Senior SEO Strategist
New York, NY 40 hours per week, core hours 10am to 4pm EasternFull timeRemote first, New York satellite office by appointmentOpen now
$105,000 to $138,000 per year, plus quarterly performance bonus
Talent pool vacancy. Your application stays on file for twelve months.
About the role
Own organic search strategy for eight to ten subscription clients and be accountable for the qualified enquiries search produces, not for rankings in a spreadsheet.
First Person Marketing sells one thing: a full service marketing subscription that commits to growth within 90 days or the client's money back. That guarantee only works because the people delivering it are senior, are given real ownership and are measured on outcomes that a business owner recognizes.
As Senior SEO Strategist you are the person a client trusts with the whole organic channel. You set the plan, decide what gets built and in what order, brief the technical and content specialists who execute it, and stand in front of the client every month to explain what changed and what it produced. You are not handed a template to fill in.
Our clients are mostly United States businesses between two million and eighty million dollars in revenue: professional services firms, healthcare groups, ecommerce brands and B2B software companies. Their search problems are real ones, including years of accumulated technical debt, thin category pages, cannibalized content and competitors who started earlier.
You will work remote first with the option of the New York satellite office by appointment. We do not track hours or keystrokes. We look at client retention, at qualified enquiry volume and at whether the work you shipped this month moved anything.
- Requisition
- FPM-SEO-1041
- Reports to
- Director of Organic Growth
- Team
- Organic search pod of six: two strategists, two technical specialists, one editor, one digital PR lead
- Level
- Senior · Full time
- Hours
- 40 hours per week, core hours 10am to 4pm Eastern
- Travel
- Up to 10 percent, mostly quarterly client sessions in the Northeast
- Work setup
- Remote first, New York satellite office by appointment
- Region
- Northeast
A typical week in this role
- Reviewing performance in the client workspace before your first meeting, so you walk in already knowing what moved
- Writing the month's organic plan for two or three accounts, with the reasoning visible rather than a list of tasks
- Briefing technical fixes and content pieces, then reviewing what comes back against the brief
- Running a client call where you explain results in revenue terms and take a decision on the next priority
- Investigating a drop or a spike properly instead of guessing, and writing up what you found
- Sitting with the paid media and conversion leads so organic is not optimized in isolation
Tools you will use
Google Search Console · Google Analytics 4 · Screaming Frog · Ahrefs or Semrush · Looker Studio · BigQuery basics · Our client workspace
What you will own
| Channel strategy | Own the twelve month organic roadmap for eight to ten accounts, sequenced by commercial impact and revisited every quarter with the client. |
|---|---|
| Technical direction | Diagnose crawl, index coverage, page experience, structured data and site architecture issues and decide which are worth engineering time. |
| Search demand mapping | Map the searches buyers run at every stage from problem aware to ready to buy and assign each cluster to a page that deserves to win it. |
| Content direction | Write briefs that a specialist can execute without a meeting, then edit for accuracy, intent match and commercial usefulness. |
| Authority building | Set the digital PR and earned link agenda with the digital PR lead. We never buy links from networks or farms. |
| Client relationship | Run the monthly review, present forecasts against targets and defend or change the plan on the evidence. |
| Forecasting | Model expected enquiry volume from planned work so the 90 day commitment is grounded rather than hopeful. |
| Team mentoring | Review the work of two junior specialists, give written feedback and raise the technical standard of the pod. |
Your first 90 days
Days 1 to 15
Onboard with your pod, shadow four client calls, complete our technical audit certification and take ownership of your first two accounts.
Days 16 to 45
Deliver a full audit and twelve month roadmap for each account you own, presented to the client with your director present.
Days 46 to 75
Ship the first tranche of technical fixes and content, take over the monthly client review unaccompanied and set the reporting cadence.
Days 76 to 90
Own your full book of eight to ten accounts, publish your forecast for the next quarter and complete your first written feedback cycle with juniors.
