How to build an SEO team for massive growth!

Now I am gonna take this from the in-house point of view, not an agency or a consultancy role. 

I am asked all the time about how you build the right team. First you need a CEO & CTO that trust, believe in and back you up. You might report to a VP of traffic or growth as well. You need them all to believe and trust in the process. 

Now this is my style and might not work for you. Keep in mind I have 20 years of leadership under my belt and I used to be an Air Traffic Controller in the U.S. Navy so my experiences are gonna be way different than yours; yours will be way different than mine. So we all have different experiences that give us different perspectives for work and leadership. 

So you have the backing, the CTO wants you to succeed so they give you 1-2 engineers and you set out a backlog in Jira. 

You build a backlog that overwhelms the engineers, with the engineers setting the LOE and you the SEO setting the ROI you prioritize your work and get after it. Once the engineers are humming along you should not sit back, you should actually press harder, put your boot down and go faster as you are picking up speed. 

Your next hire should be another engineer, yeah no joke if you are making money you need to make more money and if your backlog is over a year long then you need more engineers. In 2020 there are 252 workdays. If from the LOE you have over that (and you should) then you need more engineers. Ask yourself what matters more - Engineers or SEOs? I would favor engineers any day of the week over SEOs. 

After three engineers then you can add a junior SEO. Maybe with zero experience that you can train or someone with a little experience and then keep scaling. Your backlog should always be 12-18 months with the ability to pivot at any time. 

How do you scale? Leave a comment below.