SEO Manager

About Black Snow Agency

Black Snow Agency is an integrated digital agency working with SMEs, mid-market businesses and established brands across South Africa and international markets. Our work spans financial services, technology, telecommunications, e-commerce and other growth-focused sectors. Our integrated team brings together strategy, SEO, paid media, content, creative, web development and analytics. SEO is a core part of our digital offering. We focus on measurable organic growth that contributes to qualified traffic, leads, conversions and revenue - not rankings in isolation.

We are looking for an experienced, hands-on SEO Manager to manage organic search performance across a portfolio of Black Snow Agency clients. You will work closely with our digital lead, client service, content and web development teams to plan and execute SEO strategies across technical SEO, content, on-page optimisation, authority building, local SEO and AI search visibility.

This is a senior hands-on agency role. You will be expected to understand the technical side of websites, identify issues, brief developers clearly and QA implementations once completed.

You will also contribute directly to client strategy, reporting and performance discussions.

You will work directly with senior agency leadership and an integrated team across SEO, performance media, development, content and creative. Our client portfolio ranges from growing South African businesses to established brands and international projects. You will have the opportunity to influence how Black Snow develops its SEO, AEO and GEO capabilities as organic search increasingly moves beyond traditional search engines.

Most importantly, we measure SEO against commercial performance. Rankings matter, but qualified traffic, leads, conversions and revenue matter more.

• SEO strategy and execution
• Manage SEO performance across a portfolio of client accounts.
• Develop and execute SEO strategies aligned with each client's commercial objectives.
• Conduct comprehensive technical and on-page SEO audits.
• Identify and prioritise technical SEO issues and opportunities.
• Produce clear implementation briefs for developers and QA completed work.
• Manage keyword research, search intent mapping and competitor analysis.
• Develop topic and content strategies based on organic search opportunities.
• Create detailed SEO content briefs for writers and content teams.
• Optimise existing website content, metadata, headings, URLs and internal linking.
• Manage local SEO strategies, including location-based optimisation and Google Business Profile opportunities.
• Analyse competitors to identify content, keyword and authority gaps.
• Monitor rankings, organic traffic, engagement, conversions and lead performance.
• Establish account benchmarks, targets and SEO performance forecasts.
• Technical SEO

You should be technically confident and able to understand how websites are built and how development decisions affect organic performance. You do not need to be a developer, but you must be able to communicate effectively with developers and understand the technical implications of their work. This role calls for working knowledge across the following areas:

Website architecture, URL structures, crawling and indexationXML sitemaps, robots.txt, canonicals and redirects

Core Web Vitals and overall website performance

Structured data and schema markup

Mobile SEO, and website migrations and redirectse

Commerce and other CMS platforms

Google Search Console and GA4, including conversion trackingAI search, AEO and GEO

• Apply AEO and GEO principles across client websites.
• Optimise content for Google AI overviews and AI-powered search experiences.
• Improve client visibility across platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
• Understand entity optimisation, structured content and authority signals.
• Monitor how clients and competitors appear within AI-generated results.
• Identify opportunities to improve brand visibility and citations within AI search platforms.

Identify new organic content opportunities.

Work with writers to produce content aligned with search intent and commercial objectives.

Review SEO content before publication.

Analyse content performance and recommend optimisation opportunities.

Develop link acquisition strategies focused on quality and relevance.

Work with PR, publishers, journalists and relevant industry websites to earn authoritative backlinks.

Avoid low-quality or purely volume-driven link-building practices.

Contribute to monthly client SEO reports and internal performance reporting.

Translate SEO data into clear commercial outcomes.

Report on organic traffic, conversions, leads, visibility and growth opportunities.

Participate in client strategy and performance meetings.

Present SEO results and recommendations to clients.

Manage SEO-related client follow-ups and actions.

Identify accounts that are underperforming…