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Tips for growing into SEO Lead role?
Posted by on February 26, 2026 at 10:57 pmYou know those moments when life throws you into deep waters, and you either learn to swim or drown?
Well, I work as an in-house linkbuilder, along with another person who takes care of content, and another one who does on-page SEO. For years, off-page SEO is all I did, and knew about.
Now my company is asking me to step up into the SEO Lead role and basically be responsible for our whole SEO (keep doing off-page stuff but also provide general strategy, propose improvements, indenfity weak points… ) – basically make sure everything regarding our SEO is going well.
Most importantly, ensure that SEO is actually bringing in profits, not just higher traffic or rankings.I'll need to learn tons of new things, not just about SEO, but also stuff related to it (like Conversion Rate Optimization), and also manage our content and off-page guys.
If there are any SEO Leads here, any advice on how not to suck would be appreciated. If you know any good course or resource that could help me grow into this role, my company would pay for it.
Cheers
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1 Reply
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* Own the keyword universe
* Research
* Keep it up to date
* Competitor Analysis
* Own the data
* Conversions
* Leads
* GA4
* Tracking into sales / CRM
* Cross-checking Branded PPC that originates at SEO
* Content Schedule
* Build your SERP Report
* Build your Gap Report
* Layout your content plan
* Talk to your sales team – map the customer journey = content
* Reports
* Build custom SEO Reports
* Show % done = sales/leads increases
* Web Maintenance
* Ship “Technical audits” BS to the web team
* Build internal links manually / judiciously
* AI/LLM
* Take your best buying terms/keywords and reverse the QFO
* The QFO is the prompt searches that LLMs do
* Rank for those
* Show referrals from LLMs = SEO won businessThats it!
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Since your background is off-page, your fastest gaps to close are technical SEO fundamentals and content strategy. Ahrefs Academy is free and great quality. For a paid option your company would likely approve, the CXL Institute has strong SEO and CRO courses that are genuinely practical rather than theoretical.
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moving into SEO Lead is about thinking bigger than tactics. Focus on revenue, not just rankings. Understand how keywords turn into traffic, traffic into conversions, and conversions into profit. Align your team around clear goals and impact. You don’t need to know everything, you need to prioritize what actually moves the business.
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Congrats 🙌 Move from tactics to outcomes focus on revenue, prioritization, and clear strategy. As SEO Lead, your job is direction and impact, not just execution.
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