Nobody senior owns SEO
Your marketers, developers or an agency all do some SEO, but nobody sets the priorities or answers for the results. I take that seat.
Fractional head of SEO
I’m Stanislav Baciu, a fractional SEO consultant, in SEO since 2016. As your fractional head of SEO, I join your team part time, own the SEO strategy and lead the people who carry it out: your developers, writers, marketers and any agency you use.
Brands I’ve worked with: WordPress VIP, Yoast, Blocksy and AlphaSpread.
When a fractional head of SEO makes sense
SEO keeps losing the roadmap
SEO requests wait in the backlog because nobody can say what they’re worth. I tie each one to signups, leads or sales, so it can compete with the rest of the roadmap.
A big change is coming
A rebuild, a new market or a launch. I make sure search is in the plan before design and development start.
A full-time hire is too early
There isn’t enough SEO work yet for a senior employee and a team. A fractional lead gives you the direction without the full-time salary.
How I work with your team
Your team keeps its own process. SEO work goes through the same tickets, reviews and sign-off as everything else, and one person on your side signs off the roadmap.
With leadership
We agree what organic search should bring in and set the targets in signups, leads or sales. Every month you get one page that shows where those numbers stand and why.
With product and developers
I join planning before a build starts, write SEO requirements as work orders your developers can act on, and check changes on staging before they go live.
With writers and marketers
Writers get briefs. Every content idea is checked against your current rankings first, so you update a page that already ranks before writing a new one.
With your agency or freelancers
If you already pay an agency or freelancers, I set their priorities and review their work. When the plan needs more hands, I bring in writers and outreach specialists I already work with.
What you get
- An SEO strategy and a prioritized roadmap
- One person accountable for organic results
- SEO requirements for product and developers
- Briefs and priorities for writers
- Direction and review for your agency
- A one-page monthly report and a call
- Checklists and SEO rules your team works to
Site migrations and recovery after a Google update are part of the role when they come up.
How it starts
A discovery call
You tell me what organic search should bring in and who works on it today.
Your market and competitors
I size your market’s non-brand search demand, your share of it, and which competitors take the rest.
Your team and access
I meet the people who ship the work, and check that your analytics count conversions correctly. I need read-only Search Console access, as Google suggests for an audit, plus GA4 and your CMS.
The strategy and first priorities
You get the roadmap in priority order, each team knows its first tasks, and the first monthly report follows.
The monthly report and how I check the numbers
The report is one page for leadership. It shows organic leads or sales, clicks and AI mentions, each from the tool your team already uses, so anyone can check a number.
AI Overview links kept out of your rankings
Ahrefs counts a link in an AI Overview as position 1, and Search Console gives it the Overview’s position. Left in, those links can hide rankings that are slipping.
No impressions compared across September 2025
In mid-September 2025 Google changed how Search Console counts impressions and average position. Clicks weren’t affected, so I compare clicks.
Conversions broken down before they’re explained
I split every change by site, page, event and traffic mix first. In one GA4 property the total barely moved while booked meetings fell, hidden by a rise in form fills.
Fractional head of SEO, agency or in-house hire
It usually comes down to who sets the direction and how much work there is.
Fractional head of SEO
A senior lead inside your team sets the strategy and directs the people doing the work, your agency included if you keep one. It suits a team that can ship changes, and it won’t work if nobody can change the site.
Agency retainer
A team does the work, and you usually talk to an account lead. What you keep when it ends depends on the contract. It’s the better choice when you need many hands and someone inside already sets the direction.
In-house head of SEO
You get an employee who works with the team and budget you give them. When they leave, you keep what they documented. Hire one when there’s enough work for a full-time lead and a team.
I’ve led a team myself. My background includes managing eight people at BuzzLogic, SEO executives, copywriters, outreach specialists and a developer, and writing the processes they worked to.
Results
WordPress VIP: SEO strategist on a 38-page rebuild
WordPress VIP
SEO strategist on a 38-page rebuild
I owned the redirect strategy and wrote the SEO brief for every page. After launch, the team kept working to the noindex rules, the 301 and 410 checklist and the internal linking standards I set.
AI tool launch: 50 to 5,000 daily clicks within five months
AI tool launch
50 to 5,000
daily clicks within five months
I planned the site with the product, design and development teams for three months before there was a website, and Google indexed it right after launch.
AlphaSpread: +81.7% organic traffic in 6 months
AlphaSpread
+81.7%
organic traffic in 6 months
A stock investing SaaS with about 400,000 pages missing from Google’s index. I ran the audit and led the fixes to the site structure and internal linking.
“Stan has been a strategic partner for Ocost. His keyword research showed us which companies are searching for a product like ours, which helped us sharpen our ICP and product focus, and he leads SEO for our site in German and English.”
Questions about hiring a fractional head of SEO
Is a fractional head of SEO the same as a fractional SEO consultant or director?
Mostly, yes. The titles differ, and the role is one senior person who owns SEO strategy and results part time. The difference that matters is whether that person leads your team or only advises it.
Do you manage our team?
I direct the SEO work: I set the priorities, brief the people doing it and review what they ship. Your managers stay your people’s managers.
Can you work with our current agency?
Yes. I set its priorities, review its work and report on it next to everything else. If it isn’t delivering, you’ll see it in the numbers and hear it from me.
Does this cover ChatGPT and AI Overviews?
Yes. The monthly report shows AI mentions next to leads and clicks, and I track AI visibility on the prompts your buyers use.
What does it cost, and is there a minimum term?
It depends on how much of the work I do myself and how much your team and agency already cover. We agree the fee and the terms on the discovery call, once I’ve seen your site.
Need a senior owner for SEO?
Tell me who works on organic search today and what it should bring in. I’ll tell you where I’d start, and if a fractional lead isn’t the right fit, I’ll say so.
Book a discovery call