How to Hire an SEO Manager | Acquire Search

Customers search for answers long before they choose a brand.

They compare ingredients, research products, read reviews and look for alternatives. An effective SEO strategy helps your business appear throughout that journey, connecting what people want to know with what you sell.

For scaling DTC and consumer brands, hiring an SEO manager can bring focus and accountability to organic growth. But the brief needs to go beyond increasing website traffic.

You need someone who understands your customers, identifies commercially valuable opportunities and works with the wider team to turn search visibility into business results.

Here’s how to define the role, assess candidates and decide what kind of SEO support your business needs.

What does an SEO manager do?

An SEO manager develops and delivers a strategy to improve your website’s visibility in organic search.

Their responsibilities typically combine technical SEO, content strategy, customer research and performance analysis. Depending on the business, they may manage specialists, coordinate an agency or deliver much of the work themselves.

For an ecommerce brand, the role can include:

• Search and customer research: Understanding how people discover, compare and choose products.

• Technical SEO: Identifying issues that affect how search engines access, understand and index your website.

• Category and product optimisation: Improving pages that help customers explore your range and make purchasing decisions.

• Content strategy: Planning useful buying guides, product education and expert-led resources.

• Internal linking and site structure: Making important pages easier for customers and search engines to find.

• Digital PR collaboration: Working with communications teams to earn relevant coverage and links.

• Measurement: Connecting organic search performance with customer acquisition, revenue and wider business goals.

An SEO manager also needs to get work implemented. Their recommendations may depend on developers, designers, ecommerce managers, content creators and product specialists.

That makes communication and prioritisation central to the role.

When should you hire an SEO manager?

Consider an in-house SEO hire when organic search represents a meaningful growth opportunity and the work requires consistent ownership.

Common triggers include:

• Your product range or website has expanded, creating more complex SEO requirements.

• Organic performance has stalled and nobody owns the improvement plan.

• You’re entering new markets or launching additional ecommerce sites.

• Content production has increased without a clear search strategy.

• An agency needs an internal owner who can challenge recommendations and coordinate delivery.

• A website migration or redesign requires ongoing SEO input.

Before opening the role, assess whether the person will have the resources to deliver.

A strong SEO manager can identify opportunities, but progress will be limited if there is no development capacity, content support or access to reliable data.

Define the role before you start recruiting

“Grow organic traffic” is too broad to guide a search.

Start with the business outcome. Do you want more new customers discovering your products? Better visibility for priority categories? A stronger foundation for international expansion?

Then establish what the person will own.

SEO Executive or Specialist

Typically focused on delivery within an agreed strategy. Responsibilities might include keyword research, content optimisation, reporting or technical analysis.

SEO Manager

Usually owns the strategy and delivery plan, coordinates stakeholders and takes responsibility for performance. The role may include people management, but the title alone doesn’t establish this.

Head of SEO or Organic Growth

More appropriate when the business needs senior leadership across a larger team, multiple markets or a broader organic acquisition programme.

Be explicit about whether the role is hands-on, managerial or both. This helps candidates assess the opportunity and gives you a clearer basis for evaluating their experience.

What skills should you look for in an SEO manager?

1. Commercial understanding

The strongest candidates can explain which opportunities deserve investment and why.

For a consumer brand, that means considering search demand alongside product margins, conversion rates, availability and customer value.

Ask how they would choose between improving a high-traffic educational article and a lower-traffic category page with stronger purchasing intent.

Their answer should connect the work to the business objective, with realistic assumptions about its potential impact.

2. Technical SEO knowledge

An SEO manager should be able to identify technical problems, explain their implications and work with developers to resolve them.

Relevant areas include crawling and indexing, redirects, canonical tags, site architecture, structured data and page experience.

For ecommerce businesses, ask about experience with product variants, filters, discontinued products and large catalogues.

Look for someone who can prioritise issues by likely impact. A long audit is only useful if the team understands what to address first.

3. Content strategy and customer insight

Effective keyword research starts with understanding the customer.

A candidate should be able to explain the questions people ask, the information they need and the pages best placed to help them.

For a pet brand, that might mean connecting product pages with clear feeding guidance. For a beauty business, it could involve explaining ingredients, routines and product suitability.

Look for evidence that they can work with subject experts and brand teams to create accurate, distinctive content.

4. Analytical thinking

Candidates should be comfortable using tools such as Google Search Console and analytics platforms, while recognising the limits of the data.

