Direction, Not Just Tasks
You need someone deciding what matters, not more tickets. Senior time, a few days a month, without adding headcount.
- Whether your roadmap is right
- What your team should ship next
- Where the senior gap is costing you
Start with your Free Fractional SEO Review.
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★★★★★ 4.9 out of 5 across 240+ client reviews on Google and Yelp
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What Is a Fractional SEO Consultant?
A fractional SEO consultant gives you senior search direction for a few days a month instead of a full-time hire. They set priorities, brief the people you already employ, and stay accountable for the outcome without the cost or commitment of a salaried lead.
What a Fractional SEO Consultant Does
The role is direction rather than delivery: deciding what gets worked on, briefing whoever executes, and holding the plan against results. It is bought in days a month, not as a full-time hire.
It suits companies with people who can do the work but nobody qualified to say what the work should be.
A fractional SEO consultant owns the direction of your search program. The day-to-day breaks down like this:
- Audit and diagnosis. A full technical, on-page, and backlink review of the site, so the roadmap starts from evidence instead of guesses.
- Keyword and priority mapping. Which terms are worth chasing, which pages target them, and what order the work happens in.
- Content briefs. Writers get a spec, not a topic. Target keyword, headings, word count, internal links, and the questions the page has to answer.
- Technical direction. Fixes are written up for your developer with the reason and the priority attached.
- Quality review. Every page that ships gets checked before it goes live, so the work matches the brief.
- Reporting you can read. Rankings, organic traffic, and leads from search, with a plain explanation of what moved and why.
The consultant leads. Your team, your writers, or your agency execute. If you need leadership across every marketing channel and not just search, look at our fractional CMO engagement instead.
“He was flexible with his services rather than insisting on a one size fits all program.”
★★★★★ Laura Reed, verified Google review
Fractional SEO Director, Consultant, or Expert: What the Titles Mean
The titles get used interchangeably, and the differences are smaller than they sound. A fractional SEO consultant advises and sets strategy. A fractional SEO director does the same thing but usually carries authority over a team and a budget. A fractional SEO expert is the loosest of the three and often means a specialist brought in for one problem, like a migration or a penalty recovery.
We fill all three roles. What changes is how much authority you hand over, not what gets done. If you want someone to make calls and direct your people, ask for the director version. If you want a second opinion on decisions you make yourself, ask for the consultant version.
Who This Is For
- A marketing generalist inherited SEO and is doing their best without a search background.
- An agency sends you activity reports and traffic has been flat for two or three quarters.
- You are rebuilding or migrating the site and cannot afford to lose rankings in the process.
- You have budget for content but no confidence about what to write.
- You are between full-time SEO hires and the program has stalled.
If nobody is doing SEO at all, you probably want our SEO services rather than a consultant to direct them. Not sure which? Start with an SEO website audit.
“In just a one hour call, Brandon guided me in making significant changes to my website.”
★★★★★ Elizabeth S., verified Google review
What You Get Each Month
- Strategy session. Weekly working call with your team.
- Roadmap. Prioritized backlog, updated monthly.
- Content briefs. Four to eight per month, depending on hours.
- Technical tickets. Written for your developer, priority ranked.
- Review. QA on every page before it publishes.
- Reporting. Monthly rankings, traffic, and lead report.
- Access. Email and Slack between sessions.
Fractional SEO Consultant vs Agency vs In-House Hire
The honest version: an agency is the better buy when you need output and already know what you want. A consultant is the better buy when you have output and no direction. Plenty of companies need both.
How Engagements Work
Month one is heavier than the rest. The audit, keyword research, and roadmap take real hours, so expect twenty to thirty hours in the first four weeks. After that it settles into your regular weekly commitment.
Engagements run month to month with no long contract. Most last six to twelve months, which is how long it takes for search work to show up in revenue. The goal is to leave you with a system and a team that can run it, not a permanent dependency.
“Professional and very easy to speak with when you have questions or concerns. They helped 2 of my businesses.”
★★★★★ Marc Weinstock, verified Google review
Fractional, Agency, or In-House
| Option | What you get | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| Fractional consultant | Senior judgment, no headcount | Limited hours, needs someone to execute |
| Full service agency | Strategy and execution together | Day to day often runs junior |
| In-house hire | Full attention on your business | Expensive, and one person cannot cover everything |
| Freelancer per task | Cheapest per hour | Nobody owns the overall direction |
| Nobody, handled internally | No cost | Effort spread across whatever seems urgent |
Book a Free Search Strategy Session
We will review your site, tell you where the traffic is leaking, and show you what a first ninety days would look like. Call (310) 940-9463 or apply to work with us.
Book Your Free Fractional SEO Consultation
Read Our Reviews
You have people who can do SEO. What you do not have is someone senior deciding what they should work on.
A fractional SEO consultant fills that gap. You get an experienced search lead for five to fifteen hours a week, running strategy, setting priorities, and reviewing the work, without a full-time director’s salary on your books. Brandon Leibowitz has run search programs since 2007 and has taught SEO for General Assembly, SCORE, and the SBA.
Talk to a Fractional SEO Consultant, Free
Book a free 15 minute call with Brandon Leibowitz. No pitch.
