Search Engine Optimization Manager

Role Overview

Search Engine Optimization Manager at Salla. Mahally is Saudi Arabia's home for local commerce, operating a large-scale marketplace connecting thousands of local stores and shoppers across beauty, fashion, home, food, gifting, electronics, and more.

Company Overview

Mahally is a demand engine for Saudi merchants, helping great products get discovered and connecting shoppers with local businesses they may not have found otherwise. The marketplace operates millions of URLs with constantly changing stores and products.

Role Purpose

Own Mahally's organic search strategy end-to-end, covering technical SEO, content and organic growth, and AI-driven discovery. Build scalable organic surfaces and a sustainable organic acquisition engine that improves how search engines crawl, index, understand, and rank marketplace content, while strengthening Mahally's presence across traditional and AI-powered search experiences.

Key Responsibilities

Technical SEO Foundation

• Own technical SEO for the marketplace at scale: crawl budget, indexation, canonicalisation, pagination, faceted navigation, internal linking, sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, and JavaScript rendering.
• Diagnose and resolve index bloat by deciding which page types deserve indexation and enforcing it through robots directives, canonical strategy, and sitemap hygiene.
• Solve for URL churn by defining what happens to store or product URLs when they disappear, preventing equity loss when merchants leave.
• Partner with Engineering on an SEO backlog with clear specifications, acceptance criteria, and measured impact after release.

Organic Surfaces & Content Strategy

• Design and grow durable page types — category, collection, brand, city, intent, and comparison pages — that do not depend on any single merchant staying.
• Own the content roadmap for organic: conduct Arabic-first keyword and intent research, develop briefs, establish publishing cadence, and define refresh cycles.
• Optimize store and product templates: titles, meta descriptions, headings, structured data, on-page copy, and merchandising signals.
• Build internal linking as a systematic approach, not a one-off project.

AI & Answer-Engine Visibility

• Define and execute Mahally's strategy for generative and answer engines: crawler access policy, structured data, entity clarity, citable content, and brand presence in AI answers.
• Make deliberate decisions about which AI crawlers to allow and defend the trade-offs between control and visibility.
• Track and report where Mahally appears in AI answers for commercial Saudi queries and close the gaps.

Measurement & Analysis

• Own Google Search Console, GA4, Ahrefs or Semrush, and log-file analysis.
• Build reporting that ties organic performance to sessions, orders, and GMV, not just impressions.
• Set up rank, indexation, and coverage monitoring with alerts to catch performance drops within days rather than quarters.
• Run structured tests on page templates and title or meta patterns and report causal findings.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Brief and influence Engineering, Product, and Content teams without owning their roadmaps.
• Guide merchants on content and imagery that improve page rankings and conversion.
• Present organic performance, risks, and opportunities to leadership with a clear point of view and specific asks.

Qualifications & Experience

• 4+ years of hands-on SEO experience with proven expertise managing SEO for a large-scale e-commerce platform, marketplace, classifieds site, or other high-volume website.
• Strong technical SEO expertise with hands-on experience diagnosing and resolving complex issues related to crawlability, indexation, rendering, canonicalisation, and site architecture.
• Proven experience managing SEO for websites with 100,000+ indexable URLs or pages, including solving large-scale challenges such as index bloat, faceted navigation, duplicate or thin content, and crawl-budget optimization.
• Advanced hands-on experience with Google Search Console, GA4, SEO crawling tools such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb, and SEO platforms such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or equivalent tools.
• Practical experience implementing, auditing, and optimizing structured data or schema markup, particularly for e-commerce, including Product, Offer, Breadcrumb, Organization, or similar schemas.
• Professional proficiency in both Arabic and English, with the ability to conduct Arabic keyword and search-intent research and assess the quality and relevance of Arabic SEO content.
• Strong analytical and commercial mindset, with the ability to quantify SEO opportunities, prioritize initiatives based on potential impact, and measure results across organic traffic, conversions, and business outcomes.
• Proven experience partnering directly with Engineering and Product teams to translate SEO findings into clear technical requirements and successfully deliver SEO improvements at scale.

Skills & Competencies

• Technical SEO expertise in crawlability, indexation, rendering, canonicalisation, and site architecture.
• Proficiency with Google Search Console and GA4.
• Advanced proficiency with SEO crawling tools such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb.
• Advanced proficiency with SEO platforms such as Ahrefs or Semrush.
• Expertise in structured data and schema markup implementation and optimization.
• Bilingual fluency in Arabic and English.
• Log-file analysis.
• Commercial and analytical thinking.
• Cross-functional partnership and influence.
• Content strategy and optimization.

Additional Information

Nice to Have

• Experience with GEO or AEO and AI-powered search discovery.
• SQL, Python, or scripting experience for log analysis, bulk SEO audits, or automated monitoring.
• Experience with multilingual SEO, including hreflang and Arabic or English content strategies.
• Experience with App Store Optimization or web-to-app discovery.
• Experience working in Saudi Arabia or the GCC, with understanding of local search and consumer behaviour.
• Digital PR, authority-building, or regional link-acquisition experience.

Success Metrics

• Improved efficiency in how marketplace pages are crawled and indexed.
• Increased qualified organic discovery and traffic.
• Creation of durable search surfaces that scale with the marketplace.
• Strengthened Mahally's presence across traditional and AI-powered search.
• Measurable growth in customers, orders, and GMV for Saudi merchants driven by organic visibility.