SEO Consultant
Portfolio-scale expertise, with delivery happening through people following your method rather than your instructions. You own outcomes without owning headcount, and you are the recognised expert voice in the discipline. You still own client accounts directly and do the expert work on them yourself. You codify your expertise in SEO so others can apply it without you.
How this role differs
You move from holding depth across several accounts to owning the method for the discipline across a portfolio, including its budgets and profitability.
The Consultant owns the method and the hardest technical problems, without owning headcount. The SEO Manager owns the team, the resourcing and the quality system that holds standards in place.
Roles and responsibilities
- Own the SEO methodology across the portfolio: what good looks like, and why.
- Solve escalated technical problems independently, including ones nobody has seen before.
- Review the SEO strategy of others, not just their output.
- Turn your method into something repeatable the wider team can run without you.
- Advise the client's business where SEO is the evidence base for a decision beyond the channel.
- Own budgets and make sure projects are profitable.
- Own a set of client accounts directly, leading the client relationship and doing the expert work yourself.
- Build growth cases, upsells and scopes that win on the strength of the thinking.
- Make the case for what the discipline's tooling should be.
- Develop others through specialist coaching and strategic feedback, without line management responsibility.
Entry requirements
Gateway skills needed at 8+ in the previous role to step into this one.
How this role is weighted
Immediate growth path
Accountable for outcomes beyond own portfolio or discipline.
Portfolio scale. The Manager delivers through a team. Same level, no drop in title or reward.