Just a straight read on whether a fractional SEO consultant is the right fit for where your site is now.
On the call we will cover:
What is actually holding your rankings back
Whether you need direction or more capacity
What a realistic first ninety days looks like
“The little that I learned from my sessions with him have been significantly beneficial to my brand visibility online.”
★★★★★ Dr. Q Williams, verified Google review
Frequently Asked Questions
What is fractional SEO?
Fractional SEO is search engine optimization led by a senior specialist who works for you part time. Instead of hiring a full-time search lead or handing the whole program to an agency, you buy a set number of hours each week from someone experienced. That person sets the strategy and directs whoever does the production work. The arrangement is the same whether the person is called a consultant, a director, or a head of SEO.
What is the difference between a fractional SEO and an agency?
The difference between a fractional SEO and an agency is who owns the thinking. A fractional SEO works inside your business, sets priorities, and answers to you. An agency sells a package of deliverables and decides internally how to fill it. You can hire both. The common setup is a fractional lead who writes the plan and an agency that produces content and links against it.
What is a fractional SEO consultant?
A fractional SEO consultant is a senior search lead who runs your SEO part time instead of joining your team full time. You get someone who has managed search programs at scale, but you pay for five to fifteen hours a week rather than a six-figure salary. They own strategy, set priorities, and direct whoever does the work, whether that is your in-house writers, a developer, or an outside agency.
What does a fractional SEO consultant do?
A fractional SEO consultant sets the search strategy and makes sure the right work gets done. They audit the site, pick the keywords worth chasing, and build a roadmap in priority order. They brief writers, hand technical fixes to developers, and review what ships. They also own reporting, so you can see which pages earn traffic and which do not. They lead the program. Your team and vendors execute it.
How much does a fractional SEO consultant cost?
A fractional SEO consultant is quoted on the hours you need and the size of the site, not from a rate card. What moves it: how many hours a week the engagement needs, whether you want strategy only or strategy plus hands-on work, and how much of your team can execute.
Five hours a week for a small site is a very different engagement from fifteen hours across a large one. Request a free website analysis for a quote.
When should a company hire a fractional SEO consultant?
Hire a fractional SEO consultant when you have people doing SEO but nobody deciding what they should do. That usually happens when a marketing generalist inherits search, when an agency reports activity instead of results, or when traffic has been flat for two or three quarters. It also fits companies that need senior search input on a site rebuild or migration, where one wrong decision can erase years of rankings.
How many hours a week does a fractional SEO consultant work?
A fractional SEO consultant works five to fifteen hours a week for most clients. Ten hours is the common middle. That covers a weekly working session with your team, roadmap and brief writing, quality review of what ships, and a monthly reporting cycle. Hours run higher during the first month, because the audit and strategy build take real time, then settle into a steady rhythm.
Is a fractional SEO consultant better than hiring an in-house SEO?
A fractional SEO consultant is better than an in-house hire when you need senior judgment more than daily output. One experienced part-time lead usually beats one junior full-time hire, because strategy mistakes cost more than slow execution. In-house wins once search drives a large share of revenue and the work is steady enough to fill a full week. Many companies start fractional, then hire in house and keep the consultant as an advisor.
What is the difference between a fractional SEO and a consultant?
The difference between a fractional SEO and a consultant is ongoing ownership. A consultant is usually engaged to answer a question or deliver an audit and then leaves.
A fractional SEO stays embedded on a recurring basis, owns the roadmap, briefs whoever executes, and is accountable for whether the numbers move. In practice the titles overlap, so what matters is whether the engagement includes continuing responsibility.
How many hours a month does a fractional SEO work?
A fractional SEO typically works somewhere between a few days and a week each month, depending on how much execution capacity you already have. Companies with an internal marketer or a development team need less, because the fractional role is direction and review. Agree the days up front rather than an open-ended arrangement.
Companies with nobody to hand work to need more, or need the execution covered separately.
Is a fractional SEO right for a small business?
A fractional SEO is right for a small business only when someone can act on the direction given. The model works when you have a marketer, a web developer, or a writer who can execute and simply needs to be told what matters. With nobody to act on the direction, a done-for-you service is the better buy.
If nobody can do the work, a managed service is the better fit, since paying for strategy that never gets implemented helps nobody.
How is progress reported?
Progress is reported against the metrics agreed at the start, usually rankings for the terms that matter commercially, organic traffic to money pages, and inquiries from search. Reporting comes with a written read of what changed and what it means, not a dashboard export. You keep every account and every document.
The recurring check-in also covers what did not get done and why, since that is normally the more useful conversation.
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This is quoted on the days you need and the size of the site, not from a rate card. Agencies across the market publish retainers from about $1,000 to $5,000 a month for full delivery, and a direction-only arrangement sits below that because your own team does the work. We work from Venice Beach in Los Angeles with clients around the world.
Related SEO Services
Fractional leadership pairs with whatever capacity you already have. Where execution is needed too, that runs through the full search engine optimization service or targeted on-page SEO work.
Teams that want to build the skill internally often add SEO coaching, while a one-off engagement is usually better served by SEO consulting or a website audit. Turning the traffic into inquiries is conversion rate optimization.