SEO & Merchandising Specialist

takealot.com, South Africa's leading online retailer, is looking for a highly talented SEO & Merchandising Specialist

to join our Marketing team in Cape Town.

We are a young, dynamic, hyper growth company looking for smart, creative, hard-working people with integrity to join us. We offer a market related, Total Remuneration Package which allows full flexibility according to your needs, a great work environment and a promise that you won’t be bored as long as you are prepared for a challenge and want to build something great.

This position reports to the Senior SEO Specialist

Your responsibilities will include:

• Core Web Vitals & Page Experience: Act as the "Performance Guardian" for merchandising content. Audit and optimise heavy page assets (banners, images, scripts) to ensure they do not negatively impact LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) or CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).

• Brief technical improvements to developers to ensure green scores across all page types.

• Category & Product Page Optimisation: Execute high-volume optimization of Category Landing Pages (PLPs) and Product Pages (PDPs). Ensure that H1s, metadata, and description copy perfectly align with user search intent and commercial goals.

• Search Intent & CR% Optimisation: Analyse high-traffic landing pages to ensure content satisfies user intent. Optimise page layout, copy, and Call-to-Actions (CTAs) to reduce bounce rate and drive Conversion Rate (CR%) from organic traffic.

• Offsite Discoverability & Rich Snippets: Manage the appearance of pages on Google.

• Implement and monitor Structured Data (Schema) for reviews, price, and stock to secure.

• Rich Snippets. Optimise Meta Titles/Descriptions to maximise CTR.

• Merchandising for SEO: Collaborate with Retail and Merchandising teams to ensure strategic products and promotions are surfaced via SEO. Manage "Out of Stock" and "Discontinued" product flows to retain authority and user trust.

• Image SEO & Asset Management: Optimise all visual assets (product images, merchandising banners) for search discovery (Alt tags, filenames) and performance (next-gen formats, compression) to drive traffic from Google Images.

• Competitor Gap Analysis: Monitor competitor product and category pages to identify content, feature, or speed advantages they hold, and implement agile fixes.

Qualification & Experience:

• Minimum bachelor’s degree Marketing.

• 3-5 years of SEO experience with a specific focus on E-commerce or Retail.

• Strong technical understanding of Core Web Vitals: XML sitemaps and on-site content (E-E-A-T principles).

• Proven experience in Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) principles.

• Experience working with large-scale Catalogue Management Systems (CMS).

Attributes Required:

• Strong technical understanding of Core Web Vitals: Knowledge of what causes poor LCP, CLS, and INP, and how to fix it from a content/asset perspective.

• Proven experience in Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) principles.

• Experience working with large-scale Catalogue Management Systems (CMS).

• Technical Asset Optimisation: Ability to optimise images, videos, and HTML/CSS for speed without sacrificing quality.

• Persuasive Copywriting: Ability to write content that ranks and converts.

• Analytical Skills: Deep proficiency in Google Search Console (CWV reports) and PageSpeed Insights.

• Merchandising Eye: Ability to spot visual/product presentation issues that hurt sales.

• Structured Data: Proficiency with Schema.org implementation (JSON-LD).

The Environment:

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer- centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e- commerce company in Africa.

• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve.

• We are short on ego and high on output.

• We are doers and not only thinkers, its all in the execution after all.

• We love what we do and what we are creating.

• We seek to employ an Extra Ordinary Mind who is Smart, has Integrity, and is Hardworking.

If you meet the above you are an Extraordinary Mind so come and join us!

Takealot Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities, to apply.