Senior SEO Lead
Everything an SEO Lead does, held consistently across more accounts and more people. You lead a pod, a small delivery team working across a shared set of accounts, and hold its delivery standards independently. Formal performance processes sit with the Manager; you run the structured development conversations that feed them. You are accountable for the portfolio of client accounts your pod manages, rather than running each account yourself. You develop expertise in SEO across the pod, so quality does not depend on you.
How this role differs
You become the final review for deliverable quality, and your people responsibilities shift from in-the-moment work notes to structured development conversations.
The Senior Lead holds quality across a team's accounts and builds technical capability in others. The Senior SEO Strategist holds depth across account types and solves the more complex issues that arise.
Roles and responsibilities
- Hold technical and on-page quality across several accounts at once, through the people delivering them.
- Sequence technical work across the team so dependencies and deadlines hold.
- Spot when an Executive is out of their depth before the client does.
- Lead migrations and recoveries, and resource them across the team.
- Propose a new strategy when results are not coming through, explaining the reasoning clearly to build client trust and confidence in the next steps.
- Develop Executives' specialist capability deliberately, with progress they can name.
- Own a pod end to end (its plan, its quality bar and its output) without a senior signing off routine work.
- Working towards accountability for a portfolio of a minimum of 6 client accounts (or £20k MRR) managed by your pod.
- Support the Manager with line management for the pod: run regular one-to-ones, set objectives and feed evidence into mid-year and annual reviews.
- Raise early performance concerns with the Manager, and support them through probation reviews and career progression conversations.
- Be the escalation point for the pod's clients on delivery issues, taking these off the Manager's desk.
- Build a development plan with each person in the pod, naming the two or three skills that will move them to the next level and the training opportunities that will get them there.
- Monitor client hours against deliverables and results, identifying ways to improve efficiency, profitability and campaign success.
- Own onboarding and the first 90 days for new joiners into the pod.
Entry requirements
Gateway skills needed at 8+ in the previous role to step into this one.
How this role is weighted
Immediate growth path
Operates across multiple accounts. Consistent, not occasional, performance at level 4 behaviours. Same level, no drop in title or reward.