SEO Lead

Company Description

Depop is the community-powered circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover desirable secondhand fashion. With a community of over 35 million users, Depop is on a mission to make fashion circular, redefining fashion consumption. Founded in 2011, the company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York and Manchester, and in 2021 became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy. Find out more at www.depop.com 

Our mission is to make fashion circular and to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Just as our platform connects people globally, we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences, knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have.

If, due to a disability, you need adjustments to complete the application, please let us know by sending an email with your name, the role to which you would like to apply, and the type of support you need to complete the application to [email protected]. For any other non-disability related questions, please reach out to our Talent Partners.

Own organic growth end-to-end: strengthen core SEO performance today and build a deliberate 2026+ approach to GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) as the space matures.

You’ll sit in our core web experience team initially, and partner closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Content teams to improve visibility, site quality, and measurable commercial impact
SEO at Depop is in a ‘reset and discovery’ phase, though we have strong fundamentals in place. You’ll own the SEO space and be expected to operate with a high degree of autonomy, bringing clarity on what matters most and shaping how we run SEO going forward.

You’ll work with shared engineering and cross-functional partners. You should be comfortable getting to outcomes via influence, and will have the ability to scale support from third party partners where needed.

Being a peer-to-peer marketplace gives us interesting SEO challenges: our inventory is unique and constantly changing, and listing quality varies (with user-generated titles, descriptions, and images). We’re ideally looking for someone who understands what this means for SEO, and how to win in a two-sided marketplace environment.
Priorities by phase:

First 6 months (foundations):

• Measurement and reporting: bring SEO/GEO performance into in-house reporting with agreed definitions, a clear dashboard, and a repeatable performance review cadence.

• Strategy and “size of prize”: set a north star (“what great looks like”), baseline where we are today, quantify the opportunity, draw up a prioritised 12-month roadmap, and use this to inform our SEO operating model (where we invest, what we outsource, what we stop doing)

• Technical fundamentals: identify and drive the highest-leverage technical improvements (crawl/indexation, site architecture, performance, structured data).

• Content programme and governance: establish blog/content standards, owners, and an editorial calendar focused on user needs and information quality. Coordinate production through our content, product marketing and other teams as relevant.

6–12 months (acceleration):

• Experimentation framework (recommended, not required in the first 6 months): implement a lightweight testing approach to isolate impact and speed up learning on templates, internal linking, content, and SERP feature capture.

• Scale and leverage: expand the footprint through repeatable page patterns and systemised content production; refine vendor/tooling decisions based on demonstrated value.

Responsibilities

• Organic strategy & roadmap: define and maintain a prioritised SEO/GEO roadmap, aligned to business outcomes.

• Technical SEO: auditing and fixes across crawl/indexation, performance, architecture, and structured data; embed SEO into release processes.

• Measurement & insights: KPI framework (visibility > traffic > activation), instrumentation requirements, dashboards, and stakeholder reporting.

• Content & blog co-ownership: topic strategy, co-ordination, briefs, QA standards, editorial calendar, and performance feedback 

• Information quality: ensure users find accurate, up-to-date answers; reduce exposure to thin, duplicated, or misleading content (especially as GEO evolves). Explore opportunities to de-duplicate SERP crossover with paid marketing.

• GEO readiness: monitor how our brand/pages appear in AI-assisted discovery and adapt on-page structure and content standards accordingly.

• Vendors & tooling: evaluate what stays in-house vs. third parties (e.g., BrightEdge) and manage partners against clear outcomes.

• Cross-functional leadership: influence Product and Engineering roadmaps; align stakeholders and raise SEO capability across the org.

• Resource and operating model recommendations: use evidence to propose where additional resource/external support is required.
    

Requirements

• Demonstrated success leading SEO for a scaled consumer product, marketplace, or e-commerce business.

• Strong technical SEO capability (indexation, crawl, architecture, performance, schema).

• Data-literate and outcome-driven: able to translate noisy signals into clear priorities and measurable impact.

• Strong stakeholder management and communication; able to align teams and set durable standards.

• Hands-on with core SEO tooling (Search Console plus crawling/rank/competitive tools) and pragmatic vendor evaluation.

• Can run SEO independently while orchestrating delivery across teams without direct resourcing

Nice to have

• International SEO experience and CMS familiarity (e.g., Contentful).

• Familiarity with experimentation platforms and warehouse-based analytics.

• Experience operating and managing enterprise SEO platforms and agencies (including BrightEdge)

Additional Information

Health + Mental Wellbeing

• PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa

• Subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space

• Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative

• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support

• Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting

Work/Life Balance:

• 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days

• 1 company-wide day off per quarter

• Impact hours: Up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering

• Fully paid 4 week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop, to give you a chance to recharge or do something you love.

• Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options *role dependant

• All offices are dog-friendly

• Ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries

Family Life:

• 18 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees

• IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave

Learn + Grow:

• Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more

• Mentorship and programmes to upskill employees

Your Future:

• Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary)

• Pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings

Depop Extras:

• Employees enjoy free shipping on their Depop sales within the UK.

• Special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards!