WORK WITH US not a task-outsourcing agency
Fractional SEO services
for startups.
A senior SEO team in your Slack, for less than one SEO manager’s base salary.
You work with the two founders who fired their SEO agency and took their own startup (Gyfted) to 1.2M organic users a year, on 27%+ site-wide conversion and $7k of backlinks. We own the plan, run the work with your team, and flag problems before they show up in your numbers.
For founders and heads of marketing whose SEO keeps slipping to next quarter. Two tiers, from $3,500/mo. Max six clients, one per sector.
the model in numbers, from building Gyfted, our own startup
1.2M
Organic users a year (GA peak)
27%+
Site-wide conversion
$7k
Total backlink spend
Max 6
Clients at a time
The full curve and the Search Console screenshots are in the Gyfted programmatic SEO case study.
definition
What is fractional SEO?
A senior SEO lead, or a small senior team, who owns your SEO strategy and its execution for part of the week, on a monthly retainer.
You get head-of-SEO seniority without a full-time salary, and one owner for the whole plan instead of a vendor per task. You may know the role as a fractional SEO consultant, fractional SEO expert, or fractional head or director of SEO.
what the fee buys
Fractional SEO vs agency vs in-house: what it costs
Our price sits close to a typical agency retainer and well under a full-time salary. What changes is who does the work and who else they work for.
| Line | SEO Savages (fractional) | Typical SEO agency | In-house SEO manager |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $3,500/mo (Part-time) or $6,000/mo (Growth Team) | $3,209/mo on average; 68.8% of providers charge $2,000 or less | $89,768 a year average base (about $7,481/mo), before benefits, equity and hiring time |
| Who does the work | The two founders, with no account managers | Whoever the agency staffs on your account | One person, once you have found and vetted them |
| What it covers | Strategy plus programmatic, AI, product-led and technical SEO (two on Part-time, all four on Growth Team) | Whatever the retainer scopes; ask what sits outside it | What one person knows; the gaps become freelancers |
| Commitment | 3 months on Part-time, 4 months on Growth Team | Set by the agency contract | A permanent salary |
| Link-building spend | Agreed with you, on top of the fee | Ask whether it sits inside the retainer or on top | A separate budget line |
| Your competitors | One client per sector per market, max 6 clients | The agency may work for them too | Works only for you |
Agency: Ahrefs survey of 439 SEO providers, 2024. In-house: Indeed, US SEO manager base salary, 339 salaries, Sep 2026. Get real quotes and compare them row by row.
why the fractional model exists
Why SEO keeps slipping
to next quarter
Day-to-day business comes first, so SEO happens on the side. You’re too early for a big agency retainer, too complex for one freelancer, and too busy building product to run it yourself.
Most founders think they have two buttons: a senior hire who spends months learning your stack, or an agency where you are client number 37. Both break in ways we have seen many times, and so do the fallbacks:
-
A junior hire with nobody to direct them
You hire a growth marketer with two years of experience and expect them to design the whole acquisition engine. They are smart and eager, and they need direction you have no time to give. Six months later you are paying a salary and still cannot say what it bought.
-
An agency built for someone else
Agencies are set up for companies tuning an engine that already runs. You are building one from scratch. The senior who pitched you moves on, a junior runs the account, and your competitors may sit on the same client list. The cheap end is worse: the work is hard to judge until months have passed, and by then the budget is gone.
-
Three freelancers and no owner
A content writer for the blog. A technical consultant because the site has issues. A link builder because someone said you need backlinks. None of them talk to each other and none owns the strategy, so the content misses the keywords and the links point at pages that don't convert. You have become a marketing project manager on top of running the company.
-
Founder-mode SEO
You've taught yourself harder things than SEO, so you try: YouTube, a few posts, some experiments. You learn enough to be dangerous. Every month on the learning curve is a month the channel isn't compounding, and that's the real cost.
$ savages qualify --startup
[*] checking stage… post-product, pre-scale
[*] org-fit for organic acquisition… PASS
[*] budget gate… $3,500-$6,000/mo
[*] full marketing dept needed?… not a fit
MODEL: embedded fractional growth team max 6
min commitment: 3 or 4 months
$
built by us
What the work looks like when it lands
Four builds, five case studies, with the Search Console or Bing export behind every number. Gyfted, Prawomat and Symptomatik are our own products and RMIQ is a client, so every play here was paid for with our own money before we sold it to anyone.
-
Talent assessments
Gyfted
1.2M
Organic users a year (GA peak)
0 → 1.2M organic users a year. On $7k of backlinks.
Read the case study → -
Legal-tech (D2C)
Prawomat
4,863
Search clicks in Nov 2025: Google 3,591 + Bing 1,272
0 → 4,900 search clicks a month in year one. Built in under four months.
Read the case study → -
Legal-tech (D2C)
Prawomat
2.9x
Daily Google clicks; 1.3x on the same dates in 2025
Rebuilt in nine weeks. Then 2.9x the Google clicks and 6.4x the AI answer appearances in 19 days.
Read the case study → -
Health-tech (D2C)
Symptomatik
20x
Citations a day in Bing's AI answers: 102 in June to 2,073 (9-15 Sep)
Three languages, 540 pages, six weeks. Four months later, Bing's AI answers cite it 2,000 times a day.
Read the case study → -
AdTech / retail media (B2B)
RMIQ
~285k
/mo impressions (GSC peak)
Small traffic. Premium intent. A category owned from zero.
Read the case study → -
Want a curve like these?
Tell us what you sell and where your customers search. On the call we’ll tell you which of these plays fits you, or that none does yet.
Book a fit call →
how the partnership runs
A senior team member,
in your Slack
We join your team in Slack, WhatsApp or Telegram, with a weekly or bi-weekly call. We own the SEO plan, tell you what to skip, and raise the problems you haven’t noticed yet. The advice fits your tech stack, your product and your users, and it is aimed at the goal you care about: users, leads or pipeline.
We keep the roster small on purpose. Six clients at most, one per sector per market, so your account never competes for attention with a bigger one, and never with a competitor.
- minimum commitment: 3 or 4 months.
- weekly or bi-weekly calls, plus chat in between.
- exclusivity in your sector and market.
- max 6 clients at a time.
No middle men. You work with the founders, full stop.
be specific
What “fractional” means here
“Fractional” is a catch-all buzzword. Let’s be specific about what it means when we say it.
Fractional marketing can give you the growth expertise of founders who’ve built acquisition engines at startups before, without the full-time salary, management overhead, or agency markup and bs. We’re founders who’ve been in the room when our runway got cut to a few months.
the four areas we work on
Effective organic growth takes time and investment. We work on four areas:
- Programmatic SEO
- AI SEO
- Product-led SEO
- Technical SEO
-
Senior expertise without the senior salary
A head of SEO with real startup experience is a slow, expensive hire, and one person rarely covers programmatic, AI, product-led and technical SEO. A fractional team gives you that seniority from the first week, for part of the week, for less than the average SEO manager's base salary ($89,768 a year in the US).
-
Creativity + bias to action
Some fractional CMOs position themselves as "strategic advisors": they'll tell you what to do, but you need someone to actually execute it. We're not fractional CMOs or "marketing managers". CMO implies breadth: branding, demand gen, content, performance marketing, events, social media, the whole stack. We're deep specialists in SEO and organic growth. For us, fractional SEO means we do the deep research, figure out the strategy, and roll up our sleeves to support implementation, across two or all four of our services depending on your tier. We don't create and send you keyword reports, audit reports and what not. We move fast.
-
Founder-first thinking
We understand tight GTM budgets, runway pressure, fundraising pains, being at "ground zero" and figuring stuff out with the associated chaos. We understand that speed is survival. We prioritize ruthlessly because we've lived this startup reality. You won't get a 30-point SEO checklist from us :). We identify the things that will move the needle over 3-6 months and focus on them, without resorting to shortcuts.
-
Flexibility
Flexibility is key in moving between research, planning out your content roadmap, figuring out your site architecture, to execution support: creating unique and quality programmatic content, building links, PR, optimizing pages, building interactive tools/apps and experiences. We support all of it.
tier 01 of 02
Part-time, Fractional Service
You pick two of our four services and we run them with you, founder to founder. The work is custom: it depends on your product, model, vertical, specific goals and SEO readiness. The four service rows below apply to the two you pick.
