By Kim Talarczyk, founder of Demand Recruiting
Give organic search one owner who has already turned search into qualified meetings or trials and can show you which pages did it. That can be a hire, an agency, or a fractional lead, and whichever you pick, judge them on organic conversations and pipeline, not rankings or traffic. If you do not know yet whether search is your channel, start with a first marketer or fractional help instead.
Founders usually raise this when the blog gets traffic and nobody can point to a meeting that came from it, or when an agency report is full of rankings and sales has never seen the leads. Sometimes a buyer says they found a competitor on Google or in an AI answer and never came across you.
I would not hand search to anyone until two things are true. You can say what a qualified meeting or trial looks like, and something records where a conversation came from. Without both, nobody can show that organic worked. If what you want most is a website rebuild or a new brand, that is a different job, and if the real gap is pipeline across paid and several other channels, I would hire a demand gen marketer first.
| Option | Fits when | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| SEO or organic marketer on your team | Search is the channel you want to build, and there is enough work to fill the job | A candidate whose wins are all traffic and rankings |
| Agency | You need extra hands or a defined project, and someone inside owns the plan | Monthly reports with no line to meetings or pipeline |
| Fractional lead | You need a plan before you decide on a hire | A plan nobody inside is ready to run |
| Content writer or content marketer | Someone else already owns the plan and the number | Hiring a writer and expecting someone who owns the channel |
A content marketer writes and ships the pages, and an SEO marketer owns search as a channel and the number behind it. Whichever option you choose, the owner should pick the buyer questions worth answering, ranked by how close each one is to a buying decision, and ship pages that give a clear next step to a meeting or trial.
I would agree on a monthly read of organic conversations and pipeline, with sales agreeing on what counts. If the CRM can't tell you where a conversation came from, source tracking belongs with a RevOps lead before it belongs with search.
Agree on what the early months are judged on before anyone starts. Organic takes longer to show up in pipeline than paid, because buyers often find a page, read for a while, and come back before they ever book a call. A good owner can name the early signal they watch before revenue shows up.
I would not open a separate seat for AI search at an early-stage SaaS company. Getting cited in AI answers builds on the same work as ranking in Google, so it belongs to whoever owns search, judged on the same pipeline.
A founder asks why ChatGPT recommends a competitor, or an agency pitches a separate retainer for getting cited in AI answers, which some agencies sell as AEO or GEO. The instinct is to open a new seat for it.
Most of the work overlaps with SEO. Know the questions buyers ask, answer them clearly on pages you own, and keep the site basics right. The part that is different happens off your site. AI answers lean on what other people say about you, in reviews, in the lists buyers read when they build a shortlist, and in the communities where they ask for advice. That is why I would hire an SEO marketer who works on both, not one who only edits pages.
At a small company I would keep all of it in one seat. Your pages and what others say about you feed the same answers, and splitting them across two seats usually means nobody owns the number.
Be wary of a candidate whose plan is buying mentions, automating posts in communities, or ranking your company first in your own list of the best tools. Those shortcuts tend to stop working, and they can hurt you in Google too.
I would look at a separate seat only once your SEO marketer is already tying organic to pipeline, and the work off your site needs its own owner across several teams. If you bring in an agency for AI answers before then, judge it the way you would judge any agency, and keep someone inside who owns the number.
I want one story, told in order. A site or program they grew, what was already working when they arrived, which pages or topics produced real conversations, and how they knew. I ask an agency for the same story about a client before anyone signs.
When a candidate says they work on AI search, I ask them to walk me through one buyer question they went after. I want the page they wrote, where else they got the company mentioned, how they tracked it over months rather than one screenshot, and whether it led to a real conversation.
If you are not sure search is a channel you should actively build upon, a fractional marketer can help you find out first. I have several strong fractional marketers on my partners page.
Hire full time when search is a channel you plan to build for years and there is enough work to fill the job. Use an agency or a fractional lead when you need a plan before a hire, or the work is a project. Either way, someone inside should own the number, or the reports drift back to rankings.
Most of the companies I work with are B2B SaaS under $10M ARR. If you don't know your channel yet, start with how I hire your first marketer. The hiring framework is a practical place to decide what your next seat needs before the req opens, and if it's one GTM seat, you can start with a single search.
Tell me where things stand, and I'll reply within one business day.
Helping B2B SaaS founders and GTM leaders hire the sales, marketing, and RevOps people who move growth forward.
