Posted on: 
October 29, 2024

SEO Specialist

Job Description

Ellipsis is a world-class SEO Content agency. SEO is winner-takes-all, and we make our clients the winners. We produce SEO Content than achieves top rankings for clients at scale.

We are on a mission to be the best in the world at SEO Content. This role plays a key part in our journey towards that goal and adds to our team of SEO professionals who are determined to achieve it.

The SEO Specialist role requires a careful balance of organisational, analytical, and editorial skills.

You’ll be responsible for improving the performance of content, including SEO services like SEO Maintenance, which works to convert underperforming articles into top-ranking content, and outreach to promote content.

Ellipsis is a 100% remote team, and we’ve been fully remote since our first day 6 years ago. We lean into the best things about being remote: we balance collaboration, “Deep Work”, and regular team retreats, and we put a lot of work into a supportive and inclusive culture where everyone can do the best work of their careers.

We’re distributed across the world, but our core collaboration hours are GMT/UTC-based. Our team is distributed across the US, Europe, and Asia. We often meet up with colleagues for team meetups and conferences.

Our SEO Content work is branded as Content Growth, and clients engage us to produce a set number of posts each month on retainer based on an SEO Content strategy we formulate for them, which is focused on bringing them impressive results.

With Content Growth, we take care of everything end-to-end, from high-level SEO strategy, keyword selection (which is powered by our proprietary FALCON AI – which was in the New York Times in 2022), content briefs, content production, publication, promotion and link building, rank tracking, and troubleshooting SEO queries. Our Content team leads these projects and takes care of the content production, and our SEO team takes care of the SEO requirements.

Ellipsis is growing quickly. We do outstanding work and are building something special. It’s an exciting time to join us.

The role

As our new SEO Specialist, you'll work closely with our Head of Strategy and SEO, SEO Strategist, SEO Specialists and Content team to ensure we deliver amazing, SEO-driven content marketing that gets results to clients.

You’ll be a key part of the Strategy team, joining a team of 3 that currently undertakes a wide range of SEO and strategy responsibilities for clients. Our philosophy is to cover everything it takes to ensure we deliver real results, which means being able to adapt quickly to new processes, work on new ones, and research and understand new principles as they roll out.

This aspect of the role requires excellent communication skills, attention to detail, and the ability to build and maintain professional relationships. You'll work closely with our content team to ensure our outreach efforts align with and enhance the content we produce for clients.

You’ll help drive our SEO Maintenance process, deeply analysing underperforming client content using our FALCON AI to guide and inform decisions on what needs to be changed and/or updated in order for the content to rank and bring in traffic successfully. You’ll then implement these changes directly into the clients’ sites and monitor for results, reporting on progress and tweaking when and if necessary.

You'll play a crucial role in our outreach and promotion efforts, which are vital for the success of our clients' content. This includes managing and growing our outreach program, a key asset in our link-building and content promotion strategy.

In addition, you’ll use our FALCON AI to help find excellent, relevant topics that can convert and that the client can rank for when we produce content pieces. You’ll then work with our Content team to produce extremely detailed content briefs for these topics.

We produce incredibly detailed content briefs, and you'll be working on these. Our content briefs aim to capture everything the writer needs to know about a topic. You'll need to quickly understand topics – typically about SaaS products/businesses – and produce detailed content briefs.

SEO Content evolved rapidly in 2024, and we're expecting more rapid changes in 2025. We’re evolving faster. We've been building FALCON AI for nearly 4 years and leverage AI in our content process. We build on what the AI can do with our expertise. You don't need to be familiar with AI SEO, but you do need to be happy learning and adapting quickly to the cutting edge.

You'll be given support from colleagues but also space to "Deep Work" your best work. You'll need to be comfortable working independently, working on projects through process to completion, and communicating effectively and clearly.

This position can be broken down as follows:

  • 60% SEO Maintenance
  • 20% Managing outreach and backlink building
  • 10% topic selection and content briefs
  • 10% Reporting

This role requires a mix of data and creativity. It will suit candidates who are curious, ambitious, and keen to learn quickly. You need to love working with (and improving) internal processes, and pay meticulous attention to detail. This means that you are proactive with taking feedback on board, love a challenge, and strive for excellence!

We'll give you a front-row seat to the future of SEO, the opportunity to learn and progress, and the opportunity to contribute to a world-class process and team. It's an exciting time and an exciting role!

