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Case Study

Fractional SEO that connects organic to pipeline

Most B2B scaleups don't need a full-time SEO hire. They need someone senior, embedded, and focused on pipeline, not rankings. That's what fractional SEO is. Every engagement runs nine months and then ends by design.

Is This Your Situation?

Most of the scaleups I work with are dealing with one of these:

01.
You have organic traffic but no pipeline from it

Marketing reports sessions. Sales doesn't see leads. Nobody can explain the gap.

02.
You hired an SEO agency and got reports, not results

Traffic went up. MQLs didn't. You're not sure what you're actually paying for.

03.
You need senior SEO but can't justify a full-time hire yet

You're between €1M–€15M ARR. You need expertise, not a junior execution layer.

04.
Your CMO or VP Marketing is stretched thin

SEO needs ownership. Right now it's falling through the cracks between roles.

What is fractional SEO?

Fractional SEO is a model where a senior SEO leader works inside your company part-time, usually one or two days a week, and owns your search strategy end to end. You get head-of-SEO judgment without the full-time salary, the recruitment risk, or the six-month ramp-up.

The model borrows from fractional CMOs and CFOs: executive-level thinking, bought in the fraction you actually need. Fractional SEO applies that to search. One person is accountable for connecting organic traffic to pipeline, instead of strategy falling through the cracks between your CMO, your content manager, and an agency.

Who it's for

B2B SaaS and tech scaleups between €1M and €15M ARR. Big enough that organic should be producing pipeline, not yet big enough to justify a senior full-time hire. If your marketing team executes well but nobody owns search direction, that's the gap this model fills.

What it isn't

It isn't a freelancer picking up tickets, and it isn't an agency managing your account from a distance. A fractional SEO sits on your side of the table, makes decisions with you, and is judged on MQLs, not deliverable counts.

"We've reduced our search traffic over the last few months — which sounds alarming. But what we cut was irrelevant. What remained converts, brings in MQLs, and moves downstream into revenue. That's not what you typically get from a freelancer."
Fabienne Walch
VP Marketing, Aquablu

HOW I WORK AS YOUR FRACTIONAL SEO

Fractional SEO means you get a senior practitioner embedded in your team, without the full-time salary, recruitment cost, or ramp-up time.

Commercial SEO Strategy

I start with what drives revenue. That means mapping your ICP to search demand, identifying the pages that can produce MQLs, and connecting organic to your actual pipeline, not vanity metrics.

Content That Ranks and Converts

Use case pages, competitor comparisons, solution pages: content built around buyer intent, not keyword lists. Every piece has a job in your funnel.

Technical SEO & Site Architecture

If your site has crawl issues, poor internal linking, or structural problems blocking indexation, I find them and fix them. I also handle SEO migrations.

Embedded Team Collaboration

I work with your content manager, your CMO, your dev team. Slack, sprints, monthly calls. Real collaboration, not a monthly PDF.

"Baba helped us structure our SEO strategy at scale. He brings a strong technical perspective on AI and Programmatic SEO, alerting us to quality risks and pushing us to prioritize Audience Intent over simple volume. If you are looking for a strategic partner to scale intelligently, I highly recommend him."
Camille colinet
Senior Marketing Manager, Insify

Track Record

Fintech Scale-up

Built the organic strategy from the ground up, ran ABM SEO targeting Floryn's highest-value customer segments, and helped hire and onboard their in-house SEO. Leaving behind a team and a system that could operate independently.

Water tech scale-up

Keyword strategy, ABM segment pages, and competitor comparison pages. Onboarded and trained the in-house content manager so the team could run quality SEO independently after the engagement.

Saas, Event Tech

Multi-market SEO for a SaaS company operating across NL, DE, and US. Global SEO Content Playbook, use case landing pages, and a commercial reporting setup connecting organic to pipeline metrics.

