With a Fractional SEO Consultant, you get 20+ years of digital marketing and SEO leadership, without a full-time hire.
I plug in as your fractional SEO lead: setting strategy, prioritizing the roadmap, and guiding your team or agency, so growing companies get senior-level direction, across technical SEO, content, and the AI answer engines reshaping search (AEO/GEO), without carrying a full-time SEO salary.
Also the founder of Lift SEO Services →, a full-service SEO agency for healthcare & home services businesses.
What is fractional SEO, and who is it for?
Fractional SEO is senior-level SEO leadership delivered part-time: the same strategic thinking a full-time SEO director or SEO manager would bring, without the salary, benefits, or long hiring process of an in-house hire. Instead of executing day-to-day tasks, a fractional SEO consultant sets the strategy, prioritizes the roadmap, and directs an in-house team, agency, or freelance writer toward the highest-impact work.
It’s built for companies that have outgrown a generalist handling SEO as a side project, but aren’t ready to build (or don’t want) a full internal SEO team. If that sounds like where your business is, that’s exactly the gap a fractional SEO director closes.
The Benefits of a Fractional SEO Consultant
Senior strategy on a project or retainer basis, without a full-time salary. Direct access to the person actually setting the roadmap, not a junior account manager relaying it. A fresh, outside perspective on a site your team may be too close to see clearly. And, increasingly, a partner who already understands how AI Overviews and LLMs are reshaping what “ranking” even means.
Fractional SEO leadership first, backed by audits and AI-search automation.
Three ways to work together, all built around senior strategy rather than day-to-day execution.
Fractional SEO Leadership
Ongoing strategic direction (a few hours a week or month) for teams that need a senior SEO voice in the room without adding headcount. Whether you need a fractional SEO director for a growing team or a fractional SEO consultant for a single initiative, I set the roadmap and mentor your team; you keep the institutional knowledge.
Most popularSEO Audits & Growth Roadmaps
A deep technical, content, and entity audit of your site, delivered as a prioritized roadmap your team can act on immediately. No retainer required.
AI Search Strategy & Automation
Hands-on strategy for how your brand shows up in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other LLM-powered answers: entity building, structured data, and content built to be cited. I also build the automation behind SEO and content operations using n8n and AI workflows, and run focused training sessions for teams that want hands-on skills, drawing on 2+ years spent training SEO professionals on on-page optimization software.
How a fractional SEO engagement actually runs.
No long onboarding, no bloated retainer. Here’s the process from first call to ongoing strategy.
Meet Your Fractional SEO Expert
A free strategy call and a quick look at your site to understand where things stand today, what’s working, and what’s holding search visibility back.
Roadmap & Strategy Priorities
A prioritized plan across technical SEO, content, and AI search visibility, built around what will actually move the needle first, not a generic checklist.
Ongoing SEO Support & Direction
A regular cadence, weekly or monthly, directing your in-house team, agency, or freelance writers so the roadmap actually gets executed instead of sitting in a doc.
What senior SEO leadership actually moves.
The specifics change by engagement, but here’s where fractional SEO leadership tends to show up first. See the case studies below for the real, verified numbers behind each.
Organic Traffic & Keyword Growth
Sustainable, non-branded organic traffic growth and expanding keyword footprints, built on real ranking data and competitive content strategy rather than guesswork.
AI Search Visibility (AEO/GEO)
Content and schema structured so your brand gets cited in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other LLM-powered answers, not just ranked in classic blue links.
Local Pack & Revenue Impact
For multi-location and local service businesses, visibility that shows up in the Google Local Pack and translates directly into calls, booked jobs, and revenue.
Real fractional SEO results, case by case.
Client and employer details generalized for confidentiality; figures shown are real SEMrush and Google Search Console data for each engagement. Each card links to the full case study.
Building Organic Visibility From Zero
Owned SEO strategy for a maternal health diagnostics client whose product almost no one was searching for by name. Starting from under 100 monthly clicks and no link-building program, grew organic traffic to 34,281 visits/month and ranking keywords from 176 to 9,983.
See the organic traffic growth case study →SEO Through a Full Rebrand
When this client changed its name in October 2023, over 90% of its organic traffic was people searching the brand itself. Built a content strategy speaking directly to clinicians and ER nurses, growing true ranking keywords from 47 to 873 in about 20 months.
Read the domain migration SEO case study →Winning the Local Pack
Ongoing SEO strategy for a residential HVAC company competing against national franchises with far bigger budgets. Local Pack keyword growth nearly tripled in under a year, from 35 to 108, and that visibility is showing up in the business: booked jobs are up 58.25% and revenue 127.46% year to date.
Read the local pack ranking increase case study →Turning Local Rankings Into Booked Jobs
Ongoing SEO strategy for a multi-location HVAC and home services company. Local Pack keyword growth is up 153% in about seven months, and that visibility is showing up in the business: booked jobs are up 16.65% and revenue 14.21% year to date.
Read the local SEO expert case study →SEO & AEO Strategy Across Brands
Built and executed SEO and AEO strategy for a portfolio of home services brands across multiple markets, structuring content and schema so key answers are extractable and citable by AI search engines and LLMs.
GEO/AEO Playbook Development
Pioneered LLM ranking analysis and built entity-driven GEO/AEO playbooks and schema standards, improving visibility in both Google and ChatGPT results across client teams.
Client and employer names generalized for confidentiality.
Fractional SEO vs. a full-time hire or a traditional agency.
There’s no single right answer, it depends on your stage and budget. Here’s how the three most common paths actually compare.
Fractional SEO Consultant
Senior-level strategy and direction on a part-time or project basis. Lower cost than a full-time hire, faster to start than an agency search, and you’re working directly with the person setting the roadmap, not a junior account manager.
Full-Time In-House Hire
Full-time attention and institutional knowledge, but at full-time cost: salary, benefits, and a hiring process that can take months before a senior SEO leader is even in the seat.
Traditional SEO Agency
Useful for execution at scale, but strategy is often set by whoever is assigned to your account that quarter, and pricing rarely flexes to match a single, focused engagement.
Signs it might be time for fractional SEO help.
If a few of these sound familiar, that’s usually the point where senior SEO direction starts paying for itself.
- Your SEO is currently handled by whoever has time for it, not a dedicated strategist.
- You’ve outgrown a generalist marketer or freelancer, but a full-time SEO hire isn’t in the budget yet.
- You’re not sure whether your content and schema are set up to be cited in AI Overviews and other LLM-powered answers.
- You’ve worked with an agency before and felt like you never had direct access to the person actually setting strategy.
- You have an in-house team, agency, or freelance writers doing the work, but no one directing the roadmap or setting priorities.
- Traffic and rankings have plateaued and you’re not sure why.
Need ongoing, hands-on SEO management instead?
My agency, Lift SEO Services, handles full-service SEO for healthcare and home services businesses in Bowling Green and Nashville: technical, local, content, and AI-visibility work, managed end to end.
Let’s build an SEO strategy that doesn’t depend on hiring a full-time team.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call: no pitch, just a look at where your SEO stands today.