Head of SEO

How this role differs

You become accountable for a capability rather than a collection of accounts. What the function is good at today, and what it needs to be good at in two years, is now your problem to solve.

Both roles own the discipline agency-wide. The Head of owns it including the headcount that delivers it. The Associate Director, SEO owns it through expertise and standards, carrying a commercial number without owning the team.

Roles and responsibilities

• Own the SEO offer and its commercial performance: margin, utilisation and growth.
• Own the SEO team: resourcing, performance, development and succession.
• Be accountable for the discipline's full client portfolio through the teams that manage it, rather than holding accounts yourself.
• Hold managers accountable for team performance, delivery quality and client outcomes, while developing their leadership and commercial judgement.
• Set methodology agency-wide, including what gets retired.
• Plan capability against where search is going twelve months out.
• Support new business where SEO is the differentiator.
• Define the development pathway for the discipline: what good looks like at each level, and how people are trained towards it.
• Lead senior recruitment for the function, including roles that do not exist yet.
• Represent the function to clients in pitches and senior conversations, and externally in the industry.
• Build the leadership bench beneath you so that the function is not dependent on you being in the room.
• Work across functions on integrated work, and resolve the trade-offs where disciplines compete for the same people or the same client budget.

Immediate growth path