TL;DR: I accepted a senior SEO position in-house with only 2-3 years of experience. Now I'm sidelined doing basic Google Business Profile updates and keyword stuffing, while the real strategy work happens without me. They blame me for not delivering like someone with 10+ years. Anyone else experienced this?
I came from an agency where I was a midweight SEO exec, then a junior before that. The brand lured me with a 'senior' title and a bit more cash. Promised I'd work on technical SEO and link building, not just local listings. Then my mentor - the head of SEO - got himself fired within a few months. I was immediately stuck with the grunt work: bulk uploading citations, fixing NAP inconsistencies, rewriting stale meta descriptions. I was iced out of strategy meetings for nearly a year. By the time a freelance contractor replaced the mentor, the rest of the team (all 10+ years experienced) had already written me off. They didn't want me in the room because I 'still needed hand-holding'.
I get it - everyone's slammed. But it's not fair to blame me when things slide, then give me the cold shoulder. When they do throw me a bone, I bust my ass. I automated our citation audit with a Python script that cross-referenced Google Maps and Yelp data - saved days of manual work. A couple of my local link-building ideas got traction and boosted a few pages. But leadership still pulls me aside and says I'm on thin ice because 'the directors don't want to work with you.' How the hell am I supposed to improve if you deny me the projects and mentorship I clearly need?
Plus, the brand is 'cool' but the work is boilerplate: same local schema, same citation templates. They constantly dunk on my agency days - but honestly, the e-commerce SEO I did there was more interesting than this. I think I jumped client-side too soon. Did I make a mistake?
