Upgrow
Ahoy there! Upgrow is a digital marketing agency focused on PPC and SEO, looking for someone to join us as a key contributor to our SEO discipline, create client strategy, execute on SEO implementation, and manage a supporting SEO specialist. To get right to it, our goal is to be THE BEST organic partner for high-growth tech and finance companies, and we need your help to make it happen!
This is PERFECT for someone who wants to take OWNERSHIP in crafting a high-performing SEO for clients. You will also be a part of a close-knit, supportive team that strongly believes in empowerment and collaborative contribution – without micromanagement or a lot of red tape. You’ll work with some great people, learn and grow daily, and work on some very cool projects.
- Company Overview, Upgrow is a performance-driven digital marketing agency primarily working with B2B tech, finance, and healthcare brands. More on us further down.
- We work with fast-growing, world-class companies like Leesa, TalkDesk, SingleStore, (and more) to scale lead and sales generation.
- Tech-empowered (eg, using tools and processes to automate boring tasks)
- Recently ranked as the #2013 fasted growing company in America by Inc. 5000
- A small but mighty team of ~28
- Check us out at: www.Upgrow.io
- Role Overview, SEO Senior Manager
- You’ll join our SEO team (with 3 SEO Specialists, 2 SEO Managers, 1 SEO Director, and a Content Manager) where you will be a crucial contributor to our SEO program. We’re still a relatively early-stage company, so there is still massive potential to contribute to our agency’s approach to SEO, develop future SEO hires, and grow and be promoted from within.
- Job role: You will be the main point of contact for 5-8 key client accounts handling account management, strategy, and project management. After studying each client and their industry, you’ll develop a strategy to achieve their performance goals including traffic and conversions. You’ll then project manage the implementation of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO with the support of an SEO Specialist, content writers, and the client. You will also provide reporting and project updates to clients in recurring meetings and handle client communications. As a senior manager, you will also contribute to our SEO playbook for how Upgrow executes SEO.
- Experience required = You know how to drive (powerful, strategic, beyond fundamental) SEO results through on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. You know how to:
- Develop your clients’ SEO strategy and a plan to implement it
- Create and optimize content that performs
- Plan and oversee link-building programs
- Monitor and manage technical SEO
- Implement conversion rate optimization
- Create repeatable processes and playbooks
- Build trust, understanding, and “buy-in” from clients and stakeholders
- And ultimately know how to get things done even during non-ideal circumstances, resistance, and adversity.
- Location = 100% remote, but working in US timezones. We are not a micro-managing kind of company at all, but aligning your availability with clients and colleagues is important as a critical department leader. Where is the team?
- Founder and about half the team are in San Francisco Bay Area, CA
- Three in Texas (yeehaw!)
- The rest range from Hawaii to Rhode Island and all parts between
- Clients are all across the US, even some in Europe and India.
- Work culture = A lot of ownership and accountability, mixed with the support of processes and people with whom you’ll work closely. We don’t have excessive internal meetings, and you’ll have regular (but not redundant) strategy calls with clients. Otherwise, you get to spend most of your days doing REAL SEO WORK!
- Btw, our work hours are typically your standard 40/wk. Core working hours are 8:30am to 5:30pm in your time zone (except EST which is 9am to 6pm).
- Competitive Salary
- Ranging from $85K to 105K annually, but it can really vary depending on your background and readiness. We’re considering a range of candidates for years of experience, work history, skills, and management track record. Therefore, it’s tough to give a window without it being ridiculous. We can chat more on the topic upfront if you’re interested.
- High bonus potential! Annual, renewal, retention, and case study bonuses (can add 10%+ to your salary!)
- Paid health, dental, and vision
- Life and disability insurance
- 15-days paid time off, plus 10 company holidays
- When we’re not in a global pandemic, we hold in-person company summits annually from San Francisco or somewhere else cool.
- Sweet Company swag that will quickly elevate your social status.
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Many job descriptions are quick and generic, leaving you with lots of questions. This is meant to be a comprehensive look at the role, who it’s a good fit for, and how we operate as a company. With that disclaimer, you officially can’t get mad that it’s long!
Here we go…
About the Team
Here’s how the team is structured – and where you’ll fit.
SEO Director is where the buck stop for all things SEO. This leader develops how Upgrow positions, executes, reports, and plans SEO for the entire agency. All other SEO roles report directly to the Director. They are the primary decision-maker on tools, vendors, and roles.
