Head of SEO - Smallpdf

About Smallpdf

The last thing anyone living abroad needs is to figure out how to receive their post from home, right? That’s why our founders were inspired in 2013 to create an online tool that could turn huge PDFs into small, easy-to-send versions. And it turns out, they weren’t the only ones with this problem. Millions of people started using our tool to compress PDFs, and that was the start of Smallpdf as we know it today.

In 2022, we took a big step forward by joining forces with Pdftools (daughter company), founded in 2002. They specialise in developing a range of products for creating, manipulating, and validating PDF and PDF/A files to support the entire document workflow. Together, we bring even more value to our customers, and make it easier for them to manage their documents.

As a team of over 120 people and with offices in Zurich, Belgrade, and Barcelona, we’re proud to have made PDFs easier for over a billion customers in 24 languages with over 20 PDF tools across our web, mobile, and desktop applications. And our reputation for Swiss engineering standards has made us a trusted choice for industry leaders like Lufthansa, UBS, and Swiss Life, and millions of people around the world.

About the role

Smallpdf is looking for a Head of SEO with experience in SaaS / fast-growing industries to expand our digital footprint and organic traffic. You will be responsible for planning, organizing, and implementing end-to-end SEO strategies with the objective to increase our organic top of the funnel metrics as well as providing user value to our potential customers.

The Head of SEO will also be able to strategize the content needed to meet our SEO goals and will deliver on these plans, while supporting at the same time our Inbound programs. We expect the candidate to be extremely data-driven and analytical, with strong strategic background, have demonstrated project management experience and have a well-rounded digital background.

This role requires extensive experience in SEO including site architecture and performance, link building, content quality, and content development. The successful candidate will have a track record of defining and delivering a SEO roadmap (e.g. improving site performance, migrating to mobile-first index, or improving crawl budget), that delivers on its business goals (e.g. customer growth and revenue).

Responsibilities

• Lead all SEO efforts across multiple brands in following areas: onsite, offsite, content and technical (crawling, indexing, speed, etc)

• Develop and execute against forecast goals to grow organic traffic and revenue while focusing on delivering customer value

• Partner with Product and Engineering to execute against our technical SEO roadmap

• Grow our SEO footprint across key content initiatives including launching content pages at scale

• Work closely and provide regular feedback to Senior Content Manager on headlines, keyword usage, meta tags, URL structure, keyword analysis and related aspects of SEO for any content creation

• Design, implement and iterate experiments to increase traffic/ranks at a rigorous pace

• Audit and measure our SEO development, implement changes to prevent rank losses in line with search engines guidelines

• Develop competitor gap analysis including link analysis / anchor text distribution

• Partner with Sales to develop the right strategy for our Inbound programs to increase total number of leads

Requirements

• 7-10 yrs of experience in SEO with a focus on: organic search optimisation, keyword research, on-page and off-page optimisation, and technical SEO.

• Proven track record in building an SEO team (managing a team of internal/external SEO professionals); with a strategic mindset to develop and execute comprehensive SEO strategies that align with business goals and drive organic growth.

• In depth knowledge of Search engine algorithms, ranking factors and best practices wrt keyword research, website analysis and SEO performance tracking

• Understanding and knowledge of technical SEO aspects s.a. website crawling and indexing, XML sitemaps, robots.txt, canonicalisation, structured data, and site speed optimisation.

• Strong analytical skills to interpret SEO data, track KPIs, digest big data sets, identify trends and opportunities for improvement and present insights & recommendations

• Experience with and understanding of SEO analytical tools s.a. Google Search Console and Google Analytics and other SEO monitoring and reporting platforms.

• Strong understanding of content marketing and its integration with SEO and the ability to collaborate with content marketing teams to develop and optimize content strategies that align with SEO goals and drive organic traffic.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills to effectively communicate SEO strategies, recommendations, and performance reports to stakeholders at various levels.

• The ability to adapt to changes in search engine algorithms, industry trends, and business priorities.

• Strong problem-solving abilities and organisational skills, coupled with a self-reliant mindset.

Why Smallpdf

You get to impact the way over 60 million people get work done every month.

Push boundaries and dare to fail—that’s how we learn!

Enjoy the flexibility of a hybrid work environment: so you can work both from home and in the office!

Need to relocate? No problem! We offer relocation support for successful candidates living abroad. (Visa conditions apply.)

30 vacation days—yep, you read that right— you can take them whenever you need them.

Need a long break? We offer sabbatical leave to employees who’ve been with us for over 2 years.

16 weeks parental leave—100% of your salary—for all new parents

Don’t leave your four-legged friends at home, our offices are pet-friendly

A personal development budget of up to 2,000 CHF every year, plus days off for courses or training.

We offer 1-1 coaching sessions to both individual contributors as well as for employees in leadership positions through our external partner ’BetterUp’.

Hack days to challenge you and your team, plus build amazing things.

BBQs, game nights, meet-ups in the Swiss Alps, or in kayaks on Lake Zurich—we’re serious about great coffee, karaoke, and Mario Kart, too!