Progressive83 · Remote (UK-based) · Full-time · £50,000–£60,000 base + up to £10k performance bonus
The short version
Progressive83 helps entrepreneurs launch and scale local service businesses across the US and Canada. We're profitable and growing, and you'd report directly to the founders.
Our SEO problem is unusual: it isn't content, and it isn't technical. We produce content at scale in-house, build programmatic pages, ship site changes fast, and our commercially important pages already sit at positions 8–15 for valuable searches. What we lack is authority — and that's the entire job. Your remit: get legitimate, authoritative websites to reference, cover and link to Progressive83, move pages from position 11 to position 5, and take us from ~47 organic enquiries a month into the hundreds.
Here's why it's winnable: one competitor ranks #1 for a priority query at DR37. We don't need a Jobber-sized authority profile to take these SERPs — we need a focused, quality-obsessed digital PR and link operation, run by someone who has personally done this before. You'll build that operation, including hiring and leading an India-based specialist team, with proprietary data most PRs would kill for as your campaign ammunition.
What you'll own
Digital PR and link acquisition — roughly half your time. Data-led campaigns built from Progressive83's real numbers on US local-service businesses: pricing indexes, wage data by state, startup costs, survival rates, best-cities studies. One strong dataset should become twenty angles — the Florida story, the cleaner-pay story, the startup-cost story. You'll turn these into coverage journalists actually want, alongside expert commentary, reactive PR, podcast and trade-publication placements.
The competitor gap. You'll continuously dissect the backlink profiles of the sites outranking us — where their strongest links come from, which are replicable, which they've lost, which journalists repeatedly cover this space — and maintain a live database of authority opportunities worth pursuing. Plus link reclamation: unlinked mentions, broken links, lost links recovered.
The quality bar. We would rather acquire six excellent links a month than report seventy-two mediocre ones. Every link gets judged on traffic, relevance, editorial legitimacy, and whether we'd want the mention even if SEO didn't exist. No link marketplaces, no £150-per-DR60-post schemes — if that's your toolkit, this isn't your role. You'll set and enforce this standard for everyone underneath you.
Building the team. You'll hire and manage an India-based specialist team (digital PR, outreach, SEO delivery) — chosen by you, trained by you, held to your standards. Execution scales through them; the judgement, relationships and flagship placements stay with you. This is a player-coach role: you personally land the links that matter most, and you build the machine that lands the rest.
Strategy with the founders. Which verticals we enter next, where authority gets concentrated, which pages get direct links, which data assets we build. Real influence over the company's biggest growth lever.
The client service. Progressive83 sells SEO to its own customer base of local service businesses. Your team delivers it; you oversee quality, act as the senior UK face on key client calls, and keep it systemised — without letting it cannibalise the Progressive83 authority work, which stays priority one.
Your resources
A campaign budget of ~£2,500/month separate from salary — journalist databases, original research, survey costs, design, interactive assets, freelance support — which grows as results land. An in-house content, dev and programmatic team that implements what you prioritise, fast. Proprietary business data for campaigns. And India specialist hires made with you, not handed to you.
How you'll be measured
Not DA/DR — we track those, they're not goals. Your scorecard: priority-keyword average position and top-3/top-5 counts, qualified organic enquiries, new relevant referring domains (ramped, roughly 10–15 worthwhile ones a month, with a meaningful share genuinely strong editorial), links into priority commercial pages, coverage landed, and ultimately organic revenue. Your bonus is tied to a blend of rankings, quality referring domains and qualified leads — never link volume.
What we're looking for
- 5+ years in digital PR and SEO, with agency experience valued — agencies force you to win links repeatedly, across campaigns, under pressure
- Links and coverage you personally secured. Not "our outreach team got it" — you, personally: the idea, the pitch, the journalist, the hook, why it worked. This is the core screen and there is no substitute
- Evidence of ranking improvements on competitive terms, connected to leads and revenue
- Experience managing SEO/PR staff; offshore-team experience a plus
- Excellent written English — pitches, data stories, campaign angles — and credible on calls with founders and US/UK business owners
- US-market experience particularly valuable; local-service-sector knowledge a bonus
- Strong analytical SEO fluency (Search Console, Ahrefs/Semrush) — enough to diagnose what's blocking a page, even though implementation happens elsewhere
What's in it for you
- A pure authority mandate. Almost none of your time on blog posts, title tags, schema or routine content — we have that covered. You do the part of SEO and PR that AI can't: relationships, stories, judgement, placements
- A department of your own. You hire the team, set the standards, and build what is effectively an agency inside a profitable, growing company — with Progressive83 as your flagship client
- Unfair ammunition: real data on US local-service businesses, a dev team on tap, and a genuinely beatable competitive field
- No agency grind: one flagship brand instead of twelve retainers, no timesheets, remote-first
- £50,000–£60,000 base depending on evidence, up to £10k bonus on results, standard pension
How to apply
Send a CV plus your 3 best personally secured backlinks or placements, each with one line on how you got it. That's the whole application — no cover letter needed.
At interview we'll ask for more examples and pick a few at random to go deep: the idea, the pitch, the journalist, the timeline, what else the campaign produced. Vague answers end the conversation — detailed war stories start one. Shortlisted candidates get a practical exercise: Progressive83.com versus one named competitor — why they outrank us, the realistic authority opportunities, a 90-day plan, one campaign concept from our data, and a draft journalist pitch. We're hiring for what you've done, not what you know.
Pay: £50,000.00-£70,000.00 per year
Work Location: Remote
