Senior SEO direction without hiring a senior SEO
You get a fixed block of senior hours every month to set the roadmap, review the work, and stop your team from spending a quarter on the wrong thing.
The problem this solves
You have people who can write, build and ship. What you do not have is anyone who can say with authority which hundred things to skip. So the team works hard on whatever seems reasonable, and a year later the traffic line is flat and nobody can explain why.
A full-time senior SEO hire fixes that and costs six figures fully loaded, before you account for the three months they spend ramping up. An agency retainer fixes it and bundles in execution you may not need. Fractional is the middle: the judgment, without the salary or the bundled hours.
How the hours get used
You decide, and it shifts by quarter. In practice most engagements settle into roughly this shape:
- Quarterly roadmap. A ranked list of what to do next and — more usefully — what to stop doing.
- Review gate. Content briefs, technical specs and dev tickets get read before they ship, which is where most wasted effort is caught.
- Standing call. A weekly or fortnightly slot to unblock decisions rather than let them sit for a sprint.
- Async access. A shared channel for the questions that do not deserve a meeting.
- Escalation. When something breaks, you get hours immediately rather than a change request.
What we will tell you honestly
Fractional does not work if there is nobody to execute. If your marketing function is one person at 110% capacity, buying direction just produces a longer list of things they cannot do — you want done-for-you SEO instead, and we will say so before taking your money.
It also does not work if you want someone to blame. The engagement gives you judgment and accountability for that judgment; it does not transfer ownership of your channel. Teams that want the outcome outsourced entirely are better served by a full retainer.
Questions we get asked
How is this different from a retainer? +
A retainer buys execution — we do the work. Fractional buys direction — your team does the work and we make sure it is the right work, correctly specified. It costs less because you are not paying us to write the content.
How many hours do people usually take? +
Most engagements land between one and three days a month. Below a day, there is not enough continuity to hold context. Above three, you are close enough to a part-time hire that the maths changes.
What if my team is one marketer who has never done SEO? +
That is the common case and it works, as long as that person has the time to execute. What does not work is fractional direction with nobody to receive it — then you want a done-for-you engagement instead.
Can this convert into a full-time hire later? +
That is often the point. We write the job description, screen candidates, sit on interviews, and hand over to whoever you hire. Ending the engagement because you no longer need it is a success, not a churn event.
Read before you hire
See if there is a slot
We hold a small number of fractional engagements at a time so each one gets real attention. Tell us your situation and we will say honestly whether fractional is the right shape for it.
Check availability →