Supporting You In Your SEO Career
When it comes to decisions about your career, the questions you ask yourself will change over time. What undoubtedly started with “what am I good at?” or “what am I interested in?” and led you to SEO will later become “ok, what is my next step?”. No matter what point you’re at in your SEO career, the business you are part of is key to helping you both realise and achieve your goals.
Whether you’re just getting started or you’re a seasoned SEO professional, there’s likely to be a spot in our team that’s right for you. Our technical SEO team alone comprises of over 30 people and is still growing. For one agency, that’s a whole lot of SEO experts.
Here’s a peek behind the curtain at what we have to offer you when it comes to joining our SEO team…
What we’ll cover:
- The opportunities available within our technical SEO team
- The soft skills you’ll need in SEO
- How we support development in SEO
Opportunities within our technical SEO team
With the scale of our team and many clients to cater for, a considered structure that carefully balances the support and development needs of all team members is fundamental to our success.
For this to work efficiently, we created sub-teams, known as pods, to look after a range of client accounts. This approach not only ensures continuity for clients, but it has allowed us to craft teams comprising of mixed experience and roles that encourages knowledge sharing and mentoring to hone expertise.
With a team of this size comes great opportunity for progression; here’s just a taste of the SEO roles you’ll find at WMG:
- Technical analyst: The starting place for many, technical analysts will likely have none or minimal SEO experience when they join us. Largely dedicated to assisting other members of the team with deliverables such as reports and keyword research for their accounts, this is an ideal position to gain valuable SEO experience with exposure to and line management from more senior members of the team.
- Technical executive: Following our development programme or with a year or two’s experience under their belt, technical executives could lead on a small portfolio of their own client accounts. Time will often be split between servicing these and helping other more experienced team members to ensure development is still a priority.
- Junior technical account manager: The next step on our SEO ladder and with plenty of experience to draw upon, as a junior technical account manager level most of your time will now be spent servicing your own accounts as you develop a larger portfolio of clients.
- Technical account manager: In this role, more responsibility sits with you. Your portfolio of clients may include a number of key accounts to look after. Now, as a more experienced member in the team, the tables turn, and you’ll spend more time supporting the development of junior team members.
- Technical account director: Towards the top of the SEO hierarchy, you’ll find technical account directors. As part of this role, you’ll still manage a strong portfolio of accounts but gain further responsibility with your own pod of team members assigned to you to look after. Responsible for the day-to-day management of these people with the support of our operations managers, you’ll provide one-on-one guidance to support their development.
The softer skills you’ll need in SEO
You’d expect that to become a skilled SEO-er, you’ll need to build up your technical skill and knowledge. But something that’s not as commonly talked about are those soft skills that will see you excel.
Working within SEO, you will also be working with many clients as well as colleagues from across different teams in the agency. This means that everything from communication through to presentation and problem solving are skills you’ll want to develop. Learning to handle client questions and sensitive situations with calmness and clarity will see you go far.
Being able to present strategies with conviction, explain technical answers in an accessible, easy-to-understand way as well as build a strong rapport with clients based on trust in your abilities and assurance that you will deliver is a significant part of a career in SEO. This is why we focus on developing the whole person and not just teaching SEO skills.
How we support your development
Key to how we support development and offer progression within the SEO team is our buddy system. This sees technical analysts and executives paired with a more senior and experienced team member who is on-hand to provide regular support to further develop their SEO skills and introduce them to account management and team processes.
This ensures that every single person in the team gets the regular, one-to-one, and tailored support they need to feel comfortable in their role and see them progress onto the next position within the team. For those more experienced team members, the buddy system allows them to develop the coaching and mentoring skills that will see them too progress.
From improvements in defined areas of SEO to getting to grips with industries or our internal tools, we also have operations managers who are there to support the wider needs of the team and everyone within it. Monthly 121s provide clear objectives which keep your future career progression in mind. A chance to talk openly, your 121 is the ideal opportunity to agree on actions that get you one step closer to your career goals. If further training needs to be organised, they’ll take care of this.
At WMG, we also have a dedicated learning and development partner and run regular training workshops – both internally and through external providers. These are focused on developing an individual’s personal skills such as presentation, wellbeing and resilience amongst other topics.
Monthly lunch and learns are great for knowledge sharing, providing great insight across the business.
“It’s more of a nurturing environment which is very important to me, a lot of focus on training and development, a lot of focus on structure and that was very appealing. It seemed a no brainer – if I want to grow my career, it would be through here.” – Jack Lingard, SEO Technical Account Manager
“It is a really good company to work for and me being new and coming into a totally different kind of industry, I felt so welcomed. I’ve had really great training, everyone’s been so welcoming, and I don’t feel under pressure. It’s all very manageable and the training is there for you. It’s all gone really smoothly, and I’m really enjoying it.” – Olivia Demnyk, SEO Technical Analyst
“If you’re really ambitious and care about progression, and if you come in and you work hard and you stick to your development plans and take on feedback and continue to develop yourself, then good things can happen to you. And that’s not just like a marketing line, it’s something that actually gets delivered on. I would recommend WMG to anyone looking to join an agency that gives you good work-life balance, professional development, job satisfaction and (of course) great people!” – Dan McCartney, SEO Technical Account Manager
“When I joined as a graduate, I wanted to build a career, develop my skills and really commit to something – as I’m sure graduates today will too. From starting as an SEO Analyst, I’ve had many opportunities to progress through various roles including Account Manager, Operations Manager and now Head of Technical SEO. I think this is a pretty clear testament to the kind of company WMG is. They’re eager to help you build a career and reward you for your efforts.” – Chris Shelbourn, Head of Technical SEO
Your SEO career could start with us
We pride ourselves on not only hiring the best in the industry, but we encourage all to progress through their own developmental path through constant support from the business. We are always looking for new bright sparks to join the SEO team at any level, so don’t hesitate to get in touch today or learn more about current available roles and what we have to offer.