Fractional SEO services: audits, content strategy, and reporting
Every SEO partnership is built from these main services, as a monthly retainer or a one-off project. No bundled extras, and no line item you couldn't explain to your boss.
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01
Technical SEO audits
A full crawl and index-coverage review, including whether AI crawlers can reach your pages. It finds where budget and rankings are actually leaking, then turns it into a backlog your engineers can pick up without translation.
What you get
- Index coverage diagnosis
- Mobile indexing checks
- AI crawlability checks
- Internal link structure review
- Core Web Vitals field data
- Scored, ticket-ready backlog
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02
Demand research and competitive landscape
What your buyers search for and who's winning it now. Keywords are segmented by intent and mapped to the pages that should rank.
What you get
- Keywords segmented by intent
- Mapping to existing and planned URLs
- Gap and cannibalization report
- Competitor coverage view
- Competitor keyword gap list
- SERP opportunity analysis
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03
Content strategy
The research turned into a plan your team can publish from: briefs your writers can start from, an edit pass before anything goes live, and a calendar ordered by opportunity.
What you get
- Briefs for new and existing pages
- Edit pass on drafts before publishing
- Intent mapping per page
- Pillar and topic cluster planning
- Internal links planned into every brief
- A content calendar, not a keyword dump
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04
AI search visibility
Tracking whether your site shows up in AI Overviews and assistant answers, and the structured-data and content changes that move citation share.
What you get
- AI Overview tracking on your query set
- Citation share vs. competitors
- Structured data and markup fixes
- Content changes that move citations
- Prompt tracking and reporting
- Monthly movement report
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05
Reporting and analytics
GA4 and Search Console reconciled into a single view of non-branded organic performance, so a monthly check-in takes ten minutes.
What you get
- GA4 and Search Console reconciled
- Non-branded traffic isolated
- Entry pages tied to pipeline
- Monthly performance report
- Custom real-time reporting dashboard
- Drop analysis when traffic falls
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06
Site migrations
Replatforms and domain moves are where SEO work gets lost the fastest. Migration support keeps someone accountable for rankings through the whole cutover, not just the audit before it.
What you get
- Pre-launch URL mapping
- Redirect QA on staging
- Template parity testing
- Rollback criteria, agreed up front
- Monitored cutover window
- 30-day recovery watch
SEO shapes every stage of a site, not just the last one
Most teams bring SEO in after launch, when fixes cost the most. Here is where search input changes the outcome at each stage of a site's life.
SEO
Input at every stage, from first plan to ongoing growth.
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01
Strategy & Planning
Search demand and competitor data show what to build, for whom, and in what order, before budget is committed.
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02
Site Structure
URLs, navigation, and page hierarchy that match how people search, so link equity flows to the pages that matter.
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03
Design & UX
Layouts that keep key content visible and crawlable, headings that mean something, and pages that load fast on mobile.
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04
Development
Rendering, canonicals, redirects, schema, and Core Web Vitals built in from the start instead of patched after launch.
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05
Content
Briefs grounded in search intent, so every page has a clear job, a target query, and a reason to be linked.
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06
Launch & Migrations
Redirect maps, pre-launch crawls, and post-launch monitoring that protect the traffic you already earned.
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07
Analytics & Reporting
A custom blended data setup that puts organic traffic, leads, and revenue in one view, not just rankings.
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08
Ongoing Growth
Drop analysis, content refreshes, and gap analysis that keep pages earning and feed the next round of planning.
Read clockwise from 01. What you learn in Ongoing Growth feeds the next round of Strategy & Planning.
The gaps between teams are where search traffic gets lost
Dev, content, UX, and analytics each do their job well. These are the search details that fall between them, and what SEO adds to close each one.
Development
Focus: shipping features that work and stay stable.
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Slips through
Key content loads through JavaScript that Google renders late or not at all.
SEO adds
Rendered HTML checks before release, so what users see is what Google indexes.
