Head of SEO

Role Overview

We are seeking a deeply hands-on and technical Head of SEO to take end-to-end ownership of Patrika Digital's organic traffic footprint. You will not function as an isolated individual contributor; instead, you will lead a dedicated team of technical and content SEO analysts and possess the authority to mandate technical adjustments to our CMS/dev pipelines and content standards to editorial.

Key Responsibilities & Core Problems to Solve

• Traffic Recovery: Perform a swift, root-cause diagnosis of our organic traffic bleed (evaluating indexation, Core Web Vitals, E-E-A-T/YMYL health for critical segments like astrology/health, and competitor market share loss) and reverse it within 60–90 days.
• Future-Proof Search Shift: Formulate and execute strategies to protect traffic against AI-driven search models, zero-click landscapes, and AI Overviews across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode.
• Optimize Primary Acquisition Levers: Refine technical and structured data configurations exclusively for Google News and Google Discover placement—our largest acquisition funnel.
• Editorial Integration: Actively embed with the newsroom planning conversations daily to ensure headline architectures and story verticals maintain top Discover eligibility.

Experience & Scale Requirements

• Must have owned SEO strategy for a massive news or publisher platform generating 10M+ monthly organic sessions, ideally within Hindi or Indic language markets.
• Hands-on mastery of Google News and Discover optimization pipelines, including schema markup, Core Web Vitals for news, and Publisher Center ecosystem management.
• Demonstrated history of successfully navigating and recovering a major content site through at least one Core Update or Helpful Content Update.

Critical Disqualifiers

• SEO backgrounds confined strictly to e-commerce or B2B/SaaS verticals; news/publishing SEO is fundamentally different and mandatory here.
• Lacking hands-on technical depth (e.g., someone who can only brief developers but cannot personally debug indexation errors or audit raw schema markup).
• Lack of an immediate actionable perspective on AI search engines, treating them as a future concern rather than an active shift.