Director, SEO & AI Discovery

Overview

This is a hybrid role - 2 days remote and 3 days in the Malvern, PA office.

Cube Smart is hiring a Director of SEO & AI Discovery to own organic visibility and AI-driven discovery across a national, multi-location footprint. This is a build role: search is shifting from ten blue links to AI Overviews, generative answers, and zero-click discovery, and Cube Smart needs a leader who can translate that shift into a concrete operating model.

You will set the enterprise SEO and AI-discovery roadmap, stand up the governance and measurement systems to run it, and be the connective tissue between Marketing, IT/Engineering, Analytics, and our SEO agency partners. You'll report to the Sr. Director, Performance Marketing & Web and work in close, standing partnership with the Director of Content & Social Strategy — the two roles jointly own how Cube Smart shows up in search and AI-generated answers, since content and social are the primary levers for earning the visibility and authority signals SEO depends on.

This role is right for someone who has done enterprise, multi-location SEO before (retail, franchise, real estate, or hospitality), has already had to figure out what generative/AI search means for a brand's visibility, and wants ownership of both the strategy and the day-to-day execution engine behind it.

Cube Smart is a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on the development, acquisition, disposition, and management of self-storage facilities. Cube Smart is headquartered in Malvern, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, and is one of the largest self-storage owners and operators in the United States, with more than 1,500 locations nationwide.

Over the past five years, Cube Smart has grown significantly, acquiring approximately $1.5 billion in assets. Our growth is possible because of our3,000teammates across the country who work together to grow the company, serve our Customers, and deliver results through a culture of open communication and collaboration. We are excited to have you join our team and grow with us!

• Enterprise SEO & Organic Growth Strategy
• Own the enterprise SEO and organic discoverability strategy across all digital properties and local market pages.
• Build the long-term roadmap in partnership with IT— prioritized by visibility growth, customer acquisition impact, and effort — and champion it to leadership.
• Establish governance: intake process, prioritization framework, documentation standards, and a repeatable way to say yes or no to competing requests.
• Develop internal capabilities that enable SEO strategy to live in house, with some supplemental consultation/guidance from agency partner.

• AI Search & Generative Discovery
• Lead Cube Smart's response to AI Overviews, generative search, and semantic/LLM-driven discovery — including how Cube Smart shows up (or doesn't) in AI-generated answers.
• Track how consumer search behavior is shifting toward zero-click and AI-mediated discovery and quantify the impact on traffic and lead volume.
• Define what "AI-ready" content and structured data look like for Cube Smart
• Evaluate and pilot AI/automation tools that improve SEO efficiency — content briefs, structured data generation, monitoring — with a clear view on what's worth adopting versus hype.

• Local SEO & Discovery
• Own local search performance across Google Business Profiles, maps ecosystems, and location pages for Cube Smart's full store footprint.
• Build a scalable approach to location relevance, review/reputation signals, and hyperlocal ranking factors that doesn't require manual, store-by-store effort.
• Adapt the local strategy as AI-driven local discovery (map packs, AI-generated local answers) evolves.

• Technical SEO & Cross-Functional Partnership
• Partner directly with the technical SEO and engineering resources embedded in IT to translate business priorities into a shared implementation roadmap.
• Build the recurring cadence (planning, prioritization, retros) that keeps Marketing and IT aligned

• Partnership with Content & Social Strategy
• Sit alongside the Director, Content & Social Strategy as a standing planning partner, not a downstream reviewer — SEO and…