SEO work crosses teams
Marketing, engineering, product, editorial, analytics, and sales each own part of the result. A fractional director owns the complete program across those teams.
New York · Working worldwide
Best fractional SEO director. Dennis Shirshikov.
A fractional SEO director gives your company part-time senior search leadership. The role owns strategy, priorities, team direction, implementation quality, and the connection between organic search and revenue.
3.1Mmonthly organic impressions at peak
38Kcalculator submissions in year one
$2.1Mattributed contribution to ARR
When does a fractional SEO director make sense?
The role is useful when the company needs senior ownership across strategy, implementation, team direction, and measurement.
The agency needs direction
Production is happening while priorities, quality control, and accountability still sit with an executive. A fractional director takes ownership of the SEO program.
Growth has stalled
Traffic, leads, or revenue stopped moving and the team needs a senior diagnosis before producing more of the same work.
A high-risk change is coming
A migration, redesign, acquisition, international launch, or platform change needs experienced search leadership.
What should a fractional SEO director actually own?
The job improves the quality and order of decisions from diagnosis through release and measurement.
Set the direction
Translate the business goal into an SEO strategy, forecast, and short list of priorities that the team can defend.
Direct the work
Give developers, writers, agencies, and specialists clear requirements, owners, review standards, and release paths.
Challenge weak assumptions
Question the channel, vendor plan, and first idea when demand, implementation, or business evidence points to a stronger direction.
Review what ships
Inspect technical changes, pages, tracking, and campaigns before incomplete execution becomes another quarter of diagnosis.
Measure business value
Connect search visibility to qualified actions, pipeline, revenue, and the next investment decision.
Build lasting capacity
Improve the team, systems, briefs, reporting, and hiring plan so the company keeps the capability.
What can you achieve with a fractional SEO director?
These anonymized engagements show how technical, content, product, authority, analytics, and conversion work translated into measurable search and business outcomes.
Programmatic SEO · Vacation rentals
Every new listing became another useful search surface.
- Problem
- A vacation-rental marketplace needed to win destination demand against incumbents spending roughly 100 times more.
- What changed
- We rebuilt destination and property indexation so inventory, templates, canonicals, and page utility improved together while thin URLs stayed controlled.
Reported result+96% organic sessions YoY12 months
Reported start and end states are exact. The illustrative path shows direction where month-level source data was unavailable.
3.1Mmonthly organic impressions at peak
−38%blended booking-acquisition cost vs. the prior paid-heavy mix
4.8×measured ROI at month 12 against retainer cost
A good SEO director should make the work harder to fake.
The director challenges the channel, the vendor, and the first idea when evidence changes. The role funds work with a clear value case, catches weak implementation before launch, and explains why each priority deserves time and money.
This is the standard Dennis brings to the role: direct access, clear decisions, close review, honest measurement, and evidence-led assumptions.
A short roadmap with a reason, owner, dependency, and measure for every active item.
Bad news arrives early enough to improve the plan and the next decision.
The recommendation is reviewed where it matters: in code, content, tracking, and the released experience.
Questions to ask before hiring a fractional SEO director
Start with responsibilities, price, fit, operating model, and evidence. These answers make the first conversation more useful.
What does a fractional SEO director do?
A fractional SEO director leads organic search on a part-time basis. The role sets strategy, chooses priorities, directs technical SEO and content, manages internal teams and vendors, reviews what reaches production, and measures whether the work creates qualified demand and revenue.
How much does a fractional SEO director cost?
Dennis-led engagements start at $10,000 per month. The final retainer depends on site complexity, market risk, implementation requirements, available team capacity, specialist support, and the speed required. Every proposal states the responsibilities, included work, client inputs, and terms.
When should a company hire a fractional SEO director?
The role fits when SEO matters to revenue, the work crosses marketing and engineering, and the company has execution capacity plus a need for senior search leadership. It is also useful during a migration, traffic recovery, agency transition, or preparation for a full-time hire.
How is a fractional SEO director different from an agency?
An agency usually owns production inside a contracted scope. A fractional SEO director owns the decisions across the whole program and can direct agencies, employees, developers, writers, and specialists against one roadmap. Companies often use both, with the director leading the agency.
Why hire Dennis Shirshikov?
Dennis combines senior SEO strategy with technical SEO, editorial systems, digital PR, analytics, AI search, web engineering, finance, and conversion. The result records on this site show the work, outcomes, timeframes, sources, and limits behind previous engagements.
Talk through your next SEO leadership decision.
Share the site, business goal, current team, and timing. Dennis will tell you whether the next step calls for a fractional director, a focused specialist, an agency, or an internal hire.