How success is measured
These are the numbers reviewed with you every quarter. There is no hidden scorecard.
| Measure | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Qualified organic enquiries | Growth against the agreed baseline within the first 90 days on every account you own |
| Client retention | Above 90 percent across your book on a rolling twelve month basis |
| Roadmap delivery | At least 85 percent of planned monthly work shipped and verified |
| Client satisfaction | Average review score of 4.5 or higher across quarterly client surveys |
This role is probably not for you if
- You want to specialize in one narrow deliverable and hand the client conversation to someone else
- You prefer volume of tickets over evidence that anything changed commercially
- You are uncomfortable being measured on enquiries rather than on rankings
Qualifications
| Requirement | Standard we look for | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Search experience | Five or more years in SEO with at least two years owning client relationships directly | Essential |
| Technical depth | Comfortable diagnosing rendering, crawl budget, canonicalization, log files and structured data without engineering support | Essential |
| Commercial reasoning | Can connect search work to pipeline and revenue rather than to ranking positions | Essential |
| Written clarity | Writes briefs and client updates a non specialist can act on | Essential |
| Work authorization | Authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship | Essential |
| Agency background | Multi client environment experience with competing priorities | Advantage |
| Ecommerce or multi location | Faceted navigation, large catalogs or multi location search at scale | Advantage |
| Data fluency | SQL or scripted analysis for larger sites | Advantage |
Salary and benefits
$105,000 to $138,000 per year, plus quarterly performance bonus
| Base salary | Paid semi monthly in US dollars, reviewed every six months against national market data for Senior SEO Strategist roles. |
|---|---|
| Performance bonus | Paid quarterly and tied to client retention and measured client results rather than billable hours or utilization. |
| Medical, dental and vision | Company funded medical, dental and vision from day one for you, with employer contribution toward dependents. |
| 401(k) | 401(k) with a four percent employer match, vested immediately, administered through our national provider. |
| Paid time off | 20 days of paid vacation, 11 federal holidays, unlimited sick leave and your birthday off. |
| Parental leave | 16 weeks fully paid for all new parents, with a phased return over the following month. |
| Learning budget | $2,500 per year for certifications, conferences and paid study time during work hours. |
| Equipment | MacBook Pro or equivalent, external monitor and a $750 home workspace allowance in your first month. |
| Office access | Access to your nearest satellite office by appointment when you want to work alongside colleagues. We do not entertain walk ins. |
Hiring process
1. Application review
A recruiter and the hiring manager read every Senior SEO Strategist application within five business days. Nothing is filtered by keyword software.
2. Introductory call
Thirty minutes by video with the hiring manager about your work, your motivation and how you like to be managed.
3. Paid practical exercise
A realistic two hour task based on work you would actually do, paid at $250 whether or not you move forward.
4. Panel conversation
Sixty minutes with your future manager and one client facing colleague, including your walkthrough of the exercise.
5. Offer and references
A written offer with the salary band shown here, two references and a start date agreed around your notice period.
Questions applicants ask
Is this a talent pool vacancy
Yes. Every vacancy we publish is a talent pool vacancy. If this Senior SEO Strategist opening is filled, your application stays on file for twelve months and is matched against comparable roles in any of our United States locations before we advertise externally.
Do I need to live in New York
You need to be authorized to work in the United States and based within commuting distance of New York for occasional in person client sessions. Day to day work is remote first.
Do you sponsor work visas
Not for this role. All United States vacancies require existing authorization to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future.
Is the salary range negotiable
The published range is real. Where you land inside it depends on the practical exercise, the panel conversation and your directly relevant experience. We do not ask for salary history.
How quickly will I hear back
Every applicant gets a written answer within five business days, including applicants we do not move forward with. Nobody is left waiting without a reply.
Ready to apply
The application takes about ten minutes. You will need your resume and a short answer to two questions about how you work.
Start your application