Search Engine Optimization Manager

About Salla and Mahally

Salla is seeking a Search Engine Optimization Manager for Mahally, a marketplace based in Jeddah, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia. Mahally serves as a platform for local commerce, connecting customers with thousands of Saudi stores across various categories such as beauty, fashion, home, food, gifting, and electronics. The platform aims to enhance product discovery and facilitate purchases from local brands, functioning as a demand engine for Saudi merchants.

About the Role

The SEO Manager will be responsible for Mahally’s organic search strategy, covering technical SEO, content and organic growth, and AI-driven discovery (GEO/AEO). This full-time role focuses on a large, dynamic marketplace with millions of URLs and continuously changing products and stores. The position requires 4+ years of experience and involves strengthening the technical SEO foundation, improving indexation and discoverability, building scalable organic landing-page strategies, and fostering sustainable organic growth independent of individual merchants or products. The manager will also contribute to Mahally's visibility across emerging AI and answer engines, including ChatGPT Search, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI-powered search experiences. Success will be measured by qualified organic traffic, orders, and Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV).

Key Responsibilities

• Manage technical SEO at scale, including crawl budget, indexation, canonicalization, pagination, faceted navigation, internal linking, sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, and JS rendering.
• Diagnose and resolve index bloat, determining which page types should be indexed and enforcing this through robots directives, canonical strategy, and sitemap hygiene.
• Define the process for store or product URLs when they become inactive to prevent loss of equity.
• Collaborate with Engineering to ensure the SEO backlog is implemented with clear specifications, acceptance criteria, and measured impact post-release.
• Design and expand durable page types such as category, collection, brand, city, intent, and comparison pages.
• Oversee the content roadmap for organic search, including Arabic-first keyword and intent research, content briefs, publishing schedules, and refresh cycles.
• Optimize store and product templates, focusing on titles, meta descriptions, headings, structured data, on-page copy, and merchandising signals.
• Develop internal linking as a systematic process.
• Define and execute Mahally's strategy for generative and answer engines, covering crawler access policy, structured data, entity clarity, citable content, and brand presence in AI answers.
• Make informed decisions regarding AI crawler access and evaluate the trade-offs between control and visibility.
• Monitor and report Mahally's appearance in AI answers for commercial Saudi queries, identifying and addressing gaps.

Performance Measurement and Reporting

• Manage Google Search Console, GA4, Ahrefs/Semrush, and log-file analysis.
• Develop reporting that links organic performance to sessions, orders, and GMV, beyond impressions.
• Establish rank, indexation, and coverage monitoring with alerts to detect drops promptly.
• Conduct structured tests on page templates and title/meta patterns, reporting causal impacts where possible.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Inform and influence Engineering, Product, and Content teams regarding SEO priorities.
• Advise merchants on content and imagery best practices for ranking and conversion.
• Present organic performance, risks, and opportunities to leadership with clear recommendations.

Outcome and Impact

The SEO Manager will contribute to building a scalable organic acquisition engine for Mahally. This involves improving the efficiency of page crawling and indexing, increasing qualified organic discovery, creating durable search surfaces, and strengthening Mahally’s presence across traditional and AI-powered search. The work will aim to translate organic visibility into increased customer acquisition, orders, and growth for Saudi merchants.