$3,500 /mo
- 3-month minimum
- Pick two of these four services: Programmatic SEO, AI SEO, Product-led SEO, Technical SEO
- + off-page (backlink) work agreed with you; any link-building spend is on top of the fee
A partial, growth additive service.
-
Strategy and prioritization
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: deep research, the strategy, positioning and messaging, and what to skip for now, run by the founders with no account managers
- What the client provides
- Your goals, constraints and product context, and follow-through on the whole plan without cherry-picking.
- Included capacity
- Weekly or bi-weekly meetings, plus Slack, WhatsApp or Telegram
-
Programmatic SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: research, content ideation, strategy and on-page SEO advice Client engineering: the templates and data pipelines
- What the client provides
- The product or data assets the pages are built on.
- Included capacity
- Included when it is one of your two picks
-
AI SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: brand signal building and strategic placements in the sources LLMs rely on
- What the client provides
- Product knowledge and customer insights, so what we publish is accurate.
- Included capacity
- Included when it is one of your two picks
-
Product-led SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: query research, strategy, and the build of free tools, data products and apps Client engineering: integration into your product and stack, plus in-product changes such as UGC infrastructure and indexable outputs
- What the client provides
- Close work with your product and engineering teams.
- Included capacity
- Included when it is one of your two picks
-
Technical SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: advice and support tailored to your tech stack
- What the client provides
- Context on your tech stack, and engineering time where a change needs it.
- Included capacity
- Included when it is one of your two picks
-
Off-page SEO (backlinks)
- Who executes
- SEO Savages scopes it with you; execution depends on your capacity
- What the client provides
- Agreement on the off-page (backlink) work.
- Included capacity
- Off-page work agreed with you; any link-building spend is on top of the fee
tier 02 of 02
Fractional SEO Growth Team
The same deliverables and hand-offs as Part-time, with more capacity: all four services are in scope, and we agree a monthly link-building budget with you, on top of the fee.
$6,000 /mo
- 4-month minimum
- All four services in scope: Programmatic SEO, AI SEO, Product-led SEO, Technical SEO
- + a link-building budget agreed with you each month, on top of the fee
We become part of your growth team.
-
Strategy and prioritization
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: deep research, the strategy, positioning and messaging, and what to skip for now, run by the founders with no account managers
- What the client provides
- Your goals, constraints and product context, and follow-through on the whole plan without cherry-picking.
- Included capacity
- Weekly or bi-weekly meetings, plus Slack, WhatsApp or Telegram
-
Programmatic SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: research, content ideation, strategy and on-page SEO advice Client engineering: the templates and data pipelines
- What the client provides
- The product or data assets the pages are built on.
- Included capacity
- Included: all four services are in scope
-
AI SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: brand signal building and strategic placements in the sources LLMs rely on
- What the client provides
- Product knowledge and customer insights, so what we publish is accurate.
- Included capacity
- Included: all four services are in scope
-
Product-led SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: query research, strategy, and the build of free tools, data products and apps Client engineering: integration into your product and stack, plus in-product changes such as UGC infrastructure and indexable outputs
- What the client provides
- Close work with your product and engineering teams.
- Included capacity
- Included: all four services are in scope
-
Technical SEO
- Who executes
- SEO Savages: advice and support tailored to your tech stack
- What the client provides
- Context on your tech stack, and engineering time where a change needs it.
- Included capacity
- Included: all four services are in scope
-
Off-page SEO (backlinks)
- Who executes
- SEO Savages scopes it with you; execution depends on your capacity
- What the client provides
- Agreement on the off-page (backlink) work and its monthly budget.
- Included capacity
- Link-building budget agreed with you each month, on top of the fee
honest gating
Is fractional SEO right for you?
We’re selective about who we work with, because fractional only works when the fit is right. Check yourself against both lists before you book a call.
You’re a good fit if
-
Stage: You’re post-product, pre-scale. You have something that works. Customers are using it. Now you need to get it in front of more people.
-
Channel: Organic acquisition makes sense for your business. Your customers search for solutions. They read content, compare options, and do trials.
-
Team: You’re a technical founder, or marketing isn’t your chops. You’re brilliant at building product. You want a partner who complements your strengths, with no vendor to manage and worry about.
