SEO and AI Search Specialist

A National Marketing team is seeking an SEO and AI Search Specialist to provide hands-on expertise across organic search, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and emerging AI search platforms.

This role combines strategy, research, execution, and content development. The ideal candidate can recommend where the program should go next, stay current on the rapidly evolving AI search landscape, test new approaches, and personally execute SEO/AEO improvements.

You will partner closely with the Senior Manager, Digital Marketing and AI Enablement to develop recommendations and determine priorities for the search roadmap. The strategy is owned internally, so this person should bring a strong point of view while remaining collaborative and open to evidence.

• Initial Term: 4-week project engagement
• Hours:
  
  Approximately 20 hours per week
• Potential Extension:
  Longer-term contract engagement and potential full-time conversion based on the work
• Location:
  
  Fully remote with U.S. Eastern business-hours overlap
• Reports To:
  
  Senior Manager, Digital Marketing and AI Enablement
• Tools:
  Semrush, GA4, Google Search Console, Looker Studio, CMS, and Asana

• SEO & AEO Strategy
  • Recommend priorities and opportunities for the organic search and AI search programs.
  • Present recommendations with clear reasoning, trade-offs, and supporting evidence.
  • Identify areas where the organization may be falling behind industry developments or emerging search practices.
  • Prioritize initiatives based on expected impact and clearly communicate areas of uncertainty.
  • Partner with the Senior Manager to translate recommendations into the search roadmap.
• AI Search & Industry Research
  • Stay current on AI search through industry research, primary documentation, platform updates, release notes, and credible practitioner research.
  • Evaluate emerging AEO practices through hands-on testing and experimentation.
  • Document test results, including inconclusive findings, and translate successful approaches into repeatable processes.
  • Monitor AI visibility across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot.
  • Measure citation presence and AI visibility in addition to traditional organic rankings.
• On-Page SEO & AEO
  • Own optimization of bottom-of-funnel service, industry, and solution pages.
  • Optimize title and heading structures, entities, subtopics, internal linking, schema, and extractable answer content.
  • Write replacement copy when page content needs to be improved rather than simply providing recommendations.
  • Develop a repeatable scoring methodology for evaluating pages based on SEO, AEO, extractability, and conversion.
  • Balance AI/search optimization with the site's sales and conversion objectives.
  • Provide implementation-ready recommendations to the web team.
• SEO & AEO Content Briefs
  • Develop detailed brief for middle-and-top-of-funnel content.
  • Define target queries, search intent, entities, subtopics, heading structure, questions to answer, sources/citations, internal links, and conversion paths.
  • Ensure briefs align with existing editorial standards and writer workflows.
  • Coach writers and subject matter experts on SEO/AEO best practices.
  • Maintain templates and standards to ensure consistency as content volume grows.
• Technical SEO & Measurement
  • Conduct crawl and index analysis, including crawl budget, indexation, duplicate and thin content, orphaned pages, redirect chains, canonicals, and status codes.
  • Monitor AI crawler access and identify rendering or site-structure issues affecting indexing and AI citations.
  • Develop and maintain schema, structured data, entity, and internal-linking standards.
  • Support URL taxonomy migrations, including redirect mapping, equity preservation, and post-launch troubleshooting.
  • Reconcile data across Semrush,…