Director of SEO and Agentic Search

About LawnStarter

LawnStarter is the nation's leading on-demand marketplace for lawn care and outdoor services, with over $150M in annual bookings. We are expanding beyond lawn care to become the one-stop shop for all home services. Becoming the most discovered, cited, and trusted brand in our category is how we get there.

About the Growth Team

Growth owns the full acquisition funnel across our brand portfolio, reaching millions of homeowners every year. SEO and organic discovery are foundational to how customers find us. This role leads the team responsible for making that happen at scale, reporting directly to the CMO and operating at the intersection of content, technical SEO, product, and the emerging world of AI-powered search.

The Challenge

The game has changed. Rankings are no longer the prize; recommendation is. When a homeowner asks AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Google AI who to hire, our job is to be the answer, not just page one.

This requires two strategic bets running together. First, establishing brand presence across every surface where homeowners and machines form trust, including PR, journalists, creators, community platforms, review sites, Reddit, Nextdoor, and partner ecosystems. Authority comes from the network, not just the page. Second, exposing first-party data that nobody else can publish, such as pricing patterns, completion times, regional demand, and marketplace outcomes. This is the kind of original, expert evidence AI systems reward, which commodity SEO can no longer produce.

We have a talented team and strong brand equity. We need a leader who already operates this way and has the results to prove it, not one we have to convince.

The Role

You will own organic search and AI discovery across our brand portfolio, setting the vision, roadmap, and standards for how we compete in a world where Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode are becoming primary discovery surfaces.

The team is small by design, consisting of one SEO analyst, a lean research and editorial group, and a no-code publishing platform that gives you direct control of thousands of pages. Several strategic functions sit intentionally unowned, waiting for you to define AI visibility tracking, editorial direction, content pruning, and expert sourcing strategy. You decide what to keep, what to retire, and what to build. We are scaling leverage, not headcount.

This is a strategic, high-visibility role where you will shape company-wide priorities, partner with engineering, data, product, design, and executive leadership, and serve as the internal authority on where organic discovery is heading and what it takes to win.

Why This Role Is Different

• Building a New Playbook: The opportunity requires fresh thinking about how technical SEO, content, structured data, and AI visibility work together in 2026 and beyond.
• Scale and Stakes: You will manage multiple major brands with millions of users and real revenue stakes. Organic drives a meaningful share of our business, and your decisions compound across our entire brand portfolio.
• The AI Frontier: You are not just optimizing for blue links. This role requires genuine expertise in how LLMs and answer engines discover, evaluate, and cite content.
• Leverage: With a small internal core, a no-code publishing platform, and unique first-party data, you have direct control over thousands of pages without engineering dependency or sprint queues. You can move at the speed of a hypothesis.

Problems to Solve

• Recovering and growing traffic at scale: One of our brands has seen significant traffic decline, with rankings slipping from positions 3-5 to page 2. Diagnosing the root cause—whether algorithm shifts, content quality, technical debt, or AI Search cannibalization—is the first order of business.
• Winning in AI-powered discovery: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are becoming primary discovery surfaces. You must build a structured, repeatable approach to AI Search visibility to turn it into a competitive advantage.
• Going from defense to offense: The old playbook worked until it didn't. This role flips the posture to dominate the next era of organic discovery across more verticals than before.
• Defining how to measure AI Search: Traditional SEO signals are clear, but AI Search visibility is murkier. You must build a measurement approach that turns raw signals into a reliable view of AI Search visibility to make decisions and demonstrate progress.

Equal Opportunity

LawnStarter provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetics. We comply with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment.