Search Experience and Technical SEO Manager, OpenTable
12 Month Contract
2 days a week in office
Online restaurant reservation service
Open for applications
Online restaurant reservation service
1001+ employees
Open for applications
2 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To bring together people and the restaurants they love in the moments that matter.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 4 to 6 years of hands-on experience in SEO and organic growth roles, with a proven track record of managing visibility for B2B or lead-generation websites
- Technical Literacy: Solid understanding of technical SEO principles, including crawlability, indexation health, XML sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, and structured data implementation using Schema.org frameworks
- Developer Collaboration: Proven experience partnering directly with web development and engineering teams, including the ability to write clear technical briefs and translate SEO needs into actionable developer tasks
- Tool Proficiency: Expert-level command of SEMrush, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Regular experience using website crawling tools like Screaming Frog is highly valued
- AI Search Awareness: Strong familiarity with the evolving AI search landscape, including a practical understanding of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and how LLMs source information
- Website Management: Comfortable navigating website backends to independently execute on-page optimizations, metadata updates, internal linking overhauls, and redirect management
- Analytical Mindset: Ability to translate raw data into actionable insights, with a strong focus on connecting search performance directly to business metrics like lead generation, form completions, and pipeline
- Contractor Autonomy: A self-motivated operator with excellent time management skills, capable of prioritizing a backlog of technical and strategy tasks and executing with minimal oversight
What the job involves
- Duration: 12 months with potential to extend
- The search landscape is undergoing a generational shift from traditional Search Engines to AI-driven Answer Engines
- We are looking for a hybrid Technical SEO and Search Experience Specialist to drive user acquisition and lead generation for our OpenTable for Restaurants B2B website, seamlessly bridging the gap between high-level organic strategy and hands-on technical execution
- In this contractor role, you will be responsible for defining our B2B organic discovery strategy across traditional SERPs and emerging AI environments, including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity
- Strategy is only half the battle: you will be actively executing on-page optimizations to convert search visibility into qualified merchant leads, while directly managing our technical SEO roadmap alongside our web development team
- If you are a self-motivated expert who loves driving measurable business growth but is equally excited to dig into crawl reports, write technical dev tickets, and implement schema markup, this role is for you
- 1. Core and Traditional Search Strategy
- Keyword Strategy and User Intent: Conduct deep keyword research, competitor gap analyses, and search intent mapping to identify high-intent, funnel opportunities
- Content Clustering and Architecture: Define and execute a robust traditional content strategy, utilizing topical authority building, content hubs, and pillar-cluster models aligned with the customer buyer journey
- On-Page SEO Optimization: Ensure all existing and new landing pages, blogs, and resource hubs are fully optimized for traditional Google search, including featured snippets, heading structures, and metadata
- SERP and Competitor Surveillance: Monitor daily keyword rankings and search engine results page volatility to quickly identify and react to competitor movements or search algorithm updates
- Content Decay Management: Identify historical content that is losing search visibility and execute optimization plans to refresh and reclaim rankings
- Authority and Link Strategies: Develop and recommend white-hat backlink acquisition frameworks and internal linking structures to improve baseline domain authority and page-level performance
- 2. Next-Generation Search Strategy (AEO / GEO / AIO)
- AI Ecosystem Visibility: Design and execute strategies to maximize our brand's citations, brand mentions, and sentiment within LLM chatbots and generative summaries
- Entity and Machine Interpretability: Identify ways to strengthen our digital footprint and knowledge graph signals, instructing content resources on how to optimize for semantic search and conversational user intent
- AI-Assisted Workflows: Leverage generative AI tools to accelerate day-to-day execution tasks, such as generating structured data blocks, drafting initial metadata options, and analyzing large keyword datasets
- 3. Technical SEO Management
- Developer Bridging: Translate complex SEO, AEO, and GEO technical requirements into clear, actionable development briefs (such as Jira tickets) for our web engineering team
- Technical Quality Assurance: Partner closely with developers to test, validate, and support the implementation of technical fixes, ensuring they do not impact site performance or user experience
- Search Console Oversight: Take daily ownership of Google Search Console alerts, triaging and resolving issues related to indexation, mobile usability, and 404 errors before they impact performance
- Site Architecture and Performance: Lead technical audits focused on crawlability, indexation health, site speed (Core Web Vitals), and rendering best practices
- 4. Hands-on Execution and WordPress Optimization
- Website Implementation: Take hands-on ownership of our website’s backend and SEO configuration. You will directly execute on-page updates, internal linking overhauls, metadata adjustments, and URL redirects
- Advanced Schema Implementation: Build, test, and deploy structured data (Schema.org) frameworks to make our site highly interpretable for both traditional search crawlers and AI web scrapers
- 5. Analytics and Performance Tracking
- Business Impact Reporting: Build and maintain performance dashboards. Connect search traffic, visibility metrics, and AI citations directly to lead generation, pipeline, and business revenue
- Pipeline Attribution: Look past vanity traffic metrics to connect search visibility and AI citations directly to lead generation, form completions, pipeline, and business revenue
Our take
OpenTable was one of the earliest innovators in the online reservation space, setting up shop in 1998 as a tool to enable restaurants to take bookings online. Rather than charging consumers for the service, OpenTable generates revenue via a monthly subscription and reservation fee from businesses.
Today, the platform is used by tens of thousands of restaurants around the world and seats over 1 billion diners per year. The company was acquired by Booking Holdings – the world's largest travel company – for $2.6 billion in 2014, and remains a subsidiary of the group to this day.
OpenTable is the dominant player in the restaurant reservation software category, with an impressive 45% market share, but does face increasing competition from platforms like Resy, Tock, TableAgent, and many more. Nonetheless, this market leader has garnered an impressive reputation, and there is nothing to say it won't hold on to the dominance it has earned into the future.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
4% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Oct 2000
$36m
SERIES C
Jan 2000
$10m
SERIES B
Total funding: $48.2m
Company benefits
- Work from (almost) anywhere - wherever you do your best work
- Mental health and well-being - company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth, company-paid subscription to HeadSpace, and company-wide weeks off a year so the whole team can recharge
- Generous parental leave
- Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday
- Paid volunteer time
- Enriched learning and development opportunities - leadership development & access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings
Company HQ
Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Debby Soo
(CEO)After graduating from Stanford with a liberal arts major, Debby started their career in investment banking. Thereafter they worked in Google’s Strategic Partnerships Group and then spent a decade at KAYAK, eventually becoming CCO.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 41 more jobs at OpenTable