-
Budget: You can invest in organic growth. $3,500/mo (3-month minimum) or $6,000/mo (4-month minimum). It’s an investment, and it’s not the cheapest option.
-
Commitment: You can commit to the minimum term. 3 months on Part-time, 4 months on Growth Team. Growth takes time to build. The minimum term jump-starts our work with your product, website and team. After that, the engagement flexes with your needs.
You’re not a fit if
-
Stage: You’re pre-product. Validate first, scale later.
-
Scope: You need a full marketing department. If you need brand strategy, events, paid acquisition, content, and SEO all at once, you need a full-service solution.
-
Approach: You’re looking for shortcuts or viral moments. We don’t do tricks. We don’t promise viral moments. We build systems that compound over time.
-
Timeline: You need results in 30 days. Real growth takes time. If you need results in 30 days, we can’t help you, and honestly, no one can.
-
Involvement: You want to hand off marketing and forget about it. Fractional works because we embed with you and/or your team. That requires your involvement: access to product knowledge, customer insights, and strategic context.
the deal
What we expect for this model to work well for you
You cannot *selectively* do what we instruct you to do: we must align. Why? Think of building a bike. If you decide you only want one pedal, it won’t work and you’ll move slowly.
You must dedicate a budget for the full minimum term (3 or 4 months). This is an investment. We’re engaged in running it ourselves, and we don’t hand work off to juniors the way a vanilla bs SEO agency does.
We’ll vet you against the fit checklist above. Programmatic SEO and AI SEO aren’t suitable for every product, sector or business model; if you’re a marketplace, for example, it’s very likely to be a good fit. This is the brutal truth that most agencies won’t admit, and more often than not they’ll rip you off. Here’s why SEO agencies fail.
onboarding
Onboarding is intense
It starts with a conversation. Before we propose anything, we need to understand your business: your product, your vertical, traction, your growth goals, your constraints. Sometimes the answer is no, and we’ll tell you that directly.
Once we start, we’re open about the intensity as we learn about your situation and goals.
what moves the needle
SEO growth for
early-stage companies
We focus on organic acquisition through SEO, and the growth systems that turn traffic into users and customers. Here’s where each piece fits an early-stage company.
-
Programmatic SEO for startups with the right product and/or data assets
If your product generates unique data or serves a market with template-able search demand, programmatic SEO can scale your traffic without scaling your headcount. Prawomat launched on 1,125 letter pages, each built on a real template with an AI generator behind it, and reached 4,863 search clicks a month in its first year. Not every startup is right for pSEO. When the fit is there, it can be the highest-leverage SEO investment you make.
Learn more about our programmatic SEO approach -
AI SEO for emerging brand visibility
In 2026, your prospects ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as well as Google. Showing up in AI-generated answers requires a different approach, so we help startups build AI visibility alongside traditional SEO.
Learn more about our AI SEO approach -
Product-led SEO growth integration
For startups where the product itself can drive acquisition, we help build SEO into the product experience. Free tools that rank and convert. User-generated content systems that compound over time. Data products that attract links and citations. This requires working closely with product and engineering, which is why we embed with your team.
Learn more about our product-led SEO approach -
SEO foundations that don’t require a team to maintain
Most SEO advice assumes you have a content team, a technical team, and a link building team. You don’t, and that’s the environment we like to operate in. It’s key to develop your on-site and off-site SEO fundamentals: technical foundations, core content, and link building approaches that work with a freelance outreach specialist.
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Positioning and messaging that actually converts
SEO traffic means nothing if your site doesn’t convert. 1,000 visitors who bounce is worth less than 10 visitors who convert. That’s why positioning and messaging are part of the strategy work on both tiers: we help craft clearer value propositions, trust signals, and conversion paths.
fractional SEO for startups, answered
Straight answers
What is fractional SEO? +
How much do fractional SEO services cost? +
Is fractional SEO cheaper than an SEO agency? +
Is a fractional SEO team better than hiring in-house? +
Do startups need SEO? +
When should a startup invest in SEO? +
What does a fractional SEO consultant do in the first months? +
How long does SEO take to show results for a startup? +
Comparing us with an SEO agency? Read our guide on why SEO agencies fail.
get in touch
Tell us about your startup
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