Remote Content Writer Internship Jobs in Riverside, CA

Heads up before you go further: a video application is required to be considered.

We'll explain it in detail at the bottom, but here's the short version: this is a high-investment role and we filter hard. Resume + a short video interview through HireFlix. Both required. No video, no consideration.

Start your video application here

Who this is for

This role is for the SEO who's tired of building strategies that get watered down by committee, tired of waiting three months for someone to approve a content brief, tired of doing great work that gets buried inside a giant agency client roster.

You'll work directly with the founder. When you spot an opportunity, you can act on it. When you have a strong opinion about how something should be done, you'll be heard. The work you ship in your first 90 days will visibly move the business, and you'll be able to point to specific pages, specific links, and specific rankings and say "I did that."

If you want a role where you can put your head down, build a real content engine from scratch, and watch it compound month over month, this is it. If you want to manage other SEOs or sit in strategy meetings all day, this isn't.

About us

We're a residential plumbing company based in Orange County, California. We've built a strong brand serving homeowners across Southern California, and we're investing heavily in organic growth. This role is a key part of that investment.

What this role is

We're hiring a Senior SEO Specialist to own our content and link building strategy in-house. You'll be the SEO expert in the room, and you'll be expected to know more than the people you report to. We don't want someone we have to train. We want someone who's going to teach us things and push us to be better.

We are bringing this work in-house, which means no agency layer between you and the founder. You'll work directly with our CMO, our founder, and our Senior Web Developer to drive organic traffic, improve local rankings, and build a content engine that compounds over time.

How you work with the team

This role does not operate in isolation. You're one half of a tight in-house pair built specifically to scale our organic growth.

Senior Web Developer: Your closest day-to-day collaborator. They own the technical surface (page builds, performance, schema implementation, site architecture, GTM, GA4, Search Console error resolution). You own the strategy and the content that goes on the pages they build. Daily Slack collaboration, a weekly working session, and a clean handoff process for everything that touches both surfaces.

CMO: Strategic alignment, content priorities, performance review. You'll have a weekly working session with the CMO.

Founder: Direct communication when needed. The founder is engaged with this work, not buried two layers up.

What you'll own

Content production at scale. Researching, writing, and optimizing 4 to 6 publish-ready pieces per week, scaling to 6 to 8 once you're dialed in. This includes blog posts, service pages, location pages, and campaign landing pages. AI-assisted production is expected. We use Claude for drafting from briefs you build. You own the brief, the structure, the editorial review, and final QA. Pure AI-drafted content does not ship without your review.

Link building, full ownership. This is your domain end to end. Outreach, guest posting, digital PR, broken link building, HARO, manufacturer dealer pages, local sponsorships, competitor link gap analysis. You own the strategy, the targets, the outreach, the follow-up, and the reporting on what landed.

Content and on-page SEO strategy. Keyword research, topical authority building, content refreshes, content gap identification, competitor positioning. You set the editorial calendar.

Internal linking strategy. You own what links to what, anchor text, topical clusters, and content interconnection. The web developer owns the technical implementation and architecture that makes it scale.

Schema strategy. You decide what schema types we need, what fields, and what content goes in. The web developer handles JSON-LD implementation, structured data testing, and deployment. You review and confirm before it ships.

Local SEO. Location page strategy, citation management, NAP consistency, Local Pack ranking factors, and competitive positioning in our core OC markets. Google Business Profile execution currently sits with our marketing coordinator. As you ramp, GBP strategy and oversight will migrate to this role. Expect to absorb GBP within the first 90 days.

Strategic and content SEO audits. Link profile, content gaps, competitor positioning, on-page performance, topical authority. Technical issues you identify get flagged to the web developer for implementation. You're not expected to fix them yourself, but you should be able to identify them clearly enough that the developer can act.

Search Console analysis and reporting. Strategic interpretation of GSC data: query trends, ranking diagnostics, content gap identification, page-level performance. The developer owns error resolution and indexation issues. You own what the data is telling us about the business and what to do about it.

Performance reporting. Reporting is core to this role, not an afterthought. We need a clear weekly pulse and a substantive monthly read on the program.

Weekly tactical update (every Monday):

• What shipped (pages, content, links earned)
• Outreach status (emails sent, responses, links pending)
• Ranking movement worth flagging (wins, drops, opportunities)
• Anything blocking or pending decision
• Plan for the coming week
• Format: short. 5 to 10 minutes to read. Async in Slack or shared doc.

