timeout logo
Capital on Tap Logo
Capital on Tap Logo
Goodwood Logo
Skin&Me Logo
Psycle Health
World Horse Racing
Great Sussex Way
timeout logo
World Horse Racing Logo
Capital on Tap Logo
Goodwood Logo
Skin&Me Logo
Psycle Health
World Horse Racing
Great Sussex Way

How We Can Help

What is a Fractional Head of SEO?

As we're dealing with organic search, it's fitting that we break the question down into chunks, in a similar way to how a search engine might:

[Define "Fractional"]

We work with companies on a % of our working week basis, allowing them to have as much or as little of our time as is necessary to support them.

[Define "Head of SEO"]

We help companies by matching them with practitioners with the experience and skills to help with making the right choices for their goals.

Bringing the two together, we allow brands in a pay as you go way to leverage leadership level experience, skills and capabilities to get the most from SEO.

Who needs a fractional head of SEO?

Ultimately, we're a good fit for a company which needs important decisions made related to SEO, but do not have the bandwidth, ability or inclination to hire for it.

We make available vetted, leadership level practitioners which are matched based on your requirements, taking away the pain and preventing the search (pun intended) for the support needed.

How we Help Companies ?

Our goal with every client is to understand their specific context, and then to do what we can to help them with making SEO work for their business.

Below we've provided some illustrative examples, which have been picked because they show both some obvious and some less-so obvious ways in which we can help.

n.b. where names have been left out it's because we have signed NDA's with the respective clients so we are not able to share their names.

Installing SEO // Plan UK

The team at Plan are brilliant at building and running campaigns related to issues which affect women and young girls around the world, however it was felt that they were failing to capitalise on the SEO opportunity available in and around the topics they were campaigning on.

Additionally, they had an upcoming site redesign and re-platform which needed SEO support to make sure that they were making the right choices as they progressed and began thinking about their new positioning.

Our expert was matched based on previous experience working with site migrations and large publishing and editorial teams.

Helping with installing basic training and operating procedures, our expert was able to devise a playbook which worked for the team and their specific requirements related to campaigns, donations and education. This allowed for them and their branding agency to bring together their renewed brand positioning with the landing pages and onpage best practices required to maintain and grow their SEO visibility.

Building a business case // World Horse Racing

Tasked with the significant objective of bringing new audiences to horse racing, we worked with the Goodwood team on building out a plan how and the subsequent data, to answer the question where should they be publishing and in what order.

Our expert helped research, model the opportunity and validate the assumptions with the wider team, for a report which covered English speaking opportunity across several markets. The outcome from the report was both a plan of attack and the required data to win the investment for the project from investors.

Versus

The number one question is we get is how is this different from x or y, so below we outline how we respond to each of those questions

Fractional vs Agency

A question we get often is how do we differ from an agency and why would I not just use an agency to do what you're offering?

We believe that agencies can and do offer similar advice in many cases, however their business model prefers that you work with less expensive managers - with the overseeing work happening at the head-of/director level. Put another way, they want their head of SEO working across many projects and services, which means they are difficult to get regular access to and they are incentivised to minimise exposure to clients as they get the best value getting them to oversee many projects as opposed to working hands-on with a few.

This makes sense and is not to say that it's bad approach, it just means that it's not as suitable for a client who exclusively needs head-of level access – as providing that level of access is disruptive to their business.

Fractional vs Consultant

SEO Consultants are the most similar to a fractional head of SEO, in that they will often create and manage the strategy and decision making for their clients and are sometimes engaged on a fractional basis.

What differs us them from consultants is that they typically also do the work on an on-going basis, which means they must juggle the strategy/head-of work with the time they need to be hands-on.

We deliberately do not engage with clients as the people who are doing the SEO work on an on-going basis, as we are aimed at supporting business leadership in decision making and solving complicated problems. We typically and happily work alongside on-going consultants for the businesses we support, helping with increasing bandwidth or lending more experience to an issue or strategy.

Fractional vs Hiring

Another common question is why could I not simply hire part-time or even full-time a head of SEO?

Truthfully, if you're budget permits it we wholeheartedly encourage you to do so. Our proposition is setup for those who do not have the ability/inclination to hire a new team member for the position or who would benefit from an additional set of eyes passing over their strategy.

The Matching Process

We match our consultants and clients based on a combination of SEO experience in relative verticals and in some cases dealing with similar problems and/or situations.

For example, for a client looking for someone to help with building and onboarding a team, we may recommend a consultant who has not necessarily worked in their vertical, but may have extensive experience building, growing and managing a large SEO team successfully.

Our 3 step process is simple and hopes to get you matched as soon as possible.

1.
Our first step is a 30 – 45 mins discovery call, within which we aim to understand your requirements and to unpick how and whether we can help.
2.
Once we have detailed notes about what you're trying to achieve, we then go away and match you based on the experiences, skills and working history of our vetted consultants.
3.
Once we have shortlisted one or several consultant(s) for the role, we then send over bios for you to review and why we think they will be a good match.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we vet our consultants?

All of our consultants are interviewed by our team to establish not only their SEO knowledge, but also their ability to work at the level of a head-of level team member.

We assess for business acumen, experience and ability whilst working at the leadership team level, and their ability to problem solve complicated issues which may span both SEO and wider business considerations.

Lastly, We contact references and use previous client briefs to battle-test their experience and suitability, all with a view to making sure that they are qualified and capable.

Are our consultants employees?

None of our consultants are employees of the business, they are contractors who we work alongside and provide support to, but each is expected to operate their own limited business.

As a company, we make our money as a % of the fee charged for the consultants.

Pricing

We charge a set day rate of £550 excluding VAT.

This does not include any tooling or services, which are to be covered by the client.

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