Founding SEO Strategist

# Founding SEO Strategist

**Remote · Full-time · $2,000 to $3,000/mo to start, with a clear path up**

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## Read this part first

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've built the systems, and I know exactly what "good" looks like, so I'm going to be direct about who I want.

I want someone cracked. Someone who ranks sites in their sleep, treats a stalled campaign as a puzzle instead of a reason to email me asking what to do, and has real opinions about SEO earned from testing things, not from watching YouTube.

If that's you, keep reading. If it's not, no hard feelings.

## 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 that 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

- Owning 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
- 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 the ---------- asurably stronger, then documenting what you changed and why
- Automating the boring parts with AI (Claude, 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.
- **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, and DBA/name strategy well enough to recognize them in a competitor's profile and d ---------- , 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-fluent and automation-first.** You automate instead of grinding. Comfortable with Claude, wiring up APIs, and spinning up full site builds fast. If a process can run itself, you build it once instead of doing it by hand forever.
- **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. Bonus if you've lived in BrightLocal, indexers, and any of the AI-visibility trackers and claude code.
- **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/mo to start, scaling toward $3,000+ 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.** I need at least [X] hours of daily overlap with US Eastern Time so we can collaborate in real time. Tell me your timezone and normal working hours.
- Start date: ASAP

## How to apply

Send me the following, and yes, I read every single one:

1. Your favorite vegetable and why (from above)
2. Your name and age
3. **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.
4. The coolest thing you've ever done with SEO

Apply here: ----------