About six years ago I started an SEO department with no team, no process, and a lot of expectations. Today it covers eight business verticals with analysts, writers, developers, and a VA team. Here's what actually mattered along the way.
What is the first thing to do when building an SEO team?
Write down how the work gets done before you hire anyone to do it. If the process only lives in your head, every new hire learns a slightly different version of it, and you spend your weeks fixing the drift.
My first SOPs were ugly. They were checklists in a shared doc. That didn't matter. They gave every new person the same starting line, and they gave me something to improve instead of something to repeat.
Hire for curiosity, train the tactics
I can teach anyone how to audit a Google Business Profile or map keywords to pages. I can't teach someone to care why a page dropped three positions overnight.
The best people I've hired weren't the ones with the longest list of tools on their resume. They were the ones who asked "why" twice before I finished explaining something. Tactics change every year in this industry. Curiosity is the only skill that keeps up.
Split the work by skill, not by client
Early on, it's tempting to give one person a client and let them do everything. That works until it doesn't. Nobody is great at technical audits, content, link building, and reporting all at once.
So I built separate lanes: analysts who own strategy and reporting, a content team that owns writing, a web dev team that owns the site, and a VA team that owns the repeatable execution work. Each lane gets better at its job, and the handoffs are where you put your process.
Report what the business cares about
Leadership doesn't care about keyword counts. They care about calls, leads, and revenue. If your reports lead with impressions and average position, you're asking people to trust you instead of showing them proof.
Put the business number first. Put the SEO metrics underneath as the explanation. That one change does more for an SEO team's budget than any ranking win.
Protect the team from the noise
Every algorithm update, every new AI feature, and every viral LinkedIn post creates a wave of "should we be doing this?" messages. Part of my job is to absorb that noise, decide what's real, and only pass along the changes that matter.
A team that changes direction every week never finishes anything. A team that knows the plan and trusts that someone is watching the horizon gets a lot done.
What I'd do differently
- Document sooner. Every month without an SOP cost me rework later.
- Delegate sooner. I held onto tasks too long because I could do them faster. Faster for me is slower for the team.
- Set expectations in writing. SEO takes time. Say that early, say it often, and put timelines in front of stakeholders before they ask.
Building a department isn't about being the best SEO in the room. It's about building a room full of people who get better every month, with a process that doesn't fall apart when you take a day off.