
- Actionability: 5/10 (depends entirely on who answers)
This is for you if: you want quick sanity-checks ("is this a penalty or an algo drop?"), discovery of new tools, or to see what's currently moving in SEO discourse.
Skip it for: anything site-specific or requiring senior input. The signal-to-noise on a 50K+ member sub is what you'd expect.
Covered in depth on the 10 best SEO communities homepage of this site.
6. YouTube SEO tutorials — 7.0/10
What it is: thousands of free SEO YouTube videos.
- Specificity: 4/10 (general teaching, not your site)
- Senior contact: mixed (some channels are senior, most aren't)
- Speed to value: 6/10 (10-hour playlists are common; signal is buried)
- Actionability: 6/10 (varies wildly by creator)
This is for you if: you're a visual / video learner and want to absorb concepts at your own pace. The Julian Goldie SEO YouTube channel (394K+ subscribers) is the obvious pick if you want video from the same source as the rest of this list.
7. SEO Twitter / X — 6.8/10
What it is: the live conversation among SEO operators on X.
- Specificity: 4/10 (snippets and screenshots, not deep context)
- Senior contact: 6/10 (lots of seniors talk publicly, but in 280 chars)
- Speed to value: 9/10 (real-time updates on algorithm shifts, tools, news)
This is for you if: you want to stay current on what's happening in SEO this week and which tools are emerging. Bad as a primary learning channel; good as a current-awareness feed.
8. ChatGPT / Claude (just asking SEO questions) — 6.2/10
What it is: asking an LLM your SEO questions directly without specialised prompts.
- Specificity: 5/10 (you can describe your situation, the AI can't see your data)
- Senior contact: N/A (LLM isn't a senior SEO)
- Speed to value: 10/10 (instant answer)
- Actionability: 6/10 (often plausible-sounding but wrong on specifics)
This is for you if: you want a fast first-pass answer on a specific question before doing more thorough research. Not a replacement for senior advice on important decisions.
The 30-second decision tree
If you only have time to grab one:
- Senior operator with a real bottleneck: the free SEO strategy session — #1 pick by a wide margin.
- Mid-stage operator learning link building: the free book.
- Operator already using AI for SEO: the prompt library.
- Brand new, no GSC yet: set up Search Console, then come back to this list.
- Want quick sanity checks: Reddit (free, fast, OK quality).
- Visual learner: YouTube.
Most senior operators end up using 3-4 of these in combination. The call is the highest-leverage starting point if you fit the profile.
Why the strategy session ranks #1 (the honest case)
Three reasons it wins for the right profile:
Specificity beats generality. A 30-minute live diagnostic on YOUR site, with YOUR data open, is structurally more valuable than 200 pages of general framework. The book is breadth; the call is depth. For operators stuck on a specific bottleneck, depth wins.
Senior time is the bottleneck. Most "free SEO resources" are written, recorded, or coded once and consumed asynchronously. A strategy session is a senior operator's live attention — the scarcest resource in the SEO world. Free senior live attention is genuinely rare.
Speed compounds. The call delivers a specific tactical plan in 30 minutes that you can start implementing the same day. Compare that to reading a 200-page book (4 hours), watching a 10-hour YouTube playlist, or experimenting with prompts. The call's speed-to-action is unmatched.
The honest disclosure
I rank the strategy session #1 partly because it's mine. That's a conflict of interest worth naming.
But I rank my OWN free book #2, not #1. And I include 6 free resources I don't own at all. The ranking is honest within the constraint that I built three of the top three.
If you'd prefer rankings from someone with no skin in the game, the 10 best SEO communities post on this site links out to other reviewers as cross-references — and the meta-conclusion across most honest reviewers is: for a senior operator with a real bottleneck, a free senior strategy session is the highest-leverage move available.
🔥 Pick from the 8. The #1 is the call. Book your free SEO strategy session — 30 minutes, with me, no pitch. → Book here
FAQ — comparing free SEO resources
Should I really book a free SEO strategy session before reading the book?
If you're a senior operator with a specific bottleneck — yes, the call is the better first move. If you're learning link building from scratch, the book first.
What if I'm not sure whether I qualify for the call?
If you run a B2B SaaS, ecom, agency, or service business at $500K-$50M revenue and your SEO is under-performing relative to channel potential — you qualify. If you're under $200K ARR, grab the book first.
Why isn't [other resource] on the list?
I capped at 8 to keep this scannable. Notable mentions worth grabbing if relevant: Ahrefs / Semrush free tiers (for backlink data — not a learning resource per se), Backlinko's free articles (good blog), and dedicated newsletters in your niche.
Do you take referral fees for any of these?
No. None of the 8 includes an affiliate or referral link. Six aren't mine at all; the three that are mine are self-disclosed.
How often do you update this ranking?
Reviewed quarterly. The order shifts when new resources emerge or existing ones change materially. The strategy session has been #1 for the senior-operator profile since I started running them.
About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie — SEO entrepreneur, founder of Goldie Agency (a 7-figure SEO and link-building shop), and creator of the SEO Elite Circle and AI Profit Boardroom communities.
- 394K+ YouTube subscribers (Julian Goldie SEO)
- 200K+ daily impressions on Twitter / X
- 10+ years in SEO, 50,000+ backlinks placed across 300+ client campaigns
- Author of Link Building Mastery (free, 200 pages)
→ Book a free SEO strategy session with me
Related on this site
- Free vs paid SEO communities — when free is genuinely enough
- Best Skool communities for SEO — Skool-specific ranking
- How to find an SEO mentor — when you need a person, not a resource
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 Read on seolinkbuildingmastery.com
- 🌐 Read on bestaiseocommunity.com
- 🌐 Read on seogoldieagency.com
- 🌐 Read on seoelitecircleskool.com
- 🌐 Read on seo-growth-playbook-jg.netlify.app
- 🌐 Read on bestbacklinkagency.com
- 🌐 Read on bestaiseocourse.com
- 🌐 Read on freeaiseoaudits.com
- 🌐 Read on juliangoldieseo.com
If you've read all 8 entries and the answer is "I fit the senior-operator profile" — the only logical next click is the free SEO strategy session.