Program Manager, Search Strategy and Digital Conversion

Title: Program Manager, Search Strategy and Digital Conversion

Position Type: Fulltime Staff

Search Type: External - minimum 7 days

Department: 30R003 - Student Success,Outreach&Opportunity

Division: 5R0000 - Student Success, Engage & Oppor

Position Location: Richmond Campus

Driver Classification: Non-Driver

FLSA: Exempt

Schedule Type:Full Time (37.5 hrs per week or more)

Additional Schedule Details: May require occasional evening or weekend work for enrollment events or major digital campaigns.

Posted Salary Grade: Exempt - G26

Retirement: KTRS

Contact Person: Dan Hendrickson

The Program Manager of Search Strategy and Digital Conversion owns the performance of Eastern Kentucky University's digital environment as a conversion system, from the first search result a prospective student sees through the submitted application.
This position owns the full conversion path across both the University website and CRM-hosted student-facing surfaces. Inquiry forms, application portals, status pages, and event registration pages are conversion environments with measurable performance, and they sit on a different domain and templating system than the marketing website. The Program Manager is responsible for ensuring these operate as one continuous experience rather than as a handoff where prospective students and tracking data are lost.
This position serves as the University's internal technical authority on search, web conversion, and digital measurement. The Program Manager briefs and evaluates external agency partners, validates their recommendations against institutional academic portfolio priorities, and ensures that agency campaign strategy and EKU digital strategy operate as one system.
The Program Manager partners closely with Enrollment Operations, Web Content, Information Technology, Admissions, and academic colleges. Success is measured in cost per enrolled student, organic conversion volume, application completion rate, and the reliability of institutional digital reporting.

Education: Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Information Systems, Analytics, or a related field is required. Experience may be substituted for the specific degree but not the educational level.

Experience: Three years of progressive experience in search engine optimization, web analytics, AI search, or conversion optimization, including direct responsibility for organic search performance on a large website and hands‑on configuration of web analytics and conversion tracking.

• 30% - Own EKU's organic search strategy across academic program pages, admissions content, and high-intent conversion paths. Conduct keyword, intent, and competitive research to identify visibility gaps against regional and national competitor institutions, including online-first competitors. Establish and maintain technical search standards covering site architecture, page speed, metadata, structured data, internal linking, and mobile performance. Prioritize optimization work and partner with Web Services and academic content owners to implement it.
  
  Identify academic programs with demonstrated search demand but no adequate destination page, and drive creation of that content. Monitor indexation, ranking movement, and organic conversion, and report on trends and required interventions.
  
  - (Essential)
• 30% - Own the mapping between search intent and destination page across both organic and paid search, and maintain the keyword to landing page assignment used by agency partners. Hold the standard for whether a page is adequate to receive paid traffic, and diagnose and remediate low landing page experience conditions identified in agency reporting, prioritizing high-spend terms where poor page quality is inflating cost per click.
  
  Design, build, and test landing pages, inquiry forms, and student-facing CRM portal pages, including the application portal and status pages. Write and revise search ad copy and ad assets in partnership with agency and internal creative staff where relevance to the destination page is the determining factor in performance. Build and deploy test variants, with test methodology and results evaluation provided by the Marketing and Engagement Analyst.
  
  Reduce friction across the full inquiry to application path through form field reduction, clearer page structure, improved mobile experience, and elimination of steps that move students sideways rather than forward. Ensure portal templates meet brand,…