Fractional SEO for
tellent SEO by Baba SEOBedrijfsfitness Nederland SEO by Baba SEO
weglot SEO by Baba SEOupheal SEO by Baba SEO
insify SEO by Baba SEO
insify SEO by Baba SEOtellent SEO by Baba SEOupheal SEO by Baba SEO

Fractional SEO vs agency vs in-house vs freelancer

Most founders weighing fractional SEO are really weighing four options. Here's the honest comparison for a scaleup that needs senior direction:

Fractional SEOSEO agencyIn-house senior hireFreelancer
Year-one costFrom €7,500/month, 9 months, then it ends. From €67,500 total, known on day one€60,000–€180,000 per year, open-ended€110,000–€150,000 in salary, tools, and recruitingVaries; billed per task or per hour
Who owns strategyA senior practitioner, accountable to your pipelineAn account manager, shared across clientsYour hire, once rampedYou do; they execute
Seniority you actually get14+ years, working directly with your CMOSenior sells the deal, junior delivers the workDepends on who you can attract at this stageWide range, hard to verify
Ramp-upProducing in week 1, strategy by end of month 1One to three months of onboarding decksThree to six months to hire, three more to rampFast on tasks, never on strategy
Embedded in your teamYes. Slack, sprints, your meetingsNo. Monthly calls and a PDFYesRarely
What happens when they leaveThe exit is the plan: by month 9 your team runs it, documentedThe knowledge leaves with the retainerYou restart recruitingThe context walks out the door

The last row is the one nobody prices in. Agencies and freelancers are paid to stay. My engagements are built to end: nine months, then your team runs it. That's the 9-month exit strategy.

Each column deserves more than a table row. If you're weighing one seriously: the agency comparison in full, in-house hire vs consultant, and how to vet any SEO consultant, including me.

Investment

Fractional engagements start at €7,500/month depending on scope and days per week. Most are structured as 9-month engagements with a clear commercial goal and an end date. That makes the shape of the total knowable on day one: from €67,500 for the whole engagement. A senior in-house hire costs €110,000–€150,000 in year one before they've shipped anything. An open-ended agency retainer costs whatever it grows into.

THE CASE FOR MOVING NOW

Every month without a working organic strategy is compounding opportunity cost. If a single MQL from your sales team is worth €5,000–€50,000 in pipeline, the math on fractional SEO is fast. The HealthTech client story shows that math playing out: monthly conversions doubled.

What you get:

  • You get a senior SEO owner embedded in your team, not an agency contact
  • Ruthless prioritisation: every sprint is built around what's most likely to produce pipeline in the next 90 days
  • I handle strategy and oversee execution while your team builds the capability to run it after I'm gone
  • Direct Slack access, weekly async updates, monthly strategy reviews

WHAT YOU GET

01.
Keyword & opportunity map

Your ICP mapped to search demand. Which queries matter at each stage of the funnel, ranked by MQL potential, not traffic.

02.
Content roadmap

Prioritised pages to build. Each one has a clear job: drive a specific type of buyer to take a specific action. No content for the sake of it.

03.
Pipeline attribution setup

If organic isn't visible in your CRM, we fix that before anything else. You can't optimise what you can't measure.

04.
Technical SEO audit & fixes

Crawlability, internal linking, site structure, indexation issues. Identified and resolved, not dumped in a spreadsheet for your team to interpret.

05.
ABM SEO pages

Segment-specific landing pages targeting your highest-value verticals by industry, company type, or use case. Built for qualified traffic, not volume.

06.
Embedded team collaboration

Slack, sprint check-ins, monthly strategy calls. I work with your content manager, CMO, and dev team, not in a separate lane.

Fractional SEO results for B2B SaaS and scaleups

A B2B HealthTech scaleup doubled monthly organic conversions during a nine-month fractional engagement. Not by publishing more, but by cutting what didn't convert and building pages for the segments that do. The numbers are in the client story.

At Floryn, a Dutch fintech scaleup, I built the organic strategy from the ground up, ran ABM SEO on their highest-value customer segments, and helped hire and onboard their in-house SEO. The engagement ended the way every fractional engagement should: with a team and a system that run without me.

At Aquablu, I deliberately reduced search traffic. What I cut was irrelevant. What remained converts, produces MQLs, and moves downstream into revenue. Their VP Marketing says it better than I can, in the quote further up this page.

What this looks like in practice

HealthTech · 6 months

organic conversions in 6 months (475 → 950 a month)

Doubling organic conversions for a Series A HealthTech

Series A→B mental-health SaaS (US)

Common Questions About Fractional SEO

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DE-RISK YOUR SEO

Stop reporting traffic, start reporting pipeline

Senior ownership without the full-time overhead

Proven on B2B SaaS, fintech, and scaleups

READY TO GROW ORGANICALLY?

If organic traffic exists but nobody on your team can tell you what it's producing in pipeline, let's talk.

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