Head of SEO

The opportunity

The Candidate is delighted to be partnering with a fast-growing, international travel business to appoint a Head of SEO. This is a senior leadership role for a results-driven SEO strategist who knows how to turn search demand into profit.

You’ll own organic search performance end to end. That means driving global visibility, high-intent traffic and direct bookings, and building the brand into the go-to authority in its market. Unlike many SEO roles, this one comes with real development resource behind it: it’s a build-and-scale role, not a maintenance role.

The role

Reporting into senior leadership, you’ll own the SEO roadmap and work closely with the product, development and marketing teams to deliver measurable growth. Alongside that, you’ll set a long-term strategy to secure category leadership in travel search.

Key responsibilities

SEO strategy and leadership

• Lead and deliver a global SEO strategy aligned to traffic, ranking and revenue targets
• Act as the senior voice of SEO across the business, educating stakeholders and shaping priorities

Data-driven landing page growth

• Build scalable landing page frameworks powered by data and automation, such as destinations, itineraries and travel themes
• Write clear, structured requirements for developers so SEO scalability is built into the CMS and codebase
• Identify new page opportunities based on search demand, competition and commercial goals

Content strategy

• Build a long-term content strategy that positions the brand as the most trusted, useful resource in its market
• Create SEO content briefs and frameworks for writers, editors and external agencies
• Oversee ongoing optimisation, including E-E-A-T, on-page improvements, internal linking and schema

Technical SEO and site performance

• Partner with developers to improve crawlability, site speed, Core Web Vitals, indexation, structured data and international SEO
• Lead regular site audits and continuously improve site health across devices and markets

Measurement and reporting

• Build dashboards, forecasts and performance reviews for the leadership team
• Own SEO reporting across rankings, traffic, conversions and ROI
• Champion a test-and-learn culture driven by data and experimentation

About you

• 5+ years’ hands-on SEO experience, ideally across e-commerce, travel, marketplace or multi-market websites
• Proven success building programmatic or data-rich landing pages that drive traffic and conversions
• Strong experience leading content strategy, keyword frameworks and page-level optimisation
• Confident writing detailed technical requirements and working closely with developers
• Able to turn large datasets into clear, actionable strategy
• Commercially driven, analytical and proactive, with a genuine test-and-learn mindset
• Embraces AI and uses it to work smarter, and stays ahead of industry trends and algorithm changes
• A clear communicator who can influence senior stakeholders and work across teams

Nice to have

• International SEO and hreflang experience
• Experience with AI tooling, AI-powered content workflows or schema automation
• Understanding of CMS architecture
• Travel or tourism industry experience
• Basic SQL, Python or data visualisation skills

Why apply?

• Shape the SEO future of an international travel brand with huge room for growth
• Real development resource to build and scale, not just maintain
• A collaborative, ambitious team that values data, initiative and fresh thinking
• A people-first culture where curiosity and a sense of adventure are part of everyday life
• Hybrid working from a Manchester base

Interested? Apply now or get in touch with Laura at The Candidate for a confidential conversation about the role.

Please note due to high volumes of applications unfortunately we are not always able to respond to all unsuccessful applicants. However we wish everyone who applies the very best with their job search.

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