How to Find the Perfect Project Manager for Your SEO Agency

In this guide, we're diving into the real world lessons and insights I've gained over the past two years while building a project management team within an SEO agency. This isn’t your typical article covering general skills and requirements for a Project Manager, it's a hands-on, experience-driven guide, crafted by someone who has been in the trenches, learning the ins and outs of what truly works (and what doesn't). 

In this guide, we’ll explore the different types of SEO Project Managers, the specific skills they require to bring value, and how you can leverage them to improve your agency’s processes, profitability, and team dynamics. Whether you're unsure if you need a project manager, you're ready to hire one but don't know where to begin, or you simply want to refine your existing structure, this guide is designed to help you take the next step in growing your business in 2025.

Understanding the Two Types of Project Managers

1. Delivery Project Managers

In my experience as a senior project manager at a thriving SEO agency, Delivery PMs are essential to making sure the wheels of project delivery turn smoothly. At NOVOS, we’ve crafted this role to focus solely on managing projects, not the team itself. This means that Delivery PMs are responsible for setting up and closing projects, ensuring all tasks align with the SEO deliverables agreed in client contracts.

Responsibilities and Key Areas of Focus

Their main priority is operational efficiency rather than the quality of work, which is the responsibility of SEO Managers in our structure. By using project management tools such as ClickUp or Monday, Delivery Project Panagers can assign tasks, monitor progress, and maintain a clear view of team capacity week by week. This allows them to ensure deadlines are met, resources are effectively utilised, and workloads stay balanced, which is key to maintaining a productive team environment.

For smaller agencies, a project manager might be expected to work directly with the SEO team and even oversee quality. However, from my perspective, this approach often leads to blurred boundaries. A project manager’s strength lies in delivering work on time and within budget while keeping the team efficient and motivated, not juggling too many responsibilities that dilute their focus.

Another key element of this role is process improvement. At NOVOS, project managers work closely with key stakeholders such as SEO Managers, Heads of Department, and the team itself to create processes tailored to their specific needs. It’s a collaborative process: listening to the team, understanding their challenges, and combining this with a structure to design bespoke solutions that truly support the type of work we deliver. This approach often involves borrowing elements from different project management methodologies, such as Waterfall or Agile, to fit the context.

This is where having a project manager with both technical expertise and an SEO background becomes invaluable. They can assess what the team requires and balance it with operational needs to ensure processes are efficient, sustainable, and focused on delivering results. Not only does this benefit team well-being and efficiency, but it also ensures profitability in how work is delivered, something that’s critical to any agency’s success.

Metrics of Success

I’ve learned that stating small is the key to success. In my opinion, progress and performance can be measured by key metrics such as:

• Team Efficiency and Utilisation: Tracking how effectively team members’ billable and non billable time is allocated and used.
• On-Time Delivery: Meeting deadlines consistently, without unnecessary delays or complications.
• Servicing Within Budgets: Ensuring the team operates within allocated monthly budgets and avoids over-servicing clients.

Tailoring the Role to Your Agency

Every agency is different, so tailoring this role to your structure is crucial. For example, in larger agencies like ours, Delivery Project Managers collaborate with SEO managers to oversee workloads and align with strategic goals. In smaller agencies, they might work more directly with the team. However, I’d recommend being cautious about spreading your PMs too thinly by asking them to wear too many hats, this undermines their ability to truly excel at project delivery.

By allowing project managers to focus purely on the projects, you set them and your agency up for success. From my experience, this approach has been a game-changer in maintaining efficiency, meeting deadlines, and supporting the team’s well-being. It’s a role that truly drives results when tailored thoughtfully to an agency’s needs.

1. Capacity and Profitability Focused Project Managers

At NOVOS, we’ve learned that as an agency grows, there’s a critical need for a higher-level role to manage the big picture. This is where a Senior Project Manager focusing on capacity and profitability comes in. This role operates above the delivery focused project managers, consolidating and analysing data from day-to-day project operations to make strategic decisions about resource planning, profitability, and efficiency.

Responsibilities and Key Areas of Focus

1. Resource Planning

One of the most significant responsibilities of this role is resource planning. At NOVOS, our Senior Project Manager maintains a three-month rolling view of team capacity. This long-term planning enables us to:

• Stagger new contracts based on available resources
• Provide our sales team with a clear understanding of when and where capacity exists
• Plan ahead for hiring when additional resources are needed to meet client demands

This requires a collaborative approach, where the Senior PM works with Delivery Project Managers to define "time budgets", the number of hours the team should allocate to different tasks or projects weekly. At the same time, they oversee the team’s overall capacity, ensuring resources are aligned with both client requirements and operational goals.

1. Agency Profitability 

Beyond resource planning, profitability is a cornerstone of this role. The Senior PM is tasked with ensuring accounts are resourced profitably, balancing the team composition with a mix of account leads, strategists, and juniors. The challenge lies in finding the optimal combination of team roles, hourly rates, and budgets to deliver results while maintaining profitability.

To simplify this complex process, we’ve developed a bespoke tool that calculates resource allocations based on various factors, such as hourly rates and project budgets. This allows us to maintain profitability without compromising on quality or team efficiency.

