Associate Director, SEO & AI Visibility

Tombras • Knoxville, TN

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Associate Director, SEO & AI Visibility leads organic discovery strategy for national, enterprise, and multi-location brands across technical SEO, content SEO, local SEO, and answer-engine optimization. The role develops strategies to improve brand visibility across traditional search engines and AI-mediated discovery platforms, including Google Search, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, YouTube, Reddit, maps, and reviews. It translates changes in search behavior into client strategies for zero-click search, cited answers, and AI-driven discovery, and develops GEO/AEO frameworks focused on semantic clarity, entities, structured content, credibility, schema, internal linking, and answer-first content architecture.

The position builds AI-enabled SEO workflows while ensuring that they are grounded in brand truth, first-party inputs, subject-matter expertise, and editorial judgment. It leads enterprise technical SEO and multi-location local SEO and reputation programs; monitors visibility and citations across search and AI experiences; and helps establish measurement frameworks that connect rankings, traffic, citations, mentions, AI visibility, branded demand, local actions, and business outcomes. The role partners with cross-functional teams and clients, leads presentations and testing plans, manages and mentors SEO practitioners, and contributes to innovation, process improvement, thought leadership, and new business opportunities.

This is a hybrid role based in the assigned office in Atlanta, Georgia, or Knoxville, Tennessee. The employee works in the office Tuesday through Thursday and may work remotely on Mondays and Fridays. Relocation assistance may be provided. Overnight travel, long-distance driving, extended sitting, occasional walking and standing, and occasional lifting or carrying items under 10 pounds may be required.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of SEO experience, including meaningful experience leading enterprise SEO initiatives for large or complex brands.
• Strong hands-on expertise in technical SEO, content strategy, local SEO, and organic search performance.
• A clear, practical understanding of how AI Overviews, LLMs, answer engines, and generative discovery are changing search.
• Experience developing or applying GEO/AEO strategies to improve visibility in AI-generated results and answer-first environments.
• Experience using AI tools and workflow design to improve SEO productivity, content development, analysis, or execution.
• Strong understanding of structured data, semantic search, entity optimization, content architecture, and signals influencing search engines and AI retrieval systems.
• Ability to develop measurement approaches beyond traditional SEO KPIs, including citations, mentions, visibility, discoverability, and business outcomes.
• Strong command of enterprise SEO platforms, site-crawling tools, analytics tools, and local/listings platforms.
• Excellent client communication and presentation skills, including explaining complex ideas clearly, concisely, and persuasively.
• Strong organizational and team leadership skills, including the ability to manage multiple workstreams and mentor junior team members.
• A player-coach mindset, with willingness to stay close to the work, solve difficult problems, and advance the discipline.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with BrightEdge, Conductor, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Lumar/Deepcrawl, Google Search Console, GA4, and major local listings or reputation platforms.
• Experience with multi-location brands, enterprise sites, and international or complex website architectures.
• Familiarity with prompt design, retrieval-aware content structuring, entity SEO, schema strategy, and emerging AI visibility tools.
• Experience building scalable SEO or content workflows combining human strategy with AI assistance.
• Experience collaborating with paid media, analytics, PR, creative, and content teams in an integrated agency environment.
• Familiarity with CMS platforms such as AEM, WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, or similar enterprise content systems.
• Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and how modern front-end frameworks affect search accessibility and indexation.

Responsibilities

• Lead SEO and AI visibility strategy for national, enterprise, and multi-location brands across technical SEO, content SEO, local SEO, and answer-engine optimization.
• Architect organic discovery strategies to improve visibility across search engines, AI answer platforms, social and video platforms, maps, reviews, and other consumer discovery channels.
• Develop GEO/AEO frameworks addressing semantic clarity, entity optimization, structured content, source credibility, schema, internal linking, and answer-first content architecture.
• Develop AI-enabled content workflows for briefs, optimization recommendations, page refreshes, FAQs, internal linking recommendations, and other scalable SEO work, grounded in brand truth and sound editorial judgment.
• Partner with Content, Creative, UX, Development, PR, Social, Analytics, and Paid Search teams to improve signals affecting search rankings and AI citations.
• Lead enterprise technical SEO strategy, including crawling, indexation, renderability, schema, canonicals, hreflang, XML sitemaps, redirects, migrations, internal linking, and international architecture.
• Oversee local SEO and reputation programs for multi-location brands, including Google Business Profile optimization, listing consistency, duplicate suppression, reviews, local landing pages, and hyperlocal visibility.
• Monitor brand presence across search and AI-driven experiences, including citations, mentions, answer inclusion, share of voice, and platform-specific visibility signals.
• Define and socialize organic measurement frameworks that incorporate rankings, traffic, citations, mentions, AI visibility share, branded demand, local actions, and business outcomes.
• Partner with Analytics and Data Science teams to improve reporting on AI visibility, answer-engine exposure, and the relationship between visibility and clicks.
• Lead client presentations, strategic recommendations, reporting discussions, and testing plans.
• Manage team workloads and quality, and provide mentorship, training, feedback, and hands-on support to SEO practitioners.
• Contribute to department innovation, process improvement, point-of-view development, and new business opportunities related to SEO, AI visibility, GEO, and AEO.

Benefits

• Flexible PTO.
• Generous parental leave for primary and non-primary caregivers.
• Medical coverage (PPO or High Deductible option) for employees and dependents.
• 401(k) participation.
• Employer-paid dental and vision coverage.
• Dog-friendly offices.
• Culture of promotions from within and opportunities for varied and rapid career development.
• Relocation assistance may be provided.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed