Dave Rohrer Fractional SEO Director & Consultant

Senior SEO leadership,
without the full-time hire.

I'm Dave Rohrer. For 20+ years I've led SEO for Fortune 50 brands, enterprise publishers, and VC-backed startups, most recently as Director of Audience Management at Yahoo/AOL. Now I bring that into a fractional seat: I own the strategy and direct your team, without a full-time hire.

Book a discovery call What I do

Booking fractional clients for Q4 2026

Dave Rohrer, fractional SEO director and consultant
Worked with & for
  • AOL
  • Cabela's
  • Chewy
  • G2
  • Orbitz
  • State Farm
  • SurePayroll
  • Vanguard

Director or consultant

Do you need someone to own and direct the work, or to set the plan and guide the people already doing it?

Fractional SEO Director

You have people on SEO (in-house or an agency) but no senior owner setting strategy and holding the bar.

  • Owns strategy, roadmap, and priorities
  • Directs your existing team and reviews the work
  • Connects organic search to revenue
  • Reports to the exec team, not into the weeds
Fractional SEO Director

Fractional SEO Consultant

You need expert strategy and hands-on guidance, but not a full leadership seat. Often with little in-house SEO yet.

  • Audit, strategy, and a prioritized roadmap
  • Hands-on guidance for whoever executes
  • Technical SEO, content, and migrations
  • Flexible, lower-commitment entry point
Fractional SEO Consultant

SEO leadership notes, minus the fluff.

Short, practical notes on running organic search at scale: what's working, what's changed, and what the AI-search shift actually means for teams. First issue goes out Q4 2026; get on the list before it does.

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Two decades in the seat

Enterprise and in-house leadership, not just agency advice. The fractional work is the same job I've done full-time, for a fraction of the year.

Leadership roles

2014–CurrentNorthSide Metrics
Founder & PrincipalFounded and run the agency: SEO and paid-search strategy and delivery for small-to-midsize businesses and up.
2022–2026Yahoo / AOL
Director, Audience ManagementGrew Google Discover & News from tens of thousands to tens of millions of monthly users.
2020–2022Neon Ambition
Head of SEOBuilt the SEO practice 0→5 people across a 20+ client portfolio.
2011–2015Covario / iProspect
SEO LeadEnterprise SEO for Fortune 50, IR500, and Global 100 brands.
2007–2011SurePayroll (Paychex)
Online Marketing ManagerGrew qualified organic leads 30% a year, four years running.

Depth & range

AI search
GEO / AEO & answer enginesAdapting organic strategy for AI-generated answers and generative search.
Industry
Host, Speaker, Judge200+ podcast episodes · 50+ conference talks · Past CBMA and US Search Awards judge.
Leadership
C-suite & cross-functionalPartnering with executives and aligning product, engineering, editorial, and marketing around organic growth.
Migrations
50+ site migrations completedRedirects, content, analytics, and post-launch monitoring that protects traffic.
Scale
Technical SEO at millions of pagesCrawl, indexation, architecture, and internal linking on enterprise platforms.

What director-level SEO moves

Figures are anonymized by client. Fuller case detail lives on the Results page.

Organic
+75% organic sessions year over year, through two migrations in four months.
Discover
Tens of millions of monthly users grown on Google Discover & News, up from tens of thousands.
Opportunity
+50% clicks & impressions the quarter after a technical-audit rollout.
Lead
30% organic lead growth per year, four years running, for a SaaS product.

To Fit or Not to Fit, That is the Question.

A fit if

  • You have an SEO team or agency but no senior owner
  • Organic search is strategic, not a side project
  • You've outgrown ad-hoc SEO and need a real roadmap
  • A migration, replatform, or AI-search shift is coming

Not a fit if

  • You want cheap links or content by the piece
  • You need someone to just execute tickets
  • SEO isn't a real priority this year
  • You're looking for guaranteed rankings

Not sure whether you need a director or a consultant?

Book a 30-minute discovery call. We'll pressure-test where you are and whether fractional leadership is the right move. No pitch if it isn't.

Book a discovery call