A consultancy with opinions.
Palmetto Group Consulting is an AI-driven SEO strategy practice founded by Dane Bonnigson and based in Greer, South Carolina. We work with B2B SaaS and DTC brands who need senior strategic direction without the overhead of a full-time hire.
Dane Bonnigson.
Dane founded Palmetto Group after years of watching SEO consulting fall into one of two failure modes: agencies that bundle strategy with execution and lock clients into perpetual retainers, and freelancers who hand over a deliverable and disappear before the work gets shipped.
The premise of Palmetto is that there's a third mode: strategy and advisory only, deliverables built for execution by your team, opinions strong enough to push back when stakeholders are wrong, and engagements that end when the work is done.
Dane lives in Greer, South Carolina, with a clear preference for working with companies that take their craft seriously and a clearer one for telling clients honest things they don't want to hear.
How we work
A few principles shape how every engagement runs:
Strategy and advisory only.
We don't push code, write articles, run paid media, or build links. Every recommendation we make is a specification your team executes. This isn't a limitation we're apologizing for — it's the design choice that makes the work sustainable. Implementation that lives with your team becomes institutional knowledge. Implementation that lives with us walks out the door when the engagement ends.
Opinionated, not neutral.
We have positions. We think most "AI for content" pitches are overselling the model and underselling the editorial discipline required around it. We think most SEO audits are useless because they don't end with executable specs. We think most fractional advisors are just expensive coaches. These positions show up in our work — they're the reason a client hires us instead of a lookalike vendor.
Honest about uncertainty.
We don't promise rankings. We promise the work that produces them. SEO outcomes depend on factors outside any consultant's control — Google's algorithm changes, your competitors' moves, the state of your developers' Tuesday. What we can promise is that we'll do the work seriously, recommend the right things, and tell you honestly when something we recommended didn't deliver as expected.
Comfortable referring out.
If your problem isn't an SEO problem, we'll say so. If your problem is an SEO problem we're not the right firm for, we'll refer you to someone who is. Our reputation matters more than any single engagement. We'd rather lose a project than take work we can't do well.
Where we work
Most of our clients are B2B SaaS companies between $5M-$100M ARR or DTC brands at similar revenue scale. We work primarily with US-headquartered companies and exclusively in English. We've done work for companies in 14 industries and have particular depth in:
- B2B SaaS (DevTools, marketing tech, fintech, HR tech, vertical SaaS)
- DTC consumer brands (home goods, apparel, food & beverage, subscription)
- Professional services firms with real content programs
- Marketplaces and two-sided platforms
We don't work with companies in regulated YMYL niches where consultancy quality is hard to control and downside risk is large — medical, legal advice, financial advice, gambling, adult.
Where we're based
Palmetto Group is based in Greer, South Carolina, in the foothills between Greenville and Spartanburg. We work with clients across the United States primarily over Zoom and Slack. We travel for kickoff meetings, key stakeholder presentations, and the occasional working session — the rest of the engagement runs remotely.
The "Palmetto" name comes from the Sabal palmetto, the state tree of South Carolina and a symbol on the state flag. The company name reflects the geography. The work is national.
Curious whether we're a fit?
30-minute calls. No pitch deck. We'll either be useful or we won't, and you'll know within the first 10 minutes.
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