Audience Development Strategist (Search & AI Discoverability)

Consumer Reports•Yonkers, NY

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Audience Development Strategist will help grow Consumer Reports' audience and membership base through search engine optimization (SEO) as well as generative engine optimization (GEO), coordinating and aligning those efforts as they develop along the burgeoning AI frontier, with an emphasized and outsized lean into GEO. This role will help CR’s digital presence evolve in parallel with consumer’s changing needs. The Strategist will create a search-first culture, and influence stakeholders with a collaborative spirit to leverage search as a powerful driver of business goals, including membership revenue.

Requirements

7+ years experience in audience development, content strategy, or audience insights roles.
Optimized high-volume, consumer-facing platforms for both traditional search engines and/or AI-driven answer engines.
Developed audience strategies focused on un/structured data, entity authority, semantic and agentic search, and citation visibility—and doing so for paywalled, subscription-based, membership-driven sites and content.
Proficient understanding of zero-click behavior, AI-driven traffic shifts, and answer inclusion metrics.
Deep, demonstrable experience with major SEO platforms (SEMRush, Conductor, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Lumar).
Hands-on experience onboarding and implementing GEO monitoring and AI visibility tools with measurable results.
Ability to lead the development and execution of prompt testing, citation audits, and AI visibility assessments across major platforms.

Nice To Haves

Entrepreneurial, digitally savvy, creative and experimental.
Passion for SEO, GEO, AEO—and the growing list of acronyms across this space.
Ability to guide and influence teams (internal and external) to work on projects from inception to completion while meeting deadlines.
Strong quantitative orientation and ability to mine data to drive strategy and tactics and can translate these into pitch-oriented presentations.

Responsibilities

Lead and drive the day-to-day audience development program, roadmap, and growth.
Keep current on SEO/GEO trends, best practices, and search news.
Lead the procurement and briefing process for external partners; prioritize findings with internal stakeholders.
Evaluate, select, and onboard new technical search tools.
Utilize technical tools to analyze and identify technical SEO/GEO/AI search site issues.
Manage search projects from start to finish.
Work with external partners to establish and maintain a review process for schema and other technical search factors.
Perform periodic analysis of core web content.
Partner with the Acquisition team to ensure aligned search marketing and conversion efforts.
Develop and execute training sessions that promote org-wide implementation.
Facilitate budgeting, forecasting and re-forecasting, and vendor invoicing.