SEO Managers/Senior Managers own the complete success of a few clients each, including running the strategy, working with them to get stuff done, and managing all the work that goes into it. Our current SEO Managers are fantastic and will help you get up to speed as well as provide an excellent sounding board for ideas or questions.
SEO Specialists support the SEO Manager in implementation, reporting, communications, link outreach, research, and other areas as needed.
Content Manager works with SEO Managers to plan each client’s content strategy then ensures all content is written and of the highest quality.
Co-Founders contribute to key client strategies, support team development, handle sales, and help drive the agency’s direction. You’ll work directly with them.
And as a side note, we love keeping a “business casual” sort of virtual work environment that’s fun, positive, and encouraging. That said we work hard and demand results from ourselves but also do it because we like accomplishing big things, not only because it’s technically our job.
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What’s important to us
- Having a life
- You’ll see the words “ownership” and “accountability” here a lot, but we also extend that to taking care of yourself. Burnout is ultimately not in anyone’s self-interest. This is reflected in:
- Our vacation policy (quite generous)
- Manageable workload (quality work for 5-8 accounts, instead of skinny SEO for 30 clients)
- Set core work hours (the workday actually ends!)
- Open communication (speak directly to the founders if you need anything)
- You’ll see the words “ownership” and “accountability” here a lot, but we also extend that to taking care of yourself. Burnout is ultimately not in anyone’s self-interest. This is reflected in:
- Doing work that matters
- Doing repetitive busy work for optics alone is not what we’re about
- We want to create the best methods for doing things efficiently and always look for ways to improve further
- Creating thoughtful strategies and tactics is what sets us apart and keeps us excited every single day
About the Role
The basics —> what the job consists of, and who we’re looking for.
Responsibilities
You’ll be doing stuff like:
- Developing client strategies to ensure we have a planned activities in place to meet performance objectives
- Contributing to internal SOP’s and playbooks on how Upgrow does SEO
- Managing an SEO Specialist to level up their game across all areas of the discipline
- Evaluating and implementing SEO tools and processes
- Overseeing the project management of your client’s SEO program to ensure everything is moving forward
- Creating and analyzing performance reporting to identify SEO opportunities as well as CRO opportunities.
Who we’re looking for (skills)
- SEO Mega-Mastery
- At the end of the day, our business is selling premium SEO strategy and implementation. This role is for people who already consider themselves wizard-warriors at driving revenue growth via organic search. Our level of SEO is way beyond the typical “update the meta descriptions”, we are looking to be the best in the SEO game.
- Lead the Client
- We want to proactive, not reactive with clients. So we’re leading the strategy and letting them fill in the blanks – not the other way around. We also need client buy-in to prioritize our SEO implementations so being able to explain and convince is crucial.
- Active SEO Skills
- This means you are razor sharp in keyword research, technical SEO, content strategy, on-page optimization, link-building, and so on.
- Analytics-minded
- Practically speaking, it means experience in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any other analytics platforms
- More importantly, you have to be genuinely interested in quantifying everything, learning to think in numbers and be open to picking up new tools
- Process-oriented
- We are big on building processes. You’ll have a bunch of processes and onboarding materials that will guide you to do your job, and then be in a position to contribute to those very processes yourself.
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Is this a good fit for me?
Obviously, we’re biased, but here is our honest (as can be) assessment of the pros/cons of working at Upgrow — in this role.
Benefits to you and your career
- Turn your background and passion into your very own best-in-class SEO program
- All your career experience has led you to this point where you’re ready and able to create a superior SEO discipline. It’s like launching your own SEO agency except we already have the clients, team, admin, sales pipeline, and basic systems in place for your soft landing. Ready to take it to the next level? Let’s do this!
- Do really cool sh*@!
- Here, you are not just a cog in a machine where making a real impact is nearly impossible. This is your opportunity to step up to the plate and do things your way – this is the role in your career that you’ll look back on fondly and know you created something truly special and innovative.
- Huge career upside
- Our SEO program’s success is your success. Through our bonus structures and the high-visibility of your work, there is infinite upside. As a reminder, we’re less than 5 years old and a total organization of 19… imagine you join us now and we build a $100M company together?
Who would NOT want to take this role
A good match for any role requires a great fit between team members and the company. There are amazing people who aren’t in the right time/space in their careers to thrive and appreciate every role. . . and that’s totally ok! Just trying to keep it real here.
