SEO AIO Specialist FTC Hybrid

SEO & AI Optimisation Specialist – 12 month FTC Stoke – 3 days in office

£35-38k

Forward Role are excited to be partnering with a prestigious higher education institution, as they look to recruit an SEO & AI Optimisation Specialist to join their in-house digital team. This is a genuinely exciting, long term contract at the cutting edge of where search and AI are heading, and a real opportunity to make a visible, measurable impact on how a well-known institution is discovered online.

There is potential for this role to be made permanent.

This is a hands‑on delivery role sitting at the heart of the digital team, acting as the operational bridge between strategy and execution. Working closely with an external agency, you'll take audit findings and strategic recommendations and turn them into real outcomes — spanning technical SEO, content optimisation, and authority development.

Crucially, this role also covers AI optimisation — how the institution appears in AI‑generated responses and summaries. That's still a relatively new space, and this is a brilliant opportunity to get ahead of the curve and own it.

• Implementing SEO and AI optimisation recommendations from agency audits and action plans
• Improving rankings and visibility for priority course, subject, and destination‑related searches
• Optimising technical SEO including site structure, crawlability, performance, and metadata
• Identifying and delivering content improvements aligned to search intent
• Enhancing how the institution is represented in AI‑generated answers and summaries
• Optimising content for clarity, authority, and answerability across the website
• Supporting activity to improve domain authority and strengthen the backlink profile
• Acting as the key link between the agency, web, content, and marketing teams
• Monitoring the impact of changes on search rankings, traffic, and AI platform visibility
• Supporting faster implementation of high‑impact changes during critical recruitment periods such as Clearing

Essential:

• Solid hands‑on SEO experience, covering both technical and content‑led optimisation
• Understanding of how AI platforms surface and cite content, and how to optimise for them
• Experience working within a CMS to deploy website updates
• Ability to translate strategic recommendations into practical, delivered outcomes
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills
• A data‑driven approach to performance monitoring and continuous improvement

Nice to have:

• Experience working in higher education or a similarly complex organisation
• Familiarity with tools such as GA4, Google Search Console, and SEO platforms
• Experience working alongside or managing external agencies
• Knowledge of backlink development and domain authority building