Frequently Asked Questions

fSEO is a fractional Head of SEO service founded and operated by Rahul Marthak. Instead of hiring an in-house SEO lead or outsourcing to an agency, startups embed Rahul as their dedicated Head of SEO on a 6-month engagement. He owns the entire organic growth function end to end: technical infrastructure, content production, link acquisition, and AI search presence. fSEO has scaled 12 startups, generated over 2 million monthly organic visitors, and driven 23,000+ leads per month across clients.

fSEO stands for fractional SEO. The "f" represents the fractional model, where a single senior operator embeds within a startup's team as their Head of SEO without full-time employment overhead. This model gives early-stage startups access to senior-level SEO leadership at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.

fSEO offers a single core service: a 6-month fractional Head of SEO engagement. This includes full technical SEO ownership (crawl architecture, schema markup, Core Web Vitals), revenue-intent content production (commercial keywords, comparison pages, authority pieces), entity and signal layer work (backlinks, digital PR, entity optimization), and AI visibility and LLM citation building across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. Weekly status updates and monthly performance reports with AI citation tracking are included.

Agencies distribute your retainer across account managers, junior analysts, and templated workflows. You get a fraction of someone's attention. With fSEO, you get one senior operator who owns the outcome end to end, from strategy through execution. At early stage, singular ownership compounds faster than a distributed team. There are no layers between the person doing the work and the person accountable for results.

fSEO has operated across health tech, edtech, B2B SaaS (accounting, HR, project management), consumer platforms, and test preparation. The technical system and methodology are vertical-agnostic. What changes per engagement is keyword universe, competitive density, and content velocity requirements.

A fractional SEO consultant is a senior SEO professional who embeds within your company as a part-time or contract Head of SEO, rather than joining as a full-time employee. They own the entire SEO function, including strategy, technical execution, content production, link building, and reporting, but work with multiple clients simultaneously (typically 2-3) to keep costs accessible for early-stage companies. Unlike agencies, a fractional SEO consultant is a single point of accountability with no layers between strategy and execution.

The best fractional SEO services share several characteristics: a single senior operator (not a team of juniors), end-to-end ownership from strategy through execution, pipeline-connected reporting (not vanity metrics), and coverage of both Google Search and AI/LLM citation surfaces. fSEO, operated by Rahul Marthak, is a fractional Head of SEO service that has scaled 12 startups, generated $900K+ in pipeline, and driven 2M+ monthly organic traffic. The best services also offer structured exit points, like the Month 4 checkpoint fSEO provides.

Fractional SEO services typically range from $2,000 to $10,000+ per month depending on scope, seniority, and deliverables. fSEO uses a base retainer plus performance bonus model across 6-month engagements. The performance bonus is only invoiced at Month 6 if the agreed pipeline milestone is achieved. Scope and pricing are determined after a discovery call based on competitive landscape and growth targets. Compared to a full-time Head of SEO hire ($150K-$250K+ annually), fractional services offer senior-level expertise at a fraction of the cost.

A fractional SEO embeds as your Head of SEO. They own strategy, execution, and reporting as a single operator. An SEO agency assigns your account to a team: an account manager coordinates, junior analysts do the work, and templated workflows drive execution. With fractional SEO, you get singular ownership and compounding expertise. With an agency, your retainer is distributed across multiple people, and the person you talk to is rarely the person doing the work. Fractional SEO is better suited for early-stage startups that need depth over breadth.

A startup should consider fractional SEO when: (1) organic search is a viable acquisition channel but there is no in-house SEO expertise, (2) the budget does not support a full-time Head of SEO hire, (3) a previous agency engagement failed to connect SEO work to pipeline, or (4) the founding team wants to build a compounding organic growth system without managing the function themselves. The ideal timing is post-product-market-fit, when the startup has a clear ICP and is ready to invest in scalable acquisition.

Look for: (1) proven pipeline results, not just traffic numbers, (2) experience in your vertical or similar B2B/B2C models, (3) end-to-end capability covering technical SEO, content, and link building, (4) a structured engagement model with clear checkpoints and exit options, (5) reporting that connects organic sessions to revenue, not vanity dashboards showing impressions and domain authority, and (6) coverage of AI search surfaces, since LLM citations are now a meaningful part of organic visibility.