Requirements

Hard skills

  • 2-4+ years of SEO, Content and/or digital marketing experience
  • Comfortable working with large amounts of data in spreadsheets
  • Impeccable attention to detail
  • SEO and Content expertise with a desire to learn more
  • Excellent editorial instincts
  • Significant overlap with GMT/CET (UK/EU) timezones
  • Excellent project and task management
  • WordPress familiarity (advanced usage desirable but not essential)

Soft skills

  • Fantastic communication skills: Remote work relies on mutual trust, so frequent and clear written communication is essential
  • Receptive to feedback and solutions-oriented: We share and learn from each other honestly, openly, and easily
  • High level of self-awareness: a “people person”: You’ll be dealing with the rest of the Strategy team and clients on a daily basis, so communicating effectively is crucial
  • Proven organisational skills: You must be obsessive with deadlines, managing and updating tasks, and totally reliable
  • Self-driven work ethic: You need to be self-motivated, comfortable taking the initiative, and see projects through to completion

Bonus points if you have:

  • Experience in a fully remote work environment
  • Extensive experience working with Excel or Google Sheets
  • Experience directly managing clients or multiple stakeholders
  • Digital marketing agency experience
  • Knowledge of the WordPress and SaaS product industry
  • Deeper SEO expertise beyond basic keyword research
  • Familiarity with remote project management tools like Basecamp

Benefits

  • This is a full-time, 100% remote role. Work from home or the beach!
  • Competitive, full-time salary with pension, benchmarked to UK rates and based on experience. The range for this role is: £27-31k/year
  • 28 days of paid holidaysome text
    • An additional 1 paid holiday day a year with each year of tenure, up to a maximum of 5 additional days
  • 4-day work week, once a month
  • Genuinely flexible working
  • Regular team retreat: Our latest trips include Madrid (2023) and Edinburgh (2024)
  • Time and budget for learning and development
  • Enhanced maternity/paternity leave, and great sick pay
  • You’ll work for a sustainable, ethical company: we are aiming to become a B Corp by the end of 2025

The application process

It’s important we find the best candidate for this position, and our selection process will reflect this.

Much of our company Wiki is externally accessible, and you’re encouraged to read through this before applying. We have a very useful guide to our interview process available here. This tells you what we’re looking for and reading this will significantly increase your chance of success!

We’ll review applications on a rolling basis but interviews start after the closing date. There’s thus no benefit to rushing to apply: we will bias heavily towards your application’s answers rather than your CV, and we’d love for you to take your time.

We’re fortunate to receive a large volume of applications. You can make your application stand out by paying special attention to the main responsibilities of this role, and “how to apply”. If you think you’re a fit, or could be a fit – go for it!

We use video calls for interviews. You’ll have video interviews using Google Meet, including with your prospective line manager and the Managing Director.

We understand that this is as much you interviewing us, as the other way round. Throughout the interview process, we’re extremely happy to answer your questions about the business, working here, and the future of the company.

The final stage of our hiring process is a paid test project, which will be similar to the work you could expect to do if you were hired. We’ll give you a week to complete the project but expect that you’ll only need ~4 hours.

Following the completion of trial projects, we’ll ask for professional references from a previous manager and co-worker. We ask candidates to introduce us to their references for a 10-minute call or email conversation. We then expect to move to make an offer quickly.

We do great work for clients and are building an ethical business that lets everyone do their best work. If you think you could be the next person to join our team, please apply :)

How to apply

Please apply through Workable: https://apply.workable.com/getellipsis. We will decide who progresses to the next stage based on the form you submit, and your CV. Please give us a good reason to select you! Taking the time to research the role, what we’re looking for, what we do, and what you can do for us will increase your chance of success. Your cover letter is where you have the space to do this.

Ellipsis is an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunity.

Whilst we love technology and sit at the leading edge of its adoption (we automate hundreds of thousands of actions a month internally), we want to hear from you rather than from ChatGPT.

We will be screening applications for AI-generated content and will automatically disqualify AI-generated applications. You can see how we use AI to screen applications here.

The deadline for submission is the end of the day, on 24th October 2024.

Screening questions

1. What’s your SEO Content philosophy?

2. What's the most counterintuitive SEO insight you've discovered through your work, and how did it change your approach to content strategy?

3. A client has asked us to analyse why a specific piece of content has stopped performing well. Briefly, how do you approach this, and what actions do you take to improve performance?

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