Marketing at Wise – working in SEO Product

What is SEO Product?

SEO Product is one of the many SEO teams working at Wise. Our goal is to figure out what problems our potential customers face, and build landing pages to help them solve those problems.

We test minimally-viable versions of products to understand whether they can help us acquire new customers for Wise. This allows us to scale quickly whilst staying incredibly cost-effective.

This is how we contribute to the Wise mission of making foreign exchange eventually free. While we work in autonomous teams here, each team is striving towards that mission, and we think that organically acquiring new customers for Wise is the most exciting way of working towards that (okay, maybe we’re a bit biased 👀 ).

Not only do we love the aim of the team, but we love how the team works and the opportunities it gives us. We asked for contributions from the team for a few standout points about what it’s like to work in SEO Product, and the same themes rang true for all of us: autonomy, ownership, variety and professional development. 

Read on to find out what the team had to say about each of these fulfilling facets of working in SEO Product.

What is it like to work in SEO Product?

Autonomy (+ support)

What’s great about working in this team is the seamless mix of autonomy and support.

You’re trusted to get the job done and own projects end-to-end. This gives you a real sense of responsibility and immense satisfaction on completion, as you’ve taken ownership of each part of that project, solved problems along the way and achieved something tangible at the end. 

While you’re able to work independently, you know that if there are any bumps along the road, you have a wealth of support and knowledge in the team (and beyond) to help you find a workable solution that you can learn from.

If there’s ever a blocker we can’t resolve within the team, there’s always someone else to turn to – either in the other SEO teams, the wider Marketing team or in Engineering or Product (or even further afield!). Everyone is always more than happy to help and come up with effective solutions.

From my past experiences, I’ve found it can be hard to strike the balance between support and micro-management. For me, this is a rare but extremely valuable balance that can be really helpful in furthering professional development, so working in a team that I think achieves this is awesome!

Although we work in autonomous teams, you can really feel everyone is pushing towards the same goal. You often need to work together with different team members, so it’s easy to really feel the team spirit, and hone some leadership skills as early as in an executive role. 

We thrive on feedback here, and not just in the lead/report relationship. We peer review each other’s work so you can hone your critical SEO eye and learn from the way other team members approach tasks.

Ownership (+ a sense of achievement)

Unlike in a digital marketing agency, where you work towards improving a range of websites, working in SEO Product at Wise gives you the advantage of really owning your work. Each team member is responsible for overseeing the maintenance and growth of a part of the website, as well as building new products. The aspects of overseeing and building something new are both super interesting and crucial for our development – they teach us how to apply SEO not as a one-size fits all solution, but as a targeted strategy. 

Second of all, it feels like striving for something attainable – instead of sending recommendations to clients, which may or may not be implemented, at Wise we all have the freedom to enact them ourselves and see the fruits of our labours! It’s a huge advantage to your development, to be able to learn from the effects of your work, whether good or bad. 

It also has a psychological benefit – working in the digital industry has the potential to alienate you from the product of your own work, making it more difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment. Here, we work towards a clear set of goals, and when we achieve them and watch them grow, it’s an incredibly rewarding experience.

Even better – it’s up to us as a team to set these goals. We’re responsible for deciding what we work on, and for prioritising the opportunities that will have the most impact. We size up each opportunity, figure out how best to achieve it, work with people of various backgrounds and disciplines to build it, and publish the final product ourselves. End-to-end, you don’t just have a say in what happens, but are accountable for it (which is really cool!).

Variety 

A range of daily tasks and challenges

An excellent thing about working at Wise is that your days will be filled with varied and interesting projects. If you don’t like routine, and get frustrated by doing the same thing over and over again, then working at Wise is your best bet! 

While we follow similar processes to build each product, given the variety of topics we cover, each product poses a different challenge you have to solve in order to get it live. Whether it be grappling with a really massive piece of keyword research, launching a product in a language you don’t speak, or figuring out how to communicate a complex topic succinctly in the form of a landing page, it never gets boring!

A mix of content + technical SEO

Another big plus point of the SEO Product team specifically, is the blend of both content and technical SEO. In the past, I’ve had roles where you do either one or the other, but this team gives you the opportunity to explore both paths and develop and grow in what interests you. 

You can even branch into different disciplines and choose to specialise in the one that interests you most, be that engineering, analytics, technical or content SEO, people management – you name it, you can have a go!

Development

Personal OKRs

We have a personal OKR system in the team, with one day every other week dedicated to developing our skills. These OKRs don’t contribute directly to quarterly plans, but will still have an impact for Wise. They allow us to learn new processes relating to our roles that not only further our understanding of different facets of SEO, but will help us have a bigger impact going forward.

For example, since I joined, I’ve had personal OKRs ranging from developing technical SEO skills, to data analysis to people management – the possibilities really are endless!

We have time blocked out in our calendars to work on these (if we want to). This is something I’ve not experienced before and think is really cool – having this emphasis on professional development at the forefront. It means that if we want to dedicate that time to our personal OKRs, we can and are encouraged to do so. 

Feedback

As mentioned above, the feedback culture at Wise is fantastic. It’s ingrained in the heart of the company – you can always be sure someone will give you an honest and constructive review of your work. This allows you to learn from what went well, and understand what you can improve on for next time.

You’re constantly developing your skills, and don’t have to wait for an annual review to be clear on growth areas – the channel of communication is always open.

This is basically a love letter to SEO Product, and if you love the sound of the above (as much as we clearly do!), you would have a cracking time working in this team. Check out our open positions here.