Senior SEO Strategist (remote, overlap with UK/EU hours, £48-55k)

Ellipsis®
Posted 1 year ago
Ellipsis is a world-class SEO Content agency. SEO is winner-takes-all, and we make our clients the winners. We produce SEO Content that achieves top rankings for clients at scale.

As our new Senior SEO Strategist, you’ll play an important role in ensuring we continue to produce the finest SEO Content strategies for clients, we continue to share our expertise with the world, and we continue to drive up standards internally and in the industry.

Our current positioning is focused on the WordPress ecosystem, and we’re about to roll out new positioning entirely focused on delivering world-class SEO Content to technology businesses – we’re already world-class, and our aim is to be the very best at SEO Content in the world.

Ellipsis is a 100% remote team, and we’ve been fully remote since our first day 5 years ago. We lean into the best things about being remote: we balance collaboration, “Deep Work”, regular team retreats, and we put a lot of work into a supporting and inclusive culture where everyone can do the best work of their careers.

We’re distributed across the world, but our core collaboration hours are GMT/UTC-based. We often meet up with colleagues for team meetups and conferences.

Our SEO Content work is branded as Content Growth, and clients engage us to produce a set number of posts each month on retainer based on an SEO Content strategy we formulate for them which is focused on bringing them impressive results.

With Content Growth, we take care of everything end-to-end, from high-level SEO strategy, keyword selection (which is powered by our proprietary FALCON AI), content briefs, content production, publication, promotion and link building, rank tracking, and troubleshooting SEO queries. Our Content team leads these projects and takes care of the content production, and our SEO team takes care of the SEO requirements.

Ellipsis is growing quickly. We do outstanding work and are building something special. It’s an exciting time to join us.

About the role

As our new Senior SEO Strategist, you’ll be joining our industry-leading SEO team.

We believe that in an SEO industry that is opaque, misleading, and secretive, we have space to differentiate by being radically transparent about SEO methodology, process, and results. You’ll play a key role in bringing this to life. The Ellipsis team are experts who can be trusted, and you’ll be our newest expert.

You’ll be working alongside our Head of SEO and our SEO Specialists to develop clients’ SEO strategies, proactively monitor performance and recommend changes, troubleshoot clients’ SEO challenges, and be the go-to person to answer hard SEO questions from clients (including on client calls).

You’ll also be shaping our approach to SEO through Content Growth and write world-class Thought Leadership content that we’ll share on our blog, social media, and newsletter. Currently, responsibility for this is split between our Head of SEO and Ellipsis’ Managing Director;you’ll work closely with both and maintain their high standards.

We’re trusted to deliver SEO Content rankings that get conversions for clients, and you’ll be playing a key role in leading, shaping, and adapting both our overall approach on Content Growth, and strategies for individual clients. You'll work with businesses ranging from startups looking for product/market fit, to enterprise businesses with large sites building on their significant existing rankings.

This is a varied and extremely rewarding role. You’ll get to solve SEO problems across a wide range of clients in different sectors of technology and work with a tight feedback loop which enables constant learning by doing. SEO is an ever-evolving topic, so being able to reliably identify what works and apply that to the rest of the portfolio is a highlight of the role which makes it unique. This role fits persons who are extremely confident with SEO already, but want to be able to go deeper, test and expand their skills at scale and speed, while always beating yesterday’s results.

You’ll be working with Ellipsis’ cutting-edge FALCON AI, and lead the way with analysing for our clients the large quantity of data we pull out of FALCON, which has already led to unique publications such as our industry Weather Report. FALCON AI is our immensely powerful keyword selection tool, designed and built in-house. It’s the real deal: it was featured by the New York Times in 2022, and is a key competitive advantage for how we deliver excellent results.

You’ll be working under our Head of SEO, in our Strategy team, which handles all SEO and Strategy requirements for clients. Following onboarding, you’ll have your own strategy consulting projects to lead and deliver. You’ll be hands-on and responsible for delivering client work. This will give you the opportunity to learn and grow at an extremely fast pace.

Activity in this role will be broken down as follows:

  • 50% Leading SEO strategy for clients
  • 25% Client and account management
  • 25% Writing Thought Leadership content
Your main responsibility will be to drive SEO strategy forward for all Ellipsis clients.

You’ll need to love solving marketing problems, developing SEO winning strategies for clients, and writing these up into an actionable format, as well as driving implementation where necessary. You should be comfortable working independently and blocking off large parts of your day for Deep Work, whilst taking on board client needs and feedback, and delivering work to clients at a rapid pace.

