Associate SEO Director

Job Description

We are seeking an ambitious, enthusiastic, and highly-experienced SEO leader to join our multi-award-winning, high-growth SEO agency as an Associate SEO Director.

This pivotal role is a direct support to the Director, Head of SEO, and is responsible for a portfolio of flagship client accounts. You will actively lead the strategy for larger or more complex, typically top-tier accounts, while contributing significantly to the continued development and growth of Impression’s SEO offering.

This is an exciting opportunity to carve out a name for yourself by working with one of the largest and most successful independent SEO agencies in the UK, while working alongside like-minded and supportive individuals across our award-winning agency culture.

Who are you?

Given the senior nature of this role, we are looking for candidates who can demonstrate established team leadership experience focused on strategic guidance and inspiration. Whilst we typically expect candidates to have at least 7+ years of experience in an SEO-specific role, successful candidates will be chosen based on their skills and track record.

To be considered for the Associate SEO Director role at Impression, you will need to demonstrate experience across:

• Applying leadership and inspiring confidence across complex situations, using vision-setting to align teams/client efforts with achieving long-term organic goals.

• Being a champion for your account teams, encouraging growth and inspiring those around you.

• Having demonstrable experience in creating and managing successful SEO campaigns across national and international markets, particularly for more complex or higher value businesses/accounts. You should confidently own the client lifecycle and take responsibility for portfolio management.

• Having strong commercial awareness, using performance, activity and KPI reporting to demonstrate tangible ROI for clients.

• Applying Adaptive Thinking strategically across team and/or client challenges, confidently adjusting priorities and guiding yourself and/or your team through complex or changing circumstances with calm, focus, and clarity.

• Demonstrating exceptional agility by autonomously renegotiating roadmaps and managing scope in response to business flux, ensuring delivery remains realistic and commercially viable.

• Having excellent stakeholder management experience and the ability to build strong and lasting relationships with clients. You should act as a strategic peer to C-suite stakeholders to ensure Organic performance directly impacts top-level business goals.

• Applying forward thinking consistently to anticipate trends, platform/system changes, and emerging risks, using this foresight to shape client/stakeholder strategies and improve long-term outcomes.

(Agency experience is highly beneficial for this role, and SaaS experience alongside expertise across several verticals and industry segments, including lead generation and e-commerce, will aid your application.)

What will you be doing?

The Associate SEO Director is the escalation point for all clients within their portfolio. This role requires you to transform technical challenges into commercial opportunities.

Strategy

• Assume full accountability for flagship client partnerships, navigating conflicting stakeholder priorities to secure long-term retention and investment within SEO.

• Act as Channel Owner for high-value SEO accounts and perform quality assurance (QA) of a wider portfolio of assigned accounts.

• Contribute to the new business phase of the client lifecycle, including understanding new business briefs and prospect objectives, production of pitching materials, pitching to clients, and winning new business.

• Responsible for creating, maintaining and adapting channel strategy, for up to 12-month cycles.

• Proactively identify 'unspoken' risks or stagnation points in a client’s strategy, approaching them with pre-formulated solutions that require cross-service integration or technical innovation.

• Transform complex multi-channel data into clear, compelling narratives and frameworks, taking clients on a long-term growth journey.

• Engage in the client escalation process when necessary and work with the commercial team to manage SEO contract renewals and break clauses.

• Work collaboratively with other channel owners within the business to deliver integrated strategies beyond SEO, and identify opportunities to expand the scope of existing projects.

• Work in partnership with Client Success and Operations to deliver SEO retainers and projects, ensuring they are delivered on time and within budget.

Leadership

• Act as the department's guardian of quality, proactively challenging existing Organic methodologies and "best practices" to elevate the standard of strategic output continuously.

• Adopt a coaching-first mindset for your team, guiding them to solve complex problems independently rather than providing answers, thereby raising the team's collective capability.

• Provide high-level strategic proofing on complex accounts.

• Spearhead complex technical and data-led solutions or scalable testing frameworks that directly address high-level business objectives.

• Support the department with responsibilities including resourcing, recruitment, process improvement, new business pitches, and training.

• Establish yourself as a thought leader both within the agency and externally, supporting Impression's marketing efforts through content creation and public speaking.

(Note on Line Management: While the successful candidate will provide strategic leadership and guidance, direct line management responsibilities, including performance management and running biweekly 1-to-1s, may be integrated into the role at a later stage, as the department structure evolves. Though it’s not necessarily a prerequisite for now, experience as a confident, experienced line manager remains beneficial, as it demonstrates a proven ability to lead and engage teams.

Starting salary from: £50,900 (+£6k London weighting if you are live within the Greater London area)

What makes us different

We are proud to be listed on the “Flexa 100” Most Flexible Companies to work for and to be officially recognised as a Great Place to Work®. Alongside our amazing culture, here's what else makes us standout as a great employer:

• Flexible, hybrid working options - as per ways of working charter

• 4.5 day working week

• Private medical insurance with access to EAP

• Impression funded specialist therapy sessions, up to 6 sessions where Impression funds 50% of the cost

• Enhanced sick pay

• Access to OpenUp, a virtual therapy platform

• Enhanced parental leave

• 28 days annual leave, plus bank holiday

• Life leave – when something unexpected happens in your life and you need some paid leave

• Pregnancy loss and parental bereavement leave

• Compassionate leave

• Eye-care vouchers

• Opportunity to save on and spread the cost of new tech through Techscheme

• Travel to work scheme

• Railcard salary sacrifice scheme

• Budget for books, tools and software

• A full social calendar

• Summer and Christmas party (off-site)

• Chance to attend national and international conferences

• Top Apple equipment to use at work

• Savings on bikes and accessories through Cyclescheme

• Contributory pension scheme

• The usual agency stuff – office dogs, drinks fridge, ping pong and foosball, tea and coffee and office snacks

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We're listening and we're learning.

We’re committed to embracing diversity and promoting equal opportunities, both within our teams and through the services we provide. But we know we still have work to do. Improving fairness – in our agency and our industry – is something we’re passionate about, and we’re committed to having the conversations, making the changes and helping other businesses to do the same.

We pledge to promote equal opportunities and, as per the Equality Act 2010, will not tolerate discrimination on the grounds of: gender, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, race, colour, nationality, religion, age, disability, caring responsibilities or beliefs. We’ll also make every effort to represent different genders, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds and sexualities at the events, panels and discussions we run.

Strictly no recruitment agencies.