Senior SEO judgment, on tap.
When you need ongoing SEO direction but can't justify a full-time senior hire, fractional advisory is what fits. We embed for 6-12 months minimum: weekly meetings, monthly strategic reviews, on-call when issues arise, and the kind of judgment calls that come from a decade-plus of pattern recognition.
What we deliver
SEO is full of decisions that look small but compound. Should we redirect this old subdomain or kill it? Should this article be 800 words or 2,800? Should we publish on the day Google rolls a core update, or wait? Should we invest in this YouTube channel or that Reddit community?
None of these are project-sized questions. They're judgment-call questions. They're the reason an SEO function with a senior leader operates differently than one without — and the reason most companies eventually hire a senior SEO leader, even though most don't have enough work to justify the headcount.
Fractional advisory is the in-between. You get the senior judgment, the weekly cadence, and the institutional memory that comes from someone who's been with you 12 months — without paying full freight for the headcount.
The deliverables, specifically
What you get when you engage us as fractional advisor:
- Weekly 60-minute working session. Standing meeting with your team. Agenda set 24 hours ahead. We review work in progress, debate trade-offs, decide direction.
- Monthly strategic review. Performance against goals, what's working, what's not, recommendations for the next 30 days. Documented and shared with stakeholders.
- On-demand access for urgent calls. Slack or email for non-urgent questions, scheduled calls within 24 hours for urgent issues. Volume is bounded — we're not a 24/7 hotline — but the door is open.
- Quarterly stakeholder briefings. If your team needs to brief CMO/CEO/board on SEO progress, we'll join the meeting and present alongside your team. We frame the work in business terms, not SEO jargon.
- Strategic deliverables as needed. Mid-engagement audits, content strategy refreshes, AI integration design — all included within the retainer rather than billed separately. Scoped together at engagement start.
Who this is for
This service fits if:
- You have an SEO function (in-house or outsourced) but no senior leader providing strategic direction
- You're at a stage where SEO matters to the business but doesn't justify a six-figure hire yet
- Your team makes good tactical SEO decisions but struggles with prioritization across competing initiatives
- You have a CMO or VP Marketing who needs an SEO sounding board but doesn't have one internally
- You've considered hiring an SEO Director and decided you'd rather have senior judgment 5 hours a week than junior execution 40 hours a week
This service does not fit if:
- You don't have anyone executing the work (we direct, we don't execute)
- You want someone to manage day-to-day operations or vendor relationships
- You're looking for hours-based contracting rather than retainer-based judgment
- You want a fractional CMO covering all of marketing — SEO is our discipline, not the whole channel mix
The process.
We learn the business.
Onboarding intensive: business model, current state, team capabilities, competitive context, historical SEO performance. We're not useful as advisors until we understand the constraints. Heavy listening month, light recommendation month.
We provide direction.
Weekly cadence settles in. We're contributing to roadmap decisions, weighing in on hiring, calling out things your team is missing, defending against bad ideas from elsewhere in the org, occasionally telling stakeholders things they don't want to hear.
We have an honest conversation.
60 days before contract end, we discuss whether to renew, restructure, or wind down. Sometimes the right answer is "you've outgrown this — go hire that Director now." We'll say so when it's true.
"Fractional advisory is the most personally invested work we do. We bring opinions. We push back. We sometimes argue with stakeholders on your team's behalf. If you want a yes-person, this isn't the right service."
What it costs.
Fractional advisory engagements run on a monthly retainer with a 6-month minimum commitment.
- $6,500/month — Standard advisory. Weekly 60-min sessions, monthly review, on-demand Slack/email, quarterly stakeholder briefings. 6-month minimum.
- $9,500/month — Strategic advisory. Standard cadence plus mid-engagement deliverables (audits, content strategy refreshes, AI architecture work) scoped at engagement start and delivered as needed. 6-month minimum.
- $14,500/month — Embedded advisory. Strategic advisory plus deeper integration: attendance at internal planning meetings, cross-functional stakeholder management, board-level SEO reporting. 9-month minimum.
Annual prepay receives 10% discount. Mid-engagement scope changes handled via formal scope addendum. Get in touch for a scoping call.
Common questions.
How is this different from a freelance SEO consultant?
Freelance SEO consultants typically bill hourly and operate transactionally. Fractional advisory is retainer-based and operates as ongoing partnership. We're available between scheduled meetings. We carry institutional memory — we remember what you tried in Q1 when you're considering it again in Q3. We push back. We have skin in the game beyond the current month's hours.
How many hours do you actually spend on us per month?
Roughly 16-24 hours for standard advisory, 24-36 hours for strategic, 40+ for embedded. The retainer is priced on outcomes and judgment access, not hours. If you want hours-based billing, fractional advisory isn't the right service — that's project work.
Will you work with our existing SEO agency or in-house team?
Yes — most fractional engagements involve directing other resources. We'll work with your existing agency, in-house team, freelance writers, or development partners. We're additive, not replacive. The scope addendum at engagement start clarifies who reports to whom and how decisions get made.
Can you also handle paid search or social?
No. SEO is our discipline. We have opinions on adjacent channels (especially when they intersect with SEO — paid search bidding on the same keywords as your organic strategy, for instance) but we don't manage paid media or social. We can refer you to specialists we trust.
What if we need to end the engagement early?
The 6-month minimum exists because we invest heavily in the first 30 days learning your business — that investment doesn't pay back unless we have time to use it. After the minimum is met, the engagement is month-to-month with 30-day notice on either side. If we're 4 months in and the fit is wrong, we'll have a conversation about it rather than running out the clock.
Will Dane be the actual person on the engagement?
For all fractional engagements, yes. The whole premise is senior judgment from someone who knows your business after 6+ months. Subbing in a junior or rotating who you talk to defeats the point. If the engagement scope grows beyond what one person can handle, we'll have an explicit conversation about whether to add a second team member or restructure the engagement.
Ready to talk?
30-minute calls. No pitch deck. We'll either be useful or we won't, and you'll know within the first 10 minutes.
Start a conversation