SEO Team Lead, Head Of SEO

Smile Digital; Manchester; Remote; GBP 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

Smile Digital seeks an SEO leader to shape the direction of its organic search offering and develop the team. The role focuses on strategy, client commercial value, and senior stakeholder relationships, with limited hands-on work.

You will lead the SEO team, set strategic direction across client accounts, and own revenue and profitability while exploring AI Search and GEO trends for the agency.

Qualifications

• Strong agency-side SEO experience
• Has managed people in a lead role
• Comfortable with senior commercial conversations with clients

Responsibilities

• Leading and developing the SEO team
• Setting the strategic direction across client accounts
• Supporting the team with more complex SEO challenges when needed
• Acting as a senior escalation point for clients and delivery teams
• Helping clients understand the commercial value of SEO, not just rankings and traffic
• Building strong relationships with senior client stakeholders
• Supporting client retention and identifying opportunities to grow relationships
• Managing resource and capacity across the team
• Taking ownership of revenue, margin, profitability and overall team performance
• Helping shape the agency's approach to AI Search, GEO and the wider changing Search landscape
• Collaborating with senior leadership to drive growth and client outcomes

Skills

SEO leadership

Team leadership

Client relationship management

Job description

SEO Team Lead / Head of SEO - £50,000 to £70,000 DOE - Remote (Must be UK based)

If you love SEO but you are at the point where you want to have more influence than simply owning delivery, this could be a really interesting next move.

We are working with an established digital agency that is looking for a senior SEO leader to help shape the direction of its organic search offering, develop the team and make sure clients are seeing genuine commercial value from the work being delivered.

The exact level is flexible. They are open to someone stepping up into a broader SEO Lead role, or someone already operating at Head of SEO level who wants a role where they can have real influence without disappearing too far away from the work.

This is not about being hands on all day. You will need enough technical depth to support the team when something complex comes up, but your focus will be much more around strategy, people, clients and the commercial performance of the function.

You will be:

• Leading and developing the SEO team


• Setting the strategic direction across client accounts


• Supporting the team with more complex SEO challenges when needed


• Acting as a senior escalation point for clients and delivery teams


• Helping clients understand the commercial value of SEO, not just rankings and traffic


• Building strong relationships with senior client stakeholders


• Supporting client retention and identifying opportunities to grow relationships


• Managing resource and capacity across the team


• Taking ownership of areas such as revenue, margin, profitability and overall team performance


• Helping shape the agency's approach to AI Search, GEO and the wider changing Search landscape

We would love to speak to someone with strong agency-side SEO experience who has already managed people and is confident having senior commercial conversations with clients.

You will probably be working at Senior SEO Manager, SEO Lead, Team Lead, SEO Director or Head of SEO level currently.

What matters most is that you are commercially switched on, understand what good SEO looks like, know how to get the best out of people and can see the bigger picture for both the client and the agency.