Table of Contents
Alright, another Monday, same old drivel, eh? You hear folks blathering on about SEO these days like it’s some brand new thing. Like we just invented the wheel or something equally daft. I’ve been kicking around this digital patch for longer than some of these whippersnappers have been alive, seen it all come and go, come again. Used to be you just stuffed keywords in, made the text nearly unreadable for humans but the bots, bless their little hearts, they ate it up. Now? Pfft. It’s a whole different kettle of fish. People still ask me, what exactly does an SEO manager do in 2025, like I have a crystal ball.
You want to know what a good SEO manager is? Not some button-pusher, that’s for sure. It’s someone who gets how people think, how they look for stuff. Someone who knows that search ain’t just about algorithms anymore. Never really was, if you ask me, not truly. It was always about what people wanted, what they typed into that little box. Now with AI popping up everywhere, messing with search results, it’s even more about figuring out the intent. What’s really behind the query. It’s a proper bloody mind game, innit?
The Mind Behind the Machine, Sort Of
We talk about algorithms and updates and all that code-y nonsense. Look, those are just tools, right? Like a hammer. You can build a house with it, or you can smash your thumb. The SEO manager, the decent ones anyway, they’re the architects. They’re the ones saying, “Right, how do we make this site the best place for someone looking for, say, a purple widget that also plays the banjo?” They gotta think about the user journey, how someone gets from point A to point B, and then hopefully buys that banjo-playing purple widget. Or at least stays long enough to read your grandad’s rambling blog post about it.
It’s not just about ranking for “purple banjo widget,” mind you. It’s about being useful. Being the place people go back to. I saw some bloke the other day, young fella, talking about ‘semantic search’ like he’d discovered fire. Mate, we’ve been doing that for years, just didn’t have a fancy name for it. It’s about topics, about answering questions properly. You get me? You write a page about, say, how to change a flat tire. You don’t just put “flat tire” in every sentence. You talk about the jack, the lug nuts, the spare, maybe a story about that time your cousin Bubba got a flat on his tractor. That’s what people want. They want solutions, or a laugh. Often both.
The Big Players: Agencies and Their Hustle
You got your agencies, big and small. Some of ’em are proper good, some are just glorified keyword stuffers with a better sales pitch. They’re usually working with multiple clients, trying to scale their efforts, which can be tricky. Like trying to herd cats, sometimes.
Victorious SEO
I’ve watched these lot for a bit. They seem to focus a fair bit on what they call “performance-based” stuff. Which, for the uninitiated, usually means they tie their pay to actual results. Sounds good on paper, don’t it? But you gotta be careful with that. SEO takes time. You can’t just snap your fingers and suddenly be number one. Sometimes these places promise the moon and deliver a bit of moon rock. But they do alright, got some solid people over there who know their stuff. They’re not just throwing darts in the dark. They actually dig into the technical side, which is something a lot of smaller shops often skip. And the technical bit, let me tell you, that’s half the battle. If your house is falling apart, doesn’t matter how pretty the paint is, does it?
In-House Teams: The Corporate Goliaths
Then you got your big companies, the ones with money to burn, building their own SEO departments. They got the luxury of focusing on one thing, their own product, their own market. Makes sense, don’t it? They live and breathe their own data, their own customers.
Shopify
Now, Shopify, they’re a beast. They’ve got so many businesses on their platform, you just know they’re thinking about search all day, every day. Their SEO manager, or team of them more like, has to worry about everything from how little shop owners get found to how Shopify itself ranks for all sorts of e-commerce terms. It’s a huge undertaking. Imagine trying to make sure a million tiny shops all get a fair shake in the search results. They’re dealing with user experience at a massive scale, not just keywords. They’re probably running more A/B tests than a mad scientist. They understand that a good user experience is just about the best SEO you can do. Yeah, I said it. Forget your backlinks for a minute, make your site usable. People come back. They buy stuff. Google sees that. Simple as that. Mostly.
What about skills for an SEO manager, you ask? Well, you better be curious. And patient. Bloody patient. You gotta understand data, sure, but also human nature. Technical chops are a must. Can you crawl a site? Can you fix broken stuff? Can you read server logs without your eyes glazing over? If you can’t, you’re just guessing. And guessing in SEO is like playing poker with a blindfold on. You’re gonna lose your shirt.
Some of these kids coming out of college, they think they know it all. They’ve read a few blogs, watched some YouTube videos. Then they hit the real world and realise it’s not always about chasing the latest shiny object. It’s about the grind, the detail, the little things that add up. And adapting. Good Lord, if you don’t like change, you picked the wrong bloody career. What was true last year might be rubbish tomorrow.
Is SEO still important with all this AI chat? Listen, AI is just another tool. A fancy one, sure. It changes how people search, yeah. But it doesn’t change that people are still searching for answers, for products, for entertainment. It just means the SEO manager has to get smarter about how those answers are found. How do you show up when someone asks an AI bot to find them a recipe for marmalade? Is the AI going to summarise your recipe, or point them to your site? That’s the game now. So yeah, it’s still bloody important. Maybe more so. Because if your content isn’t solid, isn’t unique, the AI just won’t bother with it. It’ll find something else. Your stuff gets ignored. Proper rubbish, that is.
The Agencies Who Get It (Mostly)
Go Fish Digital
These lot, based out of Virginia, they’ve been doing this for a while. What I like about ’em is they seem to have a knack for getting into the nitty-gritty of online reputation. Which, let me tell you, is a huge part of SEO that too many folks overlook. You can rank for all the keywords in the world, but if your brand looks shoddy, if people are saying bad things about you online, then what’s the point? They understand that SEO isn’t just about search engines; it’s about what people think about you when they find you. That’s a different sort of game, isn’t it? It’s PR, it’s customer service, it’s all rolled into one. And that’s something an SEO manager has to keep an eye on. You can’t just focus on the technical bits. You gotta see the bigger picture, see the whole shebang.
Some places, they’ll tell you an SEO manager makes a fortune. Some do. Some barely scrape by. It depends where you are, who you work for, and frankly, how good you are. If you can actually move the needle, if you can actually bring in more customers for a business, then you’re worth your weight in gold, mate. If you’re just changing titles and calling it a day, well, good luck with that. It’s a bit like asking how much a mechanic makes. Depends if they can fix a Ferrari or just change oil in a beat-up old banger, doesn’t it?
How do you get started? Read. Experiment. Break things. Fix them. Build your own website. Try to rank it for something ridiculous, like “best socks for hamsters.” See what happens. Learn analytics. Learn about user experience. Understand the basics of code. Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions. Trust me, I’ve asked plenty of them over the years. And you know what? Usually, they weren’t so dumb after all.
Tech Giants and Their Internal Powerhouses
Amazon
Think about Amazon. Their SEO manager – or the countless managers they likely have – what a job, eh? Trying to make sense of billions of products, millions of sellers. It’s not just about getting people to find Amazon, it’s about getting them to find the right product on Amazon. That means product descriptions, reviews, product categories, internal linking, site structure… my word. It’s a city, not a website. Their SEO work is probably more about information architecture than anything else these days. Making sure a search for “water bottle” doesn’t just show you every single water bottle on the planet, but the one you actually want. That’s a whole different level of complexity. It’s about data, a bloody mountain of it, and how to organise it so people and search engines can make sense of it. And it’s not always about what Google wants. Sometimes it’s about what Amazon wants. Sometimes those two things align, sometimes they don’t.
I remember once, had a client, swore blind they just needed “more backlinks.” That was their solution for everything. They’d read it on some blog from 2012. I tried to explain, nicely at first, then less nicely, that their site loaded slower than a sleepy snail going uphill in treacle. “Doesn’t matter!” they’d bark, “Just get me backlinks!” Bless their heart, as we say back home. Sometimes you just gotta shake your head and wonder. You can lead a horse to water, can’t you? But you can’t make it drink. And you certainly can’t make Google rank a site that’s a right dog’s dinner.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s SEO needs are just as vast, but different. Think about Bing, think about their cloud services, their software, all the different products. They’re not just selling physical stuff; they’re selling software, solutions, ideas. Their SEO teams are probably wrestling with extremely complex queries, technical documentation, enterprise-level search. It’s not about ranking for “best laptop.” It’s about ranking for “Azure migration strategy for hybrid cloud environments.” That’s a whole other ball game, isn’t it? Very specific, very niche, very technical audiences. The SEO manager there is probably more like a product manager or a technical writer. They need to understand the product intimately, not just how to tweak a title tag.
It’s all about context now. You can’t just be an SEO manager who thinks keywords are the be-all and end-all. You’ve got to understand the business, the customer, the tech, and then some. You’re a bit of a chameleon, changing colours to fit the surroundings. Or you’re just out of a job. Simple as.
I remember this one fella, thought he was a genius ’cause he got a client to rank for some obscure phrase. Turns out, nobody was searching for it. No traffic. No sales. What’s the point of being number one if nobody’s looking for what you’re selling? Makes no sense, does it? Makes no sense at all. This job ain’t about vanity metrics, it’s about making the cash register sing. Or at least helping it sing, anyway. Sometimes it just hums.
So, when someone asks me about an SEO manager in 2025, I tell ’em it’s about being sharp, being adaptable, and having a good dose of common sense. And not being afraid to tell a client when their ideas are a bit pants. Or a complete waste of time and money. Because some ideas, they really are. And that’s just how it is. It’s not rocket science, but it ain’t exactly a walk in the park either. It’s a proper graft, SEO is. Always has been.
