Founding Search Engine Optimization Strategist

Founding SEO Strategist

Remote · Full-time · $3,000–$5,000/mo to start

I'm hiring someone to own SEO so I can go scale the business.

Not help with SEO. Own it. I hand you the clients and the systems, you run them,

and I stop checking. That only works with a specific kind of person: takes things

at face value and executes, over-communicates to the point of overkill, keeps

everything organized, and stays late when a client needs it.

If you need the plan handed to you every morning, this isn't your seat.

Most SEO job posts are written by people who can't tell a good SEO from a bad

one. This one isn't. I run the campaigns myself, I built the systems, and I know

exactly what "good" looks like so I'm going to be direct about who I want. I audit a business in 5 mins you should be able to also.

WHO WE ARE

We're an established SEO agency helping local businesses mostly home-service

contractors (roofing, HVAC, cleaning, window cleaning) and a handful of

e-commerce brands rank at the top of Google. US-based, US clients. We already

have the structure: documented SOPs, proven processes, and results that keep

clients coming back. We're growing fast, and now we want to go from strong to

exceptional. That's where you come in.

THE ROLE

This is our founding SEO strategist seat. You're the first dedicated SEO hire

stepping into a machine that already works, not a mess you have to clean up. The

systems are built and they produce. Your job is to take them further: run them at

a high level, own delivery for our clients, and make the systems themselves

genuinely stronger so our results go from great to exceptional.

You'll build advanced strategy alongside me. I want someone who knows the real

levers and the order to pull them in, not someone who runs a 40-point checklist

because a course told them to. I know the primary category move is worth more

than the next hundred citations. I know review velocity beats review count. I

know most of what agencies sell is hygiene dressed up as growth. You should know

that too, in your bones, from having tested it.

A big part of this is AI, and I mean both sides of it: automating our own grunt

work so we deliver faster, and owning the shift to AI search before our clients

even know it's happening. This is a long-term seat. I want someone I can grow

with for years.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

• SEO delivery across our client campaigns, start to finish

• Google Business Profile as the primary battleground: category strategy,

 proximity and service-area logic, and the engagement signals that actually hold

 a map-pack position once you win it

• Multi-GBP expansion for clients who've maxed out one profile: knowing when a

 business is actually ready for a second listing (top-3 held, reviews deep

 enough), how to anchor new profiles to legitimate addresses and DBAs, spacing

 them so coverage compounds instead of tripping duplicate detection, and running

 the whole thing white hat where possible and grey hat where it's deliberate

• Verifying and defending profiles across multiple clients: passing video

 verification, working suspensions back to live with proper documentation, and

 knowing the DBA/business-registry angle when a straight appeal stalls

• Review systems that run themselves: building velocity without tripping Google's

 filter, and recovering legitimate reviews that got filtered or wrongly removed

 instead of shrugging and chasing new ones

• Taking our existing SOPs and making them measurably stronger, then documenting

 what you changed and why

• Automating the boring parts with AI (Claude Code, APIs, whatever gets it done)

 so neither of us does the same manual task twice

• On-page and technical: canonicalization, schema, internal link equity flow,

 site structure that a page-2 result can climb out of

• Link building with judgment. Manufacturer and certification directories, real

 editorial placements, natural anchor profiles. You know why a pile of high-DR

 links with no topical relevance does nothing, and you know what an

 over-optimized anchor profile looks like before Google does

• Citation building and ordering as a hygiene floor, not a monthly deliverable we

 pretend is moving the needle

• Getting new pages and links indexed (we run paid indexers, not GSC "please

 crawl this" prayers), and knowing not to submit a URL before the destination

 content is actually live

• Keyword and competitor research that produces a decision, not a spreadsheet

 nobody opens

• GEO / AI search: llms.txt, FAQ and question-based structure, entity and schema

 work, and tracking where our clients surface across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini

 and Grok. Roughly a third of LLM-cited pages have zero organic presence, and I

 want someone who already understands why that's an opportunity

• Blog strategy and content scheduling that feeds both classic ranking and AI

 citation

• Analytics and reporting (GA4, GSC, GTM, plus AI-referral tracking) turned into

 the next three moves, not a chart that goes up

WHO YOU ARE

• Native-level English. You'll talk to me constantly and sometimes to clients.

 Non-negotiable.

• An over-communicator. This is the one I care about most. I want too many

 updates, not too few. If you go quiet, this doesn't work. The best people on my

 team tell me what's happening before I have to ask.

• A problem-solver with no ego. A stalled campaign is a puzzle, not a reason to

 email me asking what to do. You hit a wall, you research it, you test your way

 out, then you tell me what you learned. I leave my ego at the door and I want

 the same from you.

• You verify your own work before you call it done. You open the live page on

 desktop and phone, you click the buttons, you check the thing actually shipped.

 If you hand me work you haven't looked at, we're going to have a short

 relationship. AI writes fast and is confidently wrong; your judgment is what I'm

 paying for.

• Fluent across the whole spectrum. White hat, grey hat, and enough understanding

 of black hat to know exactly where the line is and why we don't drag client

 assets across it. I don't want a cowboy who torches a client's profile chasing a

 shortcut. I want someone who knows PBNs, parasite SEO, expired-domain plays, CTR

 and engagement manipulation, multi-GBP expansion plays, and DBA/name strategy

 well enough to recognize them in a competitor's profile and decide,

 deliberately, what's worth it and what isn't.

• Always sharpening. The day you think you know everything about SEO is the day

 you stopped testing.

WHAT YOU'VE ACTUALLY DONE

• Ranked multiple local businesses into the map pack and held them there. Not

 "worked on." Ranked. You can walk me through a campaign where you knew the

 lever, pulled it, and watched the position move. Local is our bread and butter;

 e-commerce is a strong bonus.

• Tested your own strategies on your own properties. White hat, grey hat,

 whatever taught you something. I want someone who's broken a site, understood

 why, and rebuilt it smarter. Cookie-cutter operators need not apply.

• AI-native, not AI-curious. Non-negotiable. You live in Claude Code daily and

 can show me what you've built with it: automations, site builds, scrapers,

 reporting pipelines, wh