SEO Specialist

Howden is a global insurance group with employee ownership at its heart. Together, we have pushed the boundaries of insurance. We are united by a shared passion and no-limits mindset, and our strength lies in our ability to collaborate as a powerful international team comprised of 24,000 employees spanning over 56 countries.

People join Howden for many different reasons, but they stay for the same one: our culture. It’s what sets us apart, and the reason our employees have been turning down headhunters for years. Whatever your priorities – work / life balance, career progression, sustainability, volunteering – you’ll find like-minded people driving change at Howden.

What is the role?

This role will be offered on a temporary basis to cover a maternity leave for a period of between 9 -12 months.

We are looking for a skilled SEO Specialist to join our forward-thinking and dynamic team to help implement and maintain our international SEO strategy and improve our overall organic search visibility.

Situated within the wider Digital Customer Experience team, this role reports to the Digital Optimisation Lead. As an integral part of the team, you will play a key role in enhancing and optimising our estate of website’s organic search performance, carrying out a number of on-page and technical activities, whilst collaborating with various stakeholders, including marketing professionals, developers, content teams, and product owners.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about SEO, with a minimum of 4 years’ experience working within the field and ideally with hands on experience involved with website migrations. We look for team members who are confident in their role, passionate, curious, and often have varied and interesting backgrounds – both at work and personally.

This role is based in our Central London office and supports hybrid working, with the expectation to attend the office 2 days per week on average and as needed.
 

What will you be doing?

• Support the Digital Optimisation Manager with the rollout and maintenance of the International SEO strategy across markets, with a strong emphasis on regional content localisation and management.
• Collaborate with content and marketing teams to ensure user-first, SEO optimised content.
• Conduct comprehensive data-led site audits delivering actionable insights and optimisations to the business to bolster their organic visibility.
• Carry out necessary technical and on-page updates in our proprietary CMS, such as URL structure changes, internal link updates, fixing broken links, correcting heading hierarchy’s, adding missing metadata, and other SEO optimisations.
• Conduct topic, keyword, competitor and user intent research to inform content build and optimisation
• Regularly run test and learn activity, detailing and communicating findings and rolling out successful tests across broader pages/sites.
• Stay on top of new and updated content and ensure necessary on-page and technical requirements are met.
• Carry out existing content performance analysis to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Monitor and analyse the impact of activities, reporting on key SEO KPIs such as organic traffic, rankings, query counts, brand vs non brand clicks, and leads, and present findings in a clear and engaging manner.
• Create and contribute towards the improvement of team processes and documentation, and where relevant, identify and utilise supporting tools to upskill and teach other colleagues across the business.

What are we looking for?

• A thorough understanding of how search engines work, and modern practices.
• Good understanding of core updates as well as user-centric principles such as E-E-A-T, Helpful Content, YML etc.
• Good proficiency with Excel / Google Sheets to work with heavy datasets.
• Experience with Google Search Console, SEMrush or similar, and Google Analytics.
• Confident communicating professionally with people across the business, using a range of styles and techniques to adapt to different stakeholders and language and cultural barriers.
• Good numerical ability: you’ll need to be comfortable with numbers and able to spot trends and patterns.
• B2B &/or Financial Services Industry experience desirable.
• Experience with AI APIs, automation and running or building python scripts to support with research and analysis a plus.

A career that you define. At Howden, we value diversity – there is no one Howden type. Instead, we’re looking for individuals who share the same values as us:

• Our successes have all come from someone brave enough to try something new

• We support each other in the small everyday moments and the bigger challenges

• We are determined to make a positive difference at work and beyond

We're committed to providing reasonable accommodations at Howden to ensure that our positions align well with your needs.  Besides the usual adjustments such as software, IT, and office setups, we can also accommodate other changes such as flexible hours* or hybrid working*.

If you're excited by this role but have some doubts about whether it’s the right fit for you, send us your application – if your profile fits the role’s criteria, we will be in touch to assist in helping to get you set up with any reasonable adjustments you may require.

*Not all positions can accommodate changes to working hours or locations. Reach out to your Recruitment Partner if you want to know more.