Ask how they distinguish between changes caused by seasonality, branded demand, technical issues or content improvements.

They should also explain how they evaluate progress beyond rankings, using measures relevant to the business, such as qualified visits, new customer orders and organic revenue.

5. Communication and delivery

An SEO manager’s impact depends partly on their ability to secure support from other teams.

Can they turn a technical finding into a clear development brief? Explain a content opportunity to a brand director? Make a practical case for prioritising one project over another?

Look for examples of recommendations that were implemented and the candidate’s role in making that happen.

6. Sound judgement about AI and search

Ask how the candidate approaches AI-assisted research, content production and changes in search behaviour.

They should understand how to use tools efficiently while protecting accuracy, originality and brand voice.

Google’s guidance continues to emphasise established SEO foundations and useful, original content for visibility in its AI search experiences.

Look for thoughtful experimentation, clear measurement and a willingness to distinguish evidence from speculation.

SEO interview questions to ask candidates

Use a consistent set of questions to compare how candidates think and what they have delivered.

“Tell us about an SEO project that contributed to business growth.”

Explore the starting position, their responsibilities, the changes made and the outcome.

Ask what other factors influenced performance and how confident they are about the contribution of their work.

“What would you investigate if organic revenue fell but traffic stayed stable?”

A strong answer might explore changes in landing pages, customer intent, conversion rates, stock availability, product mix or measurement.

The value lies in their investigation process and prioritisation.

“How would you build your first 90-day plan?”

Look for a balance of discovery, measurement checks, practical improvements and longer-term planning.

They should want to understand the business before committing to targets.

“How would you protect organic performance during a website migration?”

Ask about URL mapping, redirects, testing, content changes and monitoring after launch.

This is particularly relevant if you’re changing platforms, restructuring the site or expanding internationally.

“Tell us about a recommendation that wasn’t implemented.”

Explore how they handled the constraint, communicated the implications and adapted their plan.

This can reveal more about their effectiveness than a polished success story.

How SEO connects with commercial and operational priorities

SEO sits within Marketing & Growth, but its priorities need input from across the business.

Working with Sales & Commercial, an SEO manager can understand priority categories, product launches, market expansion and the role of retail alongside direct ecommerce sales.

Working with Operations & Supply Chain, they can plan around availability, seasonal demand, replenishment and discontinued products.

For example, if a bestselling product is temporarily unavailable, the team needs an agreed approach to its product page, availability information and relevant alternatives.

These connections help the SEO manager prioritise work that supports what the business can sell and deliver.

Should you hire in-house, use an agency or work with a freelancer?

The decision depends on the scale of the opportunity, the work required and the support already available.

An in-house SEO manager can provide ongoing ownership, detailed business knowledge and close collaboration with internal teams.

An SEO agency can offer access to several specialisms, particularly when the work spans technical SEO, content and digital PR.

A freelance specialist or consultant may suit a defined project, a technical challenge or a business that needs experienced support for part of the week.

Some brands benefit from a combination: an internal owner supported by external specialists.

Whichever model you choose, agree who sets priorities, who implements changes and how performance will be assessed.

Measure success beyond rankings

Agree what success looks like before the person starts.

Depending on the brief, useful measures could include:

• Organic visibility and clicks for priority non-branded searches.

• New customer acquisition and revenue from organic search.

• Performance of commercially important category and product pages.

• Resolution of significant technical barriers.

• Delivery of agreed content and development priorities.

Use rankings and traffic as part of the picture. Assess them alongside the quality of the audience, business outcomes and the work delivered.

Avoid judging success through a single third-party “SEO score”. It cannot capture the full commercial value of the role.

Hiring an SEO manager with Acquire Search

A successful SEO hire starts with understanding what your next stage of growth requires.

At Acquire Search, we partner with scaling DTC and consumer brands across the UK, Europe and US. Our expertise spans Marketing & Growth, Sales & Commercial, and Operations & Supply Chain.

Whether you need an SEO specialist to improve delivery or a senior organic growth leader to set direction, we can help define the brief and identify candidates with relevant experience.

Speak to Acquire Search about your next Marketing & Growth hire.

About the author

Alex Marriner is the Founder & CEO of Acquire Search, a specialist recruitment and executive search partner to scaling DTC and consumer brands. Acquire Search helps founders and leadership teams make specialist and senior appointments across Marketing & Growth, Sales & Commercial, and Operations & Supply Chain.