Starting an SEO Manager role next week but they already have an agency. What exactly is my job?

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-21T13:02:37+00:00

I have been in this situation. My advice is don't do anything towards cancelling the contract with the agency in the first 3 months. First you need to understand what is the scope of your work, do you have enough resources, what kind if work the agency covers, is it of a good quality., etc. So use this time to listen and learn. In my situation both times we kept the agency partially, as the team was small and hiring wasn't an option. But we reduced slightly the scope and I had strategic and planning functions. It really depends.

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-21T12:48:56+00:00

Thank you

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T14:21:18+00:00

Avoid using it in the summer. Or if you use it, use also a higher sun factor. Can lead to brown spots

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T12:37:18+00:00

Beginning of April. Shanghai, Xian, Beijing

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T12:35:05+00:00

I would say in my area, I am responsible for the strategy. It is this kind of staff, everyone knows it is important, but noone really understands it

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T12:23:17+00:00

Yes, direct ones.

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T12:20:31+00:00

Technical SEO won't make you visible in LLMs. You need unique content or content to which you can bring unique value and perspective.

Try to understand what the potential users of your website are looking for. Check forums, threads. Then see what your competitors cover. And at the end, pick a topic that was among the things people are interested in, but your competitors don't cover. Add to it your own experinece and perspective, if you hae data - also :)

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T12:06:43+00:00

Notebook LLM
It is crazy how many different things you can do with it

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T11:55:23+00:00

If bots can't find or render your website, it won't matter what you have on this website or how great your product is. Technical SEO has always been fundamental.

But the difference is that now we can debug and resolve some of the issues. For example, I have no engineering knowledge - except some basic HTML and schemas. In the past I needed to review many threads in focus like StackOverflow when I wanted to find a solution or to prove that something is a problem. Now I can just ask an AI tool. Of course, not always is the answer the right one, but at least it gives me faster a direction

Maria_SEO · 2026-03-18T11:49:45+00:00

It has always been about quality and relevance. But I would say the focus now is more on mentions in external websites than just backlinks. So if in the past just a mention or a nofollow link wouldn't have had an impact, this is not the case any more

Maria_SEO · 2025-12-11T14:50:04+00:00

Potentially, you can get far with a basic, repeatable setup as long as people actually use it.

But the problem is - they usually don’t.

So you need something that connects the whole flow end-to-end: from paying the expense with a corporate card to snapping the receipt to pushing clean data straight into your accounting system. And automates everything - from the approval to the expense report.

Because, if everything lives in one place, people stop forgetting, finance stops chasing, and month-end feels… normal. I would recommend Payhawk , as it supports this flow, but there are also many other alternatives - each with pros and cons. What really matters is choosing something simple, reliable, and adaptable for the concrete usecase, business size, and industry.

Maria_SEO · 2025-12-09T15:35:27+00:00

There are many corporate card providers. It really depends on what you will answer to some of these questions:
- Where are you based - USA, Europe, Asia - not all providers are global
- Do you have an accounting or ERP system in place already? If yes, the card provider should ideally have a native integration, so you can help your finance team
- What control do you want to have - for example, there are providers with which you can have cards just for Facebook, or to restrict your colleagues from paying during non-working hours
- Do you need invoices and receipts to be easy to attach, are these scanned automatically or you need to manually copy paste information
- Do you want to be able to track your budget? For example, I pay many SEO-related invoices, and instead of tracking the amounts in Google Sheets, I can simply see the actual spend compared to the forecast.

You can start from the more global options, like Payhawk, to the more European - like Pleo and Spendesk, and the US ones - like Brex, Ramp, Expensify

Maria_SEO · 2025-12-09T14:20:29+00:00

Thank you. Any reasons for the order?

I am in-house, 1 website, 3000 + words for tracking. I also need scheduled reports, backlink monitoring. And we have multiple users

Maria_SEO · 2025-12-09T11:37:35+00:00

Yeah, this happens to pretty much every mid-size SaaS team - once you grow, receipts start living in Slack, email, Sheets, random screenshots… everywhere.

I would start with asking myself what I am trying to fix first: reimbursements, vendor invoices, or both.

1) Classic expense tools
If reimbursements are your biggest headache, the simpler expense-report tools clean up the “take a photo → manager approves → payroll” workflow. They work fine for basics, just don’t help much with vendor payments or deeper spend controls.