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Slips through
Noindex tags or blocked paths carried over from staging into production.
SEO adds
A pre-deploy check of robots.txt, meta robots, and canonicals.
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Slips through
URL changes ship with no redirects, or with long redirect chains.
SEO adds
One-to-one 301 maps and a crawl after every release that touches URLs.
Content
Focus: clear, on-brand writing published on schedule.
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Slips through
Topics picked by internal priority instead of what people search for.
SEO adds
Keyword and intent research before the content calendar is set.
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Slips through
Several pages competing for the same query and splitting rankings.
SEO adds
A cannibalization audit and a map of which page owns which query.
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Slips through
New posts go live with no internal links pointing to them.
SEO adds
An internal linking plan built into every content brief.
UX & Design
Focus: clean layouts and easy paths to conversion.
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Slips through
Important copy tucked into tabs, carousels, or images.
SEO adds
Guidance on which content must stay as visible, indexable text.
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Slips through
Heading tags chosen for font size instead of page structure.
SEO adds
An H1 to H3 outline per template that reflects the page's topics.
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Slips through
Navigation labels written in brand language nobody searches for.
SEO adds
Menu labels and filters matched to the words people actually use.
Analytics
Focus: accurate tracking and site-wide reporting.
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Slips through
Organic traffic reported as one total, with no view by page type.
SEO adds
Landing pages grouped by template and topic, so trends have a cause.
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Slips through
Leads and sales never tied back to the organic page that started them.
SEO adds
GA4 conversion events reported by organic landing page.
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Slips through
Search Console data sits apart from GA4 and rarely gets checked.
SEO adds
Query and page data joined in one report, so ranking shifts explain traffic shifts.
SEO works best as a shared checklist across teams, not a final review after everything ships.
SEO packages: what each one includes
| Service | Audit | Retainer | Migration support |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical SEO audits | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Demand research and competitive landscape | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Content strategy | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ |
| AI search visibility | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Reporting and analytics | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Site migrations | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
What I don't do
- Bought or exchanged links
- Bulk-generated content
- Ranking guarantees
- Paid media management
- Content creation
FAQ
Common questions
How is a fractional retainer different from an agency retainer?
With a fractional retainer, you work directly with the person doing the audits, writing the tickets, and reading the reports, instead of an agency account manager relaying updates from a delivery team. Scope stays smaller and more focused as a result.
How is a fractional SEO different from a consultant or freelancer?
A fractional SEO owns the search channel the way an in-house lead would, while consultants and freelancers are often brought in for a defined project or task. Owning the channel means setting the strategy, overseeing how it gets carried out across your teams, and staying accountable for results over time. That difference is about how the role is set up, not skill, and plenty of consultants and freelancers bring the same strategic oversight.
Do you guarantee rankings?
No, I don't guarantee rankings. Nobody can guarantee a specific ranking or traffic number, and any offer that does is a red flag. Engagements are scoped around diagnosable, fixable problems instead.
What if we already have an in-house SEO or marketing team?
Fractional SEO works well alongside an in-house SEO or marketing team, and most engagements do. The focus is the technical and engineering-adjacent work that in-house teams often don't have bandwidth for, like crawl audits, migrations, and structured data.
How does a site migration get scoped?
Site migration scope is based on how many page templates your site has (product, category, blog post, landing page, and so on), not the total number of pages. Each template gets its own URL mapping, redirect QA on staging, and parity testing, followed by a monitored cutover window and a 30-day recovery watch after launch.
Who implements the changes?
Your team usually implements the SEO changes. They already know your custom settings, templates, and page builder, which vary a lot from site to site, so it saves everyone time and you aren't paying me to learn your setup. I write the requirements and check the result on staging and in production. For quick fixes like content tweaks or redirects, I can make the change myself when needed.
What access do you need?
I need access to your CMS, your analytics, and Google Search Console.
That's what the call is for