To support the above, you need the following skills:

  • Expertise at SEO strategy: you’ve been working in SEO and deeply understand what works, what doesn’t, and how to keep up-to-date with the latest in SEO to stay one step ahead. We’re not interested in experimenting with or implementing black-hat techniques: our focus is to deliver genuine, strong results which make a difference to client businesses.
  • Adaptability and willingness to learn: new challenges come up on a very regular basis in SEO, and you’re excited by the prospect of being able to triage, analyse and create new processes (or even tools) to circumvent new problems.
  • Excellent analytical skills: you know which data you should be looking at, how to extract and analyse it, and what insights to look for to drive results. You’re also excited by the idea of creating new analytical workflows for new types of insights where needed.
  • You’re motivated by results: we retain our clients by delivering results that make a real difference. That remains our primary concern, and should be your primary motivation for this work.
  • Excellent written communication: you are excellent at long-form writing, and communicating your ideas clearly and persuasively to the reader.
  • Client communication: you’re able to present your ideas to clients effectively, answer questions on-the-fly, and keep the client very happy. You’re happy to do this predominantly via video calls and email.
  • Technical SEO: we’re interested in Technical SEO to the extent that it unlocks rankings for clients. You’re able to troubleshoot using Google Search Console, and tools like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog, and identify fixes to issues with client sites.
Requirements

Requirements: hard skills

  • 5+ years experience in SEO, and preferably 2+ years in a strategic/consulting role
  • Strong understanding of technical SEO, and what needs to be covered to power SEO Content success.
  • Digital marketing/SEO agency experience
  • Excellent English language writing / editing skills
  • Excellent project and account management
  • Friendly, efficient client-facing communication
  • Experience working remotely full time
  • Availability to work our core collaboration hours, which are GMT/CET;this role also requires availability for client calls, which can be later for EU applicants/earlier for US applicants
  • Highly versed in using software like Google Search Console, Google Sheets/Excel, Google Analytics, Ahrefs/SEMRush, and desktop SEO software such as Screaming Frog or other similar tools.
Requirements: soft skills

  • Fantastic communication skills: Remote work relies on mutual trust, so frequent and clear written communication is essential
  • Receptive to feedback and solutions-oriented: We share and learn from each other honestly, openly and easily. Being able to say you were wrong is important!
  • High level of self-awareness: a “people person”: You’ll be dealing with questions from colleagues and clients on a daily basis, so this is an integral part of the role
  • Proven organisational skills: You must be obsessive with deadlines, managing and updating tasks, and totally reliable without supervision
  • Self-driven work ethic: You need to be 100% trustworthy, self-motivated, comfortable taking the initiative and seeing projects through to completion
Bonus points if you have:

  • Led SEO teams made up of strategists and content writers
  • Worked directly on generating detailed content briefs and outlines
Benefits

Compensation and benefits:

  • This is a full-time, 100% remote role. Work from home, or the beach!
  • Competitive, full-time salary with pension, benchmarked to UK rates and based on experience. The range for this role is: £48k to £55k/year
  • 28 days of paid holiday
  • Genuinely flexible working
  • Regular team retreats (~2 per year);last was Budapest, next is Madrid!
  • Time and budget for learning and development
  • Maternity/paternity leave, and sick pay
  • You’ll work for a sustainable, ethical company: we are aiming to become a B Corp by the end of 2023
The application process:

It’s important we find the best candidate for this position, and our selection process will reflect this. We’ll review applications on a rolling basis but interviews start after the closing date. There’s thus no benefit to rushing to apply: we will bias heavily towards your application’s answers rather than your CV, and we’d love for you to take your time.

We’re fortunate to receive a large volume of applications. You can make your application stand out by paying special attention to the main responsibilities of this role, and “how to apply”. If you think you’re a fit, or could be a fit – go for it!

We use video calls for interviews. You’ll have video interviews using Google Meet, including with your prospective line manager, a prospective peer, and the Managing Director.

We understand that this is as much you interviewing us, as the other way round. Throughout the interview process, we’re extremely happy to answer your questions about the business, working here, and the future of the company.

The final stage of our hiring process is a paid test project, which will be similar to work you could expect to do if you were hired. We’ll give you a week to complete the project, but expect that you’ll only need ~4 hours.

Following the completion of trial projects, we’ll ask for professional references from a previous manager and co-worker. We ask candidates to introduce us to their references, for a 10 min call or email conversation. We then expect to move to make an offer quickly.

We do great work for clients and are building an ethical business that lets everyone do their best work. If you think you could be the next person to join our team, please apply :)

How to apply:

Please apply through Workable: https://apply.workable.com/getellipsis/. We will decide who progresses to the next stage based on the form you submit, and your CV. Please give us a good reason to select you! Taking the time to research the role, see who we are, what we do, and what you can do for us will increase your chance of success. Your cover letter is where you have the space to do this.

Ellipsis is an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunity.

Whilst we love technology and sit at the leading edge of its adoption (we automate hundreds of thousands of actions a month internally), we want to hear from you rather than from ChatGPT.

We will be screening applications for AI-generated content and will automatically disqualify AI-generated applications.

The deadline for submission is the end of the day, on 17th April 2023. We’ll be in touch with all candidates, following the close of applications.