Senior SEO Manager / Team Lead

Head of SEO / Team Leader £40,000 - £55,000 great benefits Have you got what it takes to be the Head of SEO at a fast-growing digital marketing agency? If you have experience managing an SEO team, growing an SEO department or leading SEO for an agency, we may have the perfect role for you. Our client is an ambitious agency who are rapidly growing. The Head of SEO to lead the growing SEO team (you will oversee the growth of the team). This is a key department for the agency, and the successful candidate will form part of the core leadership team helping to steer the agency and support new business acquisition alongside the MD and other department heads. Skills required for the role: • Team leadership • Client communication and relationship building • Presenting, leading meetings and pitching. • Pitch creation aimed at varying levels of client and prospect knowledge. • Passionate about driving client SEO performance. • A deep understanding of technical, on-page, content and off-page SEO strategies. • Ability to prioritise strategy and work based on client priorities as well as highest impact achievable activities. • A strong understanding of the SEO landscape and upcoming changes. • Analytical skills, with ability to make decisions based on data and research. • Excellent keyword research, ability to uncover landing page, blog and other opportunities using a range of search terms, PPC and competitor research methods. • Content strategy - defining content processes from research, brief through to editing and optimisations, including E-E-A-T, editorial, multimedia and content performance best practice, and content audits. • Technical SEO - strong understanding of technical SEO best practice, including schema markup, crawl budget optimisation, site speed and core web vitals, redirects and more. • Reporting: Strong understanding and familiarity with Google Search Console, GA4 and Google Looker Studio. • Backlink analysis, link prospecting, outreach, HARO, partnerships, suppliers and other link building skills. Responsibilities • Sharing experience and SEO skills with the SEO team. • Empowering and supporting SEO managers, helping them to take ownership of client SEO accounts. • Monitor and develop SEO performance across clients. • Introduce processes and ways of working to improve team efficiency. • Staying up to date on industry news and innovations, incorporating these industry changes into your work and the work of the teams. • Stay on top of Google Algorithm updates and features, using these to influence client strategies and proposals. • Upskilling, educating and training client teams to take SEO best practice into account in their own processes and website changes. • Commerciality - ability to uncover distinct new opportunities, projects and enhancements for client growth alongside BAU SEO activity. • Communicating with clients, keeping them up to date on SEO activities with support from the accounts team. • Working alongside other department heads and MD to help steer the agency, improve ways of working between teams as the agency grows in size. • Hosting digital marketing training sessions, participating in podcasts and other activities to develop your own presentation skills and personal brand. • Ownership of client reporting: Ensuring the SEO team are keeping to report deadlines, delivering high quality and accurate client reports, and pulling out insights from report data and findings. Experience Required: • 5 years of SEO experience minimum • Team management. • Client-facing agency experience. • An extensive knowledge and demonstrable experience of SEO best practices. • In-depth audits to uncover a range of opportunities across various website types. • Experience with a range of SEO, analytics and other tools or platforms: GA4, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, SEMRush, Google Looker Studio, Google Business, Google Merchant Centre, Uberall, AI tools and LLMs, Microsoft Office, Google Docs. • Experienced in SEO migration and redesign projects. • Understanding of wider digital marketing areas such as PPC, CRO, digital PR, social media and analytics would be beneficial. • Experience or knowledge of wider SEO areas beneficial but not entirely necessary, such as local SEO, reputation management, listing management, lead generation, Google Discover, Google Hotel Search, Google Shopping, • Experience with various CMS’, particularly Umbraco is advantageous, and an understanding of how the CMS should be tailored to facilitate SEO performance. • Retail, brand or hotel/hospitality experience is desirable but not necessary. Salary range purely dependent on skills & experience £40 - £55,000 benefits. Hybrid working / 1 day per week in the Glasgow city centre office. FURTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Gilchrist Recruitment Partnership are a specialist recruitment agency and recruiting partner within the Marketing, Digital communications/PR, Creative & Design and Advertising industry for Scotland, both agency and client side. When submitting your application, please outline your current salary, salary expectations and notice period. It is also essential that you are already legally permitted to work in the UK with the associated paperwork if you are not a UK citizen. If you are not currently living in Scotland, please explain/outline your plans and timelines for relocation to Scotland. We are a Scottish based recruiter who generally do not represent “remote” opportunities - thus you will be either living in Scotland or have solid plans to relocate. We cannot guarantee a response to each individual application, made necessary by the level of response we receive. We will contact only those candidates we wish to shortlist. Apologies in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. We aim to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to ensuring that no applicant receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status or race. Unless clearly stated otherwise, the advertised position is a permanent contract. Jill Gilchrist Managing Director