Founding Search Engine Optimization Strategist

Founding SEO Strategist

Remote · Full-time · $2,000–$4,500/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, whatever. You wire up APIs without a tutorial open in

another tab. If a process can run itself, you build it once instead of doing it

by hand forever. If you've never used Claude Code, don't apply yet — go build

something with it first, then apply.

• Shipped work you were personally accountable for. Not "the tool generated it."

You ran it, you checked it, you fixed what was wrong, and then it went live.

• Verified and reinstated GBPs the hard way. You've passed video verification,

you've fought a suspended profile back to live with real documentation, and

you've won back reviews that got filtered or removed. Anyone can swap a

category. Recovering a suspended profile is where I find out whether you

actually know the platform.

• Understand what actually holds a ranking: engagement signals, dwell time, click

behavior, the conversion actions Google reads through Chrome. You know that

winning position one and keeping it are two different games.

• Expert in the core tools: Semrush, Ahrefs, GSC, GA4, GTM, and Claude Code

(required, see above). Bonus if you've lived in BrightLocal, paid indexers, and

any of the AI-visibility trackers.

• Worked on a team before. You know how to hand off, document, and collaborate.

(Quick one so I know you actually read this: what's your favorite vegetable, and

why? Put the answer at the very top of your application.)

WHAT I OFFER

• Growth that's real. As we add clients, the role grows and your pay grows with

it. $2,000–$3,000/mo to start depending on what you bring, scaling toward

$4,000 as you take on more ownership, and higher over time as we grow together.

• A real path to managing. You're the founding SEO hire. As the team grows, the

right person becomes the one who runs it.

• Real ownership. No bureaucracy, no ten layers of approval. You own SEO here and

you'll feel it.

LOGISTICS

• Full-time, remote

• Overlap with US business hours at least 4 hours of daily overlap with US

Eastern so we can collaborate in real time MORE preferred. Tell me your timezone and normal

working hours.

• Start date: ASAP

HOW TO APPLY

Send me the following. Yes, I read every single one.

1. Your name and where you're based

2. What motivates you be brutally honest. "Money" is a fine answer if it's the

true one. I trust honest people more than polished ones.

3. The coolest thing you've ever done with SEO

4. Something you've built with Claude Code. A sentence or two on what it does is

enough.

5. The last thing you shipped that turned out to be wrong. What broke, how you

1. found out, and what you check now because of it.

6.)Cool Local SEO Case study! for GBP or sites