Monthly strategic review (first week of each month):

• Organic traffic and engagement trends, month-over-month and year-over-year
• Search visibility (click, impression, CTR, average position trends, plus query-level shifts)
• Local Pack performance by city (rank tracking across our core OC markets)
• Domain authority and backlink growth (DR, referring domains, new and lost links, competitive positioning)
• Content output and performance (pages published, top performers, content that needs refresh)
• Link building results (links earned, sub-track breakdown, outreach metrics)
• Competitor movement (what our key OC competitors are doing that we should respond to)
• Strategic recommendations (what to double down on, what to kill, what to test)

We are not handing you a template. A senior SEO knows how they want to present data better than any template can specify. What we will require is that every monthly report contains the sections above. Beyond that, the structure, visualizations, and commentary are yours. We will review your first monthly report together and lock the format from there.

What you need to have

• 4+ years of hands-on SEO experience for B2C businesses. Home services experience is a big plus. We're not interested in B2B SaaS or enterprise SEO backgrounds.
• Hands-on experience across the SEO reporting stack. You've used the major tools daily (GA4, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush, BrightLocal, or equivalents). We're still finalizing our stack, so you should be tool-fluent rather than tool-dependent.
• Proven link building experience. Real campaigns, real outreach, real results you can show us.
• Content production at volume. You've personally researched, briefed, and edited 4+ pieces of publish-ready content per week. AI-assisted is fine. We expect it. What we don't accept is unreviewed AI output shipping as final.
• Local SEO fundamentals. Google Business Profile, citation management, NAP consistency, location page strategy, Local Pack ranking factors. You know the local SEO playbook cold.
• Strong written English. This is non-negotiable. You'll be writing content that homeowners read and editing AI-drafted content to a publish-ready standard.
• Experience working Pacific Time Zone hours from wherever you're based. We're not interested in candidates who plan to flip their schedule for this role.
• Reliable internet, a quiet workspace, and the ability to be on camera for team meetings.

A note on how we work

This is a 100% remote role. We don't use monitoring software and we don't micromanage. We trust our team to do excellent work and communicate proactively when something is off track.

That trust runs both ways. We expect you to show up, take ownership, and operate with high integrity. If you need help, ask. If you're stuck, say so. If you're ahead of schedule, find the next thing. We're hiring an adult, and we'll treat you like one.

This role is full-time. Not a side gig, not a weekend project, not something you stack with three other clients. Your full attention during business hours is part of what we're paying for.

Communication rhythm:

• Daily async updates in Slack: what you shipped, what you're working on, anything blocking
• Weekly working session with the CMO
• Weekly working session with the Senior Web Developer to coordinate on schema, internal linking, page builds, and technical issues
• We over-communicate by default. Silence is a flag, not a feature.

Decision authority:

We want you to ship without asking permission for things you should be empowered to ship.

• What you can ship without approval: content briefs, on-page optimization, internal linking decisions, link building outreach, schema strategy recommendations, content calendar decisions, AI-assisted drafts that you've reviewed.
• What needs CMO or founder approval: major topical pivots, link building budget commitments above $250 per item, sponsorships, paid placements, brand voice changes, anything that contradicts existing strategy documents.
• Always loop in the developer on: schema specs before implementation, internal linking changes, page-level technical needs, anything affecting URL structure.

Hours and compensation

• Full-time, 100% remote
• Monday to Friday, 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific Time
• One-hour lunch and two 10-minute breaks
• $2,000 to $3,500 USD per month, depending on experience
• Independent contractor role, paid through our global payroll partner

Reports to: CMO and Founder

Start date: Immediate

How to apply

We're filtering hard on this role. Generic applications will be ignored.

To be considered, you must submit both:

1. Your resume through this BambooHR posting
2. A short video interview through our HireFlix link

The video is short, four questions, about 15 minutes from your phone or laptop. A real person watches every video. No bots, no AI screening.

Start your video application here

Applications without a completed video will not be reviewed. Resume alone is not enough.

If you're a finalist, we'll ask you for a custom screen-share video walking through your actual SEO workflow. That's the deep dive. The HireFlix video is the gate.