1. Utilisation and Efficiency

A critical element of this role is monitoring and balancing utilisation rates with profitability targets. Simply put, utilisation rates measure the percentage of a team member’s time that is billable versus non-billable. At NOVOS, we use this metric in two ways:

• Efficiency: Delivery PMs and SEO Managers use utilisation rates to set monthly targets for billable hours, which are tailored to individual team members based on their available capacity.
• Profitability: The Senior PM uses the utilisation rate metric to create different sets of data, such as understanding how profitably we’re utilising the team and to calculate the Resource Rate, how much work is available for the team to take on. This information is invaluable for both financial and hiring planning and sales strategies.

If there’s unused capacity, the Senior PM can suggest alternative uses for that time, such as team upskilling, internal projects, or initiatives to increase long-term efficiency and profitability.

1. Preventing Burnout

Overseeing resource allocation is another vital aspect of this role. The Senior Project Manager works with delivery-focused PMs to ensure that the team is neither overstretched nor underutilised. Striking this balance is key to maintaining team well-being, avoiding burnout, and fostering long-term productivity.

Making the Right Decision for Your Agency

When deciding whether your agency needs a Senior or a Delivery PM, consider factors like your agency size, client load, team structure and existing internal processes.

At NOVOS, we recommend starting with a Delivery Project Manager to establish solid workflows and processes. These workflows lay the foundation for more advanced capacity planning and profitability management. Without them, it’s difficult to gather the necessary data to make informed decisions. Once you’ve established clear operational structures, you can expand or split the PM role to include a capacity and profitability focus.

Pro Tip: Start with Building a Strong Foundation

Effective capacity planning relies on solid delivery workflows. At NOVOS, we learned the importance of having a clear understanding of how we work before diving into metrics like utilisation rates or resource planning. By starting with a Delivery PM, you create the clarity and structure needed to support more strategic planning down the line.

This two-tiered approach has been a game-changer for us, enabling us to scale efficiently while maintaining profitability, team well-being, and client satisfaction.

Key Skills of an SEO Project Manager

Being a project manager requires a strong foundation in traditional skills. Communication, time management, organisation, and leadership are non-negotiable traits for any successful PM. These skills lay the foundation of effective project management across industries, and SEO is no exception.

However, in the unique world of SEO, project managers need to go beyond these staples. They must possess a specialised set of skills tailored to the creative, technical, and ever-evolving nature of the industry. These are the abilities that truly set apart an exceptional SEO Project Manager from the rest.

Whether you’re looking for a Delivery Project Manager or a Senior Project Manager, these advanced skills will help your agency thrive. Based on our experience at NOVOS, here’s what you should look for.

1. Adaptability

SEO is anything but rigid, and a project manager working in this field needs to embrace that. A great SEO Project Manager learns from the team and tailors their approach to the company’s unique structure and needs.

The goal isn’t to enforce rigid frameworks, but to create custom solutions that suit the creative and fluid nature of SEO work. This could mean borrowing elements from methodologies like Agile or Waterfall, but always applying them in a way that benefits both the delivery team and the operational and financial sides of the business.

In my experience, adaptability is the foundation of success for SEO project managers. It’s not just about managing tasks; it’s about creating workflows that work for your team and can evolve as the agency grows.

1. SEO Knowledge

This skill is non-negotiable. A project manager in an SEO agency needs to understand the fundamentals of SEO. This doesn’t mean they need to be an SEO expert, but they must have enough knowledge to:

• Grasp the nature of SEO tasks, timelines, and goals
• Recognise the challenges the team faces and understand their pain points
• Communicate effectively with both the team and stakeholders about progress, risks, and results

At NOVOS, we’ve found that PMs who bring prior SEO knowledge (or quickly develop it through shadowing the team or taking courses) are better equipped to lead. A PM who can discuss things like keyword research, technical audits, or content optimisation shows the team they truly understand their world. This helps foster trust and collaboration.

For a Delivery PM, deep SEO knowledge is even more critical because they’re directly supporting the delivery team. For a Senior PM, the knowledge doesn’t need to be as hands-on, as their focus leans more toward efficiency, profitability, and resource management.

1. Fluid Thinking

In SEO, the path from A to B is rarely linear. Clients can change strategies mid-month, new priorities emerge, and unexpected challenges arise. A successful project manager needs to be dynamic, helping the team adjust on the fly without losing sight of broader business goals.

Fluid thinking involves assessing the current workload, accommodating new requirements, and prioritising tasks based on available resources, timelines, and budgets. It’s about finding the balance between being flexible to client needs and avoiding over-servicing. 

For Delivery PMs, fluid thinking comes into play more often, as they’re working directly with the team to adapt schedules and workloads. Senior PMs also need this skill, but they apply it at a strategic level, helping the agency pivot operations while staying profitable as well as supporting Delivery PMs.

1. Balancing Soft and Hard Skills

I believe that, at the core, Project Managers in SEO agencies have two main goals:

• Be team-focused: build trust, keep morale high, and maintain relationships with the team.
• Be business-focused: manage budgets, ensure profitability, and optimise operational efficiency.

