New York Marketing Agency:
Doubling Its Link-Building Target With a Technical SEO Specialist
Full-day overlap
in 24 hours, fully aligned with role requirements
2x
target
doubled the agency’s link-building target in 6 weeks
12+ months retention
one year on the team, now transitioning to a direct, full-time role.
Employees
1-10 employees
Location
Upstate New York
Industry
Digital Marketing & Creative Agencies
The Challenge
We needed someone to own technical SEO, spot problems, and offer solutions. Finding that expertise locally within our budget wasn’t happening.
Founder
Digital marketing agency in Upstate New York
The agency had reached the point where its client roster was growing faster than its technical bench. Strategy, content, and client relationships were well covered. The technical side of SEO was not. Site speed problems, crawl and indexing issues, and fixes on clients’ content management systems kept landing on the CEO’s desk or getting split among generalists who already had full plates.
That work is hard to schedule around. A slow-loading site or a broken template does not wait for a quiet week, and every technical issue left open made it harder to show clients the results they were paying for. The CEO was spending hours each week on hands-on fixes instead of on growth, sales, and client strategy.
Hiring locally was not a realistic answer. The agency is based in a smaller Upstate New York market, where experienced technical SEO specialists are scarce, and competing with metro-area agencies and in-house teams for that talent would have meant a long search and a budget the agency could not justify. The CEO also wanted more than an executor. The ideal hire needed to be proactive, communicative, and comfortable offering opinions, someone who would spot problems before clients did and push back when something did not make sense.
Without that person, the risk was clear: a growing technical backlog, a CEO stuck in the weeds, and a ceiling on how many clients the agency could serve well.
The Approach
The agency needed a technical SEO specialist to improve site speed, resolve website issues, and take ownership of technical work. Strong English, proactive communication, and a budget of $20–$30 per hour were equally important.
Wow presented two vetted candidates, and the CEO selected a Mexico-based specialist with 7 years of experience in marketing and computer systems engineering. His background combined hands-on technical expertise with the ability to explain the client impact of each fix.
He started at roughly 30 hours per week with a two-week trial, joining the agency’s existing workflows, tools, and team channels. Working directly with the CEO during overlapping business hours enabled same-day communication and fixes.
Wow provided ongoing check-ins and later supported a Staff-to-Hire conversion with a flexible payment schedule suited to the agency’s cash flow.
He’s been a standout, both in the quality of his work and in how professional he is. When he took over link building, he doubled our target in six weeks. That’s the kind of ownership we were hoping for
Founder
Digital marketing agency in Upstate New York
The Outcome
The work has been outstanding, and working with Wow has been about as
low-maintenance as it gets.
They were also flexible when we wanted to bring him on full-time, which isn’t something every staffing partner offers. That’s why our next hires are going through them too
Founder
Digital marketing agency in Upstate New York
One year in, the agency has a dedicated technical SEO owner, a CEO back on growth work, and new client revenue it can trace to the specialist’s performance.
Technical work has a single owner. Speed optimization, crawl and indexing fixes, and website issues now go to one person who sees them through. The CEO no longer handles hands-on technical fixes, and generalists are no longer pulled off their own client work to cover gaps.
A redesign launched without losing the thread. Website redesigns are where search visibility is most often lost. The specialist led the technical SEO work after a major redesign went live, giving the agency an in-house owner for the riskiest phase of the project.
Link building doubled. Within 6 weeks of taking over the link-building program, he delivered twice the agency’s target. That turned link building from a service the agency squeezed in into one it could deliver with confidence.
A bigger contract. According to the CEO, the specialist’s performance directly enabled a contract increase, the clearest sign that the role pays for itself in revenue, not only in hours saved.
Twelve months of stability. The specialist has been with the agency for a full year, working entirely inside its Eastern Time business day. The next step is a full-time, direct role on the agency’s team.
More hiring through the same model. The agency is now working with Wow on a second search, for a Growth Marketing Specialist, with a brief to find someone of similar caliber.
Hire the Perfect Specialist
Hire the Perfect Specialist