SEO Account Director

Company Description

Performics UK is the performance marketing arm of Publicis Media, committed to exceeding business goals by blending Data, Tech, Ops, and Talent to accelerate performance impact daily. With over two decades of experience, we harness technology and innovation to generate and convert consumer demand across search, social, display, and commerce channels. Embracing a deep understanding of consumer intent and behaviour, we thrive on data-driven insights, guiding our planning and optimisation processes through rapid trials, real-time enhancements, and intelligent analytics. As the world’s first Performance Orchestration agency, we have a proven track record of driving performance impact across diverse sectors and markets, leveraging our industry expertise to innovate and transform swiftly. Performics is dedicated to delivering award-winning results and empowering all Publicis Media UK clients.

Overview

Our award-winning Performance Experience team is seeking an SEO Director to lead strategy and drive innovation across Starcom. You’ll own the end-to-end SEO strategy – partnering with Performance Content, Paid Search, Social and CRO teams – to deliver holistic, future-facing search programs. From crafting LLM-optimised content frameworks to piloting social-search integrations, you’ll set the roadmap for best-in-class organic performance. Reporting into the Business Director, you’ll be the senior point of contact for clients and the wider SEO community – mentoring Managers and Executives, defining gold-standard operating models, and shaping a product roadmap that keeps our offering two steps ahead of algorithm shifts, voice search evolution and generative AI trends.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership: Define and sell in multi-channel SEO roadmaps - technical, content, link-building, local and AI/LLM search - aligned to client budgets, audiences and KPIs.
• Team & Account Management: Line-manage SEO Managers and Executives, champion professional development, ensure consistent quality and on-time delivery across all client work.
• Innovation & Product Development: Pilot new search formats (e.g., AI chat integrations, voice, social discovery), build repeatable workflows and scale best practices across accounts.
• Cross-Channel Collaboration: Integrate SEO insights with Paid Search, Social, Content and CRO strategies - ensuring seamless performance marketing activation.
• Performance Measurement: Architect clear measurement frameworks; track rankings, organic traffic, engagement and conversion lift; translate data into executive-level reports and roadmaps for continuous optimization; create business cases to power implementation and case studies to showcase the best work.
• Client Leadership: Serve as principal SEO advisor - nurturing senior relationships, driving thought-leadership sessions, and pitching expansion opportunities and new services.
• New Business Support: Leverage your industry expertise and case studies to support pitches, RFP responses and incremental service offerings.

Qualifications

• Experience: Prior hands-on SEO leadership in an agency or in-house setting, with demonstrable success on enterprise-scale brands.
• Technical & Analytical Expertise: Deep proficiency across HTML/CSS/JS fundamentals, crawl/index optimisation, site architecture and advanced analytics (GA4, BigQuery, Tag Manager).
• Innovation Mindset: Proven track record of piloting AI-powered search solutions, schema/structured data implementations, and voice/social discovery integrations.
• Leadership & Communication: Exceptional people leader with experience managing multi-disciplinary teams; confident presenter to senior client and agency stakeholders.
• Strategic Acumen: Ability to translate business objectives into multi-layered SEO programs; strong commercial awareness for upsell, cross-sell and revenue growth.
• Collaboration Skills: Comfortable working in matrixed environments, partnering with Paid, Content, Social and CRO leads to drive unified performance outcomes.
• Tools & Qualifications: Advanced user of enterprise SEO platforms (e.g., Screaming Frog, Botify, Semrush, Ahrefs, Similarweb), Google Marketing Suite and visualization tools (e.g., Looker Studio, Power BI).

Additional Information

Publicis Media has fantastic benefits on offer to all of our employees, full details of which are shared when you join. This includes the classics like Pension, Life Assurance, Private Medical, as well as Reflection Days, Shared Parental Leave, and spans initiatives.

At Publicis Media, we are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, and do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief, disability, age, citizenship, relationship status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other protected characteristic. We are committed to providing a fair, accessible, and inclusive recruitment process. If you have any access needs - for example, related to disability, neurodivergence, or a health condition - please let us know. We’ll work with you to ensure the process works for you. Sharing this information will never impact your application.

Guided by our values, we listen with empathy, uplift each other, take responsibility, and embrace change - building a culture where everyone feels seen, respected, and genuinely included.