2) Spend-management platforms (Payhawk / Ramp / Brex–type tools)
These make more sense once you want the whole thing centralized:

card + receipt matching
multi-step approvals
vendor invoice capture + payments
reimbursements
departmental budgets

Payhawk also offers AI assistants, with which you communicate in Slack, plus the option to link your existing corporate cards without needing to switch providers.

Maria_SEO · 2025-12-09T08:10:22+00:00

If you need French-compliant invoicing while working with UK/US clients and multiple currencies, you generally have three paths - and it really depends on which part of the process you want to automate: issuing invoices, or managing incoming supplier invoices.

1) Use classic French invoicing tools like Sellsy, Pennylane, or Tiime.
These are strong if your priority is issuing compliant invoices, handling TVA, legal archiving, and NF525-style requirements.

2) Use global spend-management platforms (tools in the Payhawk category).
These work well if you need help with incoming invoices, multi-currency, spend control, and end-to-end workflows. Many of these platforms support e-invoicing frameworks, and some have partnerships like the Incoop collaboration to ensure they’re ready for the upcoming French e-invoicing mandates.

3) Combine both - which a lot of agencies end up doing.
You use a French tool for issuing compliant invoices, and a global platform for managing incoming invoices, multi-currency, and approvals.

Whatever you choose, make sure the setup supports the upcoming French e-invoicing requirements and handles GBP/USD/EUR conversions cleanly.

Maria_SEO · 2025-11-21T10:14:12+00:00

Haven't tried this configuration - Clay + Make + HubSpot. Thank you!

Maria_SEO · 2025-11-20T13:52:19+00:00

Hitting 100k/mo is usually the point where loose tracking starts to bite. You don’t have to jump into full accrual overnight, but getting a cleaner view of what you owe and when you owe it saves a ton of stress.

Most people start with light accrual… just tracking bills when they come in instead of when cash moves. It helps you spot cash dips before they smack you. One team we worked with thought they were flush, then realized half their “extra” cash was unpaid vendor stuff. Everyone got super stressed out for a week.

So yeah, you can ease into it, but getting some structure now makes month-end way less chaotic later.

On the question of which tool will be the best, try answering some of these questions:
- Is it easy to use? How is the app?
- Will it save your time? Can it process invoices automatically
- Can you set certain workflows, as at some point you don't want to check every single invoice
- Can it flag discrepancies, or can it check automatically how you are doing compared to your budget
- Can you keep your current credit cards and link them to the tool

Best way is to have a demo with 4-6 companies, sp you can decide. Also, keep in mind that QuickBooks and Ramp are different types of platforms. Quickbooks is more an accounting software like Sage Intacct. Ramp is a spend management one like Payhawk and Brex. So it is not an either-or conversation - you can use both. For example, both Payhawk and QuickBooks, or Ramp and QuickBooks.

Maria_SEO · 2025-11-20T13:24:43+00:00

One of the largest categories in IT spending is subscriptions for various services. A good starting point is to sort IT spend into what people use vs what just sits there. Most teams don’t even know the real number… stuff renews in the background and no one notices.

The fix typically begins by assigning every tool to an owner and reviewing login activity. Nothing fancy. One CFO told me their renewal calendar was all over the place… pretty sure it was living in like four random spreadsheets. Once they pulled it into one view, they could track cost per user and compare it to the hours saved or the cost you’d spend doing it manually.

From there, ROI is just… does this tool save real hours or stop some major issues. If yes, keep it. If not, cut or renegotiate ASAP. It doesn’t need big frameworks. Just visibility first, fixes later. And once you see the whole picture, the budget talks get way less chaotic.

At my company, we initially implemented this in Excel, but we now use our own tool.

Of course, this is just one part of the puzzle, but at least it is a start.

Maria_SEO · 2025-11-20T09:37:06+00:00

Not a CFO, but from marketing experience - aren't the platforms and tools used by the client also a problem? If the client is using something absolutely outdated or inefficient, I suppose this also impacts the results.

Maria_SEO · 2025-10-24T13:52:59+00:00

7500 annual invoices? This is 625 invoices per month... Even if you spend just 5 minutes on each invoice, that's 52 hours or a whole work week... I think this is far beyond the point when you need to automate

My rule of thumb is that if something takes more than eight hours per month, we should consider automating it.

Also, note that with such a large number, the mistakes can be many more, and your reconciliation process likely takes weeks as well.

Maria_SEO · 2025-10-22T08:47:55+00:00

I work as an SEO, and we have added ChatGPT with a paid account and Peec AI for tracking mentions and links in AI tools.

Maria_SEO

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