It might not be a good fit for you, IF:
- You want to be told exactly what to do
- While we have some processes documented and our team is not newbies, this role will be the top SEO gun in the company – who will TELL US how to do SEO. That doesn’t mean you’re on you’re own or starting from 0 but we do want you to drive with ownership and accountability. So if you’re looking for more of a straightforward execution role, this is not it.
- You want to stay in your comfort zone
- You’ll have the opportunity to solve new problems and help us evolve the way we think about working with fast-growing companies. If you don’t like geeking out on new information from forums, Google, and Youtube then you’ll get frustrated fast. We all solve new problems on a regular basis, which is exciting to some – but not what everyone is looking for.
- You really want an office and are apprehensive of remote work
- We’re fully distributed and that’s our long-term plan. It does take some discipline to work on your own and focus.
- You want a freelance style work schedule
- If your schedule requires high flexibility or you prefer working exclusively in the middle of the night then this probably isn’t your gig. If you are backpacking across Europe with sometimes spotty wifi then you’re also going to have a hard time. As a team leader, we need you at the helm during the workday.
- You are a marketing generalist with only some SEO background
- This is a director-level role for someone deeeeeply specialized in SEO. If you’ve only had surface-level exposure to SEO or SEO hasn’t been more than a small % of our overall digital marketing role then your broader talents will be under-utilized in this role and your experience may not be deep enough.
Examples of backgrounds/experiences that may be a great fit
This is NOT some definitive list; more so, to show examples that different types of people could kill it in this role. For example:
- You have managed SEO/organic growth in-house and want to get more diverse experience working with different companies in an agency role.
- You’ve driven Growth (broadly) with a deep focus on SEO and content (eg T-Shaped Marketer with deep SEO). You’d have more to learn, but this could work for the right person.
- You have agency experience with Content/SEO and want to be a part of building something.
- If you’ve worked at an agency and always wanted to own more of the direction… here is your chance!
If you don’t fit any of these descriptions, but you still think you’re qualified, then go ahead and apply!
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About Upgrow
We think about performance digital marketing and SEO more holistically than many agencies in our own, totally-not-self-righteous opinion.
We want to give ourselves no excuses (or at least as few excuses as possible). So what does that mean?
- Focused on scaling our success
- We don’t want to get comfortable, it sounds way too boring. That’s why we’re always adding new software, developing better processes, hiring for new disciplines, and seeking efficiency and automation wherever we can.
- High-touch, long-term client work
- Our clients are primarily funded startups and established companies. Mostly B2B tech, finance, and healthcare. We don’t plan to have 100’s of clients but instead 10’s of clients that we deliver comprehensive, highly engaged consultation and implementation for.
- Fullstack performance marketing
- SEO alone isn’t performance marketing. That’s why Upgrow also offers PPC, design, content writing, web analytics, and conversion rate optimization services so if any point in the sales funnel isn’t working… we can fix it.
How We Hire: A Look Inside Our Hiring Process
- Apply Online
- Now that you have found a position that you have matched your skills and interests it’s time to apply! You will be asked to submit a video response and answer a few questions about your background.
- Application Review
- Applications are read first by our friendly recruiter and hiring manager, if we find that you are a potential match, we will reach out by email to schedule a call with you to learn more about your skills and experience.
- **The interviews-**Our interview process consists of 3 interviews, a questionnaire, and a case study presentation.
- 1) Short conversation via Zoom video with our Administrative Coordinator.
- 2) Conversation with our Co-Founder & interim SEO Director, Ryder. He’ll give you a feel for the role/company, and ask you some questions to better understand your background, experience, and fit.
- ** Questionnaire -**we will ask you to complete a small (20-25 minute) questionnaire. (This helps us understand how you think and approach common SEO tasks.)
- **Case Study Presentation-**The final step will be to share a case study of a project you are particularly proud of that illustrates your SEO strategy, execution, and ability to get results. You’ll share a few slides to highlight your case study with a few peers from our SEO team.
- You’re in!– After the interview process, we will review everything and make a decision as a team. If it’s a great fit, we’ll present you with an offer and review everything on a call. If you accept you’ll be part of the team and begin planning for the onboarding process!
First 12-Week Onboarding Plan
- We’ll work with you to create a first 12 week plan to get up and running to ensure you’re familiar with our processes, clients, team, tools, and account history. We’ll set targets, make sure you have what you need to excel, and support you in taking the reigns!
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