Head of Content job description

Content and SEO — Head of Content
Sets content and search strategy and owns organic growth org-wide.

REQUIRED SKILLS
Search Strategy
- Keyword and Search Intent Research — You can set how the organisation researches and prioritises search demand, and change the method when the data shows the old one is missing real opportunity.
- Search Competitor Analysis — You can run competitor analysis across a content programme, spot where a whole category under-serves a search intent, and direct the team to it.
- Content Strategy and Briefing — You can set the content strategy for the organisation, deciding which topics and formats the whole function invests in, and hold that plan against pressure to chase trends.
- Content Gap Analysis — You can run gap analysis programme-wide, deciding where new content beats updating old content, and where a gap is not worth filling.
- Editorial Calendar Management — You can run the calendar across the whole content function, resolve competing priorities between teams, and protect capacity for unplanned work.

Search Optimisation
- On-Page SEO Optimisation — You can set on-page practice for the organisation and change it when an algorithm update shows the old approach no longer works.
- SEO Metadata and Title Writing — You can set metadata standards and templates for the team, and diagnose a page with strong rankings but weak click-through.
- Internal Linking and Architecture — You can own the site's overall architecture and linking strategy, and decide when a structural change is worth the short-term ranking risk.
- Technical SEO Auditing — You can set the organisation's technical SEO standards and audit cadence, and make the final call on a tradeoff between SEO and product goals.
- Site Speed and Core Web Vitals — You can set page-experience targets for the site and get speed fixes prioritised against feature work.
- Structured Data Markup — You can design the structured data for a large site where the same entities repeat across templates, and keep it correct as those templates change. You are who people ask when a rich result stops showing.
- Crawl and Indexation Management — You can plan indexation for a large site or a migration, sequencing redirects and canonicals so traffic survives the move. You are the one called in when a whole section drops out of the index.

Editorial Craft
- Long-Form Editorial Writing — You can write the pieces the rest of the team finds hardest, and edit others' drafts so the structure, not just the sentences, improves.
- Editorial Style Governance — You can set editorial voice and standards for the whole organisation, and adapt them as the brand or audience changes.
- Copyediting and Proofreading — You can edit difficult or sensitive copy where the argument itself is the problem, and you set the style rules the team edits to. Writers get better because of your notes, not just their drafts.
- Content Localisation — You can run localisation across several markets at once, deciding what is shared and what is written locally, and keep hreflang and market versions from competing with each other. Local teams come to you when a market underperforms.

Digital PR
- Digital PR Campaign Development — You can set the digital PR strategy for the organisation and decide how much of the content budget it deserves against other channels.
- Link Prospecting and Outreach — You can run an outreach campaign end to end and land links from sites that matter, and you drop weak prospects early. You judge a site by whether its audience is real, not by a tool's score for it.
- Backlink Profile Analysis — You can judge a profile that looks dangerous, such as inherited spam or an old paid campaign, and decide whether to disavow, clean up or leave it alone. You are who people ask when rankings drop and links are suspected.

Performance Analysis
- Content Performance Analysis — You can set what the organisation measures as content success, and change it when the current metrics stop reflecting real value.
- Search Ranking and Traffic Reporting — You can build reporting for a large site where several teams read the same numbers, and defend a finding a senior stakeholder does not want to hear. You catch the misleading metric before it reaches a board slide.
- Content Audit and Pruning — You can audit a site too large for anyone to read every page, and sequence the work so the risky changes come with a way back. You are who people ask before a big cull goes ahead.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can run the organisation's largest and most contested programmes, and the planning practices you introduce get adopted by teams you do not lead.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast at the scale of quarters and headcount, and the estimation practice you set is what the wider organisation plans against.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can take on the outcomes the organisation is most exposed on, and other leaders route ownerless problems to you by default.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organisation by building the tooling and habits that make the careful path the easy one.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organisation has repeatedly failed to solve, and your approach becomes how others tackle that whole class of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practised beyond this organisation, and your expertise settles questions that have stood open for years.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organisation invests its learning time in, and the material and practice you create outlive your involvement.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organisation communicates, and the forums and norms you create measurably improve how information travels through it.
- Collaboration — You can dismantle the barriers that stop teams working together, and how the organisation collaborates changes because of what you built.
- Technical Writing — You can set the writing standard the organisation works to, and documents you authored are still in use long after you moved on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organisation in its most consequential relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organisation, make hard calls under real uncertainty, and carry the decisions nobody else wants to own.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organisation grows its people, and those you developed are themselves named by others as strong practitioners.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organisation's strategy, and the bets you argued for are visible in where it ended up.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- HubSpot Content Marketing Certification (required from Content Marketing Specialist)