This dual role requires a unique combination of analytical thinking and a creative brain. A PM needs to understand how to maximise team usability and ensure everyone feels supported, while also keeping an eye on broader agency goals like profitability and efficiency.

This is especially challenging for delivery focused PMs, who are more hands-on with the team. They need to strike a delicate balance between supporting the team and aligning their work with the agency’s objectives. For senior PMs, the focus shifts slightly, leaning more toward analytics and profitability while ensuring Delivery PMs have the tools and support they need to manage their teams effectively.

The Value of Hiring an SEO Project Manager

We’ve touched on the importance of having a dedicated project manager in my previous post  Does your SEO Agency Need a Project Manager. Here’s a quick recap of why hiring an SEO PM was truly a game-changer for your agency.

From an operational standpoint, the addition of a project manager brings immediate value by improving the efficiency and speed of SEO project delivery. With the right processes in place, the work gets completed faster and more smoothly, reducing the risk of delays and missed deadlines. This not only improves team morale but also frees up your SEO experts to focus on their core tasks, without the added stress of managing coordination, deadlines, or project planning. This clarity and focus can drastically enhance productivity and help avoid burnout.

But the value doesn’t stop there. At NOVOS, we’ve experienced a direct correlation between hiring project managers and increased client retention. By having someone dedicated to support the team and own project coordination, we’re able to not only meet deadlines but be more proactive, deliver higher quality work, and, most importantly, give our delivery teams more time to focus on building stronger relationships with clients. 

From an operational perspective, we’ve seen the impact of a project manager on profitability, too. Streamlined workflows, better resource allocation, and smarter planning have allowed us to reduce inefficiencies and maximise ROI. Having someone manage the bigger picture and act as a bridge between Operations and Delivery ensures that every decision aligns with our goals for growth and profitability.

In our own agency’s experience, the journey of hiring our first project manager has been a huge catalyst for growth. As we expanded, we quickly realised that scaling successfully requires not just more team members, but more structure and foresight, things that only a dedicated project manager can provide. So, whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale, a project manager will not only improve day-to-day operations, but also help position your agency for long-term success.

How to Find the Right Project Manager for Your Agency

Finding the right project manager for your agency is a crucial step in ensuring smooth operations, better team collaboration, and greater client satisfaction. However, before diving into the hiring process, it's essential to first evaluate your agency’s current structure and identify where you might have gaps.

Evaluate Your Current Structure

Ask yourself a few key questions:

• Are you struggling to meet deadlines consistently?
• Are you unable to get a clear view of the team’s workload?
• Do you find it difficult to plan beyond the week ahead?
• How much resource do you have available for new clients, and how much are you losing by over-servicing existing clients?

Understanding where these gaps are will allow you to figure out where you need the most help and tailor your PM search accordingly.

Where to Start 

Once you've identified the areas that need support, it’s time to decide where you want to start. If your agency doesn’t yet have a PM, or you’re lacking a dedicated project management team, I recommend starting small. Adding a new role to your team can shift dynamics, so be clear on what you need them to do. Start with the basics, and be ready to adapt as you learn how the role fits within your organisation. Flexibility and open communication with your team will be key in the early stages.

Key Traits and Skills

Keep in mind the skills we touched on in the section above: experience in SEO, adaptability, an analytical mindset, and strong communication abilities. It's also vital that the PM can work with different stakeholders and manage both operational and team needs. When assessing candidates, look for a track record of adapting to challenges and a solid understanding of SEO fundamentals.

Red Flags to Watch Out For

• No exposure to SEO or Creative Industries: a general project manager who has never worked in SEO or creative environments might struggle with the nuances of SEO projects
• Over rigidity in methodologies: someone who insists on following rigid project management methodologies that don’t fit SEO work may cause friction within your team

Hiring Tips

1. Always start small and adjust as you go. At Novos, we took approximately six months to adapt our first PM to our way of working. It’s a learning process, and being flexible is key. 
2. Keep in mind that hiring a PM may require realigning roles within your existing team to ensure responsibilities are clear and there’s no confusion. For example, you might need to redefine the responsibilities of SEO managers, strategists, or executives. To avoid confusion or friction, be very clear about the PM’s responsibilities and how they complement or overlap with other roles. Make sure everyone understands that the new hire’s goal is to improve efficiency and support the team, not to take over their tasks.
3. Be mindful of how you communicate and introduce the role to your team. It’s important that they don’t feel threatened or that tasks are being taken away from them. Instead, present the PM role as a support function, one that will help them focus on delivering better results without the added pressure of managing projects, capacity or budgets. Starting with the business needs and gradually working with the team will help set everyone on the right foot.

Ultimately, finding the right Project Manager is a process. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong at first, the key is to be flexible, listen to feedback, and adapt as you go. As your agency grows, the role will evolve, and so will your understanding of what works best for your team.

As we step into the new year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on your agency's growth and future. How can you take the next step in evolving your business, streamlining your processes, and setting your team up for even greater success? Investing in the right project management approach could be the key to unlocking your agency’s full potential in 2025. 

Now is the time to ask: What’s the one change that could propel your agency forward this year?