Associate Director, SEO

Stella Rising is the leading marketing and media agency for spirited, high-growth consumer brands and service companies.

As Associate Director of SEO you will play a key role in supporting the retention and organic growth of the SEO division across multiple verticals. This role involves ownership of key client relationships, guiding and overseeing across several client projects, execution of campaign objectives, budget pacing, data analysis, and creating insights based on campaign results.

You will directly manage a team of 3-5 direct reports and oversee up to fifteen team members within your full team, providing effective team support and management to all team members.

Success in this role requires robust client communication and management skills to act as a senior voice for insights, strategies, and complex conversations, including de-escalation and retention as well as strong people management skills. In addition, the ideal candidate will have experience working with enterprise beauty brands, enterprise ecom, D2C, and  (CPG) clients. Prior agency experience is a must and must be located in the New York Metropolitan area
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Regular Responsibilities but not limited to:

• Lead strategy, deliverables, and communication on 2-4 clients (depending on the scope and number of direct reports) resulting in strong client satisfaction, growth, and retention.
• Autonomously spearhead client conversations to discern business objectives and ad hoc requests, translating them into holistic SEO strategies aligned with industry best practices. This includes the ability to quickly adjust to shifting client priorities and gaining stakeholder buy-in.
• Expert-level experience in relevant SEO tool suite (Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, AI visibility tracking, etc.) and ability to leverage the advanced capabilities of each platform, such as MCP connections, API configurations, and custom extractions. Additionally, the ability to train junior members to utilize these tools in more advanced ways and identify and evaluate new tools and platforms;
  
  working with the leadership team to integrate them into workflows.
• Manage and execute the implementation of SEO strategy for all department deliverables (GEO, on-page SEO, off-page authority building, and technical SEO). This includes overseeing and providing feedback for the work product for others on your team, ensuring compliance with all processes, assisting with the development of new deliverables, and creating SOP documentation and videos to assist with team training.
• Provide advanced analysis of SEO performance metrics in GA4, GSC, and Google Data Studio, such as organic traffic, rankings, conversions, and user engagement; generate comprehensive and insightful monthly reports and renewal decks for clients.
• Provide thought leadership across (1) the team; creating time and safe space for knowledge sharing, Q&A, brainstorming, discussion of client case studies/issues, and team summits, as well as (2) the agency including blog posts, webinars, whitepapers, etc.
• Collaborate with development teams on SEO initiatives like site migrations, redesigns, and all tasks requiring dev assistance.
• Create strong partnerships with necessary internal and external teams to implement client-approved strategies, provide insights on campaign performance, and resolve client issues for your clients and the clients of direct reports.
• Maintain awareness of new SEO trends and applications for relevant campaigns and train others.
• Hold regular meetings with direct reports addressing client accounts, personal development and growth, strategic support, career advice.
• Manage 3-5 direct reports including managers with their own direct reports. Provide guidance,…