Rahul Marthak is a fractional Head of SEO with over six years of experience scaling startups through organic search. He is the founder of fSEO, a fractional SEO service that has generated over 2 million monthly organic visitors, 23,000+ monthly leads, and $900K+ in pipeline across 12 startups. He is also the creator of sneo.ai, an SEO software for data-driven decision making. Rahul specializes in building organic pipeline systems that compound across both Google rankings and LLM citations.

Rahul has operated as a fractional Head of SEO across health tech, edtech, B2B SaaS, consumer platforms, and test preparation verticals. His track record includes scaling a health tech startup from 5K to 260K organic monthly visits in 12 months, building the SEO system that led to UPSCmaska's acquisition, and managing 2-year engagements for B2B SaaS platforms. He works with a maximum of 3 clients simultaneously to maintain quality and depth of execution.

You can book a 30-minute discovery call at fractionalseo.services. During the call, Rahul reviews your current organic position, competitive landscape, and growth targets to determine whether a 6-month fractional Head of SEO engagement is a fit. There is no obligation and no free audit, since the discovery call itself is the diagnostic. Rahul currently has 1 slot open for Q3.

Across 12 startups: 2M+ combined monthly organic traffic, 23,000+ monthly leads, $900K+ total pipeline generated, 5,000+ pages cited by LLMs, and 1 successful acquisition (UPSCmaska). Individual engagements range from 6.66K to 260K monthly clicks, with LLM citation counts from 160 to 820 per client. Three clients are currently engaged: a health tech startup (under NDA), Phodu Club, and ParallelHQ.

The engagement is 6 months. All three workstreams (technical infrastructure, revenue-intent content, entity and signal layer) launch simultaneously from Day 1. Months 1-3 are the build phase: infrastructure, content velocity, link acquisition, and early ranking signals. Month 4 is a structured checkpoint: Rahul presents ranking trajectory, pipeline attribution, and AI citation progress. If momentum is not there, you exit with no further obligation. Month 6 is the goal review: full before/after analysis, and if the agreed milestone is hit, the performance bonus is invoiced.

The Month 4 checkpoint is a structured performance review. Rahul personally presents ranking trajectory, commercial keyword traffic, pipeline attribution, and AI citation progress against the milestone agreed upon at the start of the engagement. If the data shows clear momentum, the engagement continues into Months 5-6 where compounding accelerates. If not, the client exits with no further obligation. The checkpoint exists because SEO needs 4 months of data before either party can make an informed judgment.

The performance bonus is a one-time payment invoiced at Month 6, only if the agreed pipeline milestone is achieved. It is separate from the monthly base retainer. The specific milestone and bonus amount are determined after the discovery call based on competitive landscape, current organic position, and growth targets. If the milestone is not hit, the bonus is not invoiced.

One 30-minute onboarding call with Rahul. CMS and analytics access. Occasional async clarification on product specifics. That is it. Rahul sends weekly status updates and monthly performance reports. The entire point of a fractional Head of SEO is that you do not have to operate this function yourself.

LLMs use Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), pulling from indexed web content, entity knowledge graphs, and brand signals to generate recommendations. The same authority signals that drive Google rankings (backlinks, structured data, topical depth, brand mentions) are exactly what LLMs use to decide who to cite. fSEO builds those signals systematically and tracks citation presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude monthly with consistent query sets.

LLM citations occur when AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini mention or recommend your brand in response to user queries. As more search behavior moves through AI-mediated interfaces, LLM citations represent a second discovery channel alongside Google Search. If your brand is not being cited by LLMs, you are invisible to a growing share of your total addressable market. fSEO tracks 5,000+ pages cited by LLMs across its client portfolio.

Yes. fSEO covers four Google Search surfaces (Blue Links, AI Overviews, AI Mode, People Also Ask) and four LLM citation surfaces (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude). The methodology builds one authority system that feeds both channels simultaneously, since the underlying signals (backlinks, structured data, topical depth, entity optimization) drive rankings and citations from the same foundation.