Lead, Organic Search & AI Content Strategy

Gildan•Winston-Salem, NC

About The Position

The Manager, Organic Search & AI Content Strategy leads how the brand is discovered, understood, and recommended across search engines, answer engines, and AI-powered discovery platforms. This role sets organic visibility strategy across SEO, AEO, and GEO, then executes it through AI-assisted content production: designing prompts, directing AI agents, and building the workflows that turn strategy into scaled, on-brand copy. This is a strategist-first role. The Manager owns the discovery playbook, decides what content to create and why, and uses AI tooling to produce it faster and at higher quality than traditional manual workflows allow. Hands-on copywriting experience is essential, precisely because directing and quality-controlling an AI writer requires having done the writing well yourself. The Manager applies the brand voice set by the Brand team, maintains copy quality and retailer content standards, and tweaks copy where necessary, but the day-to-day output is increasingly generated and refined through prompt engineering and agent direction rather than written by hand. Working with E-Commerce, Brand Marketing, Creative, UX, Analytics, and Product Management, the Manager ensures digital content is optimized for how customers actually search today: keywords, conversational questions, and AI-generated recommendations.

Requirements

5+ years in organic search, SEO/content strategy, or e-commerce content, with demonstrated ownership of discovery strategy.
Strong command of SEO and organic search performance measurement, plus working knowledge of AEO and GEO.
Hands-on prompt engineering experience: building prompts, directing AI tools and agents, and producing quality content through AI workflows.
Hands-on copywriting and editorial experience. You need to have written and edited strong copy yourself to effectively direct and quality-control AI-generated content.
Sound editorial judgment and the ability to apply brand voice and enforce copy quality and retailer standards.
Ability to translate complex product features into clear customer benefits.
Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Journalism, English, or related field, or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Apparel, consumer goods, retail, or e-commerce experience.
Experience building or scaling an AI-assisted content workflow.
Experience maintaining retailer content guidelines across major accounts.
Familiarity with customer journey mapping, UX writing, and conversion rate optimization.
Experience with PIM/syndication platforms or PDP content operations.

Responsibilities

Own the organic discovery strategy across search engines, answer engines, and AI-driven platforms, targeting visibility, traffic, and share of recommendation.
Drive on-page strategy: keyword architecture, content structure, internal linking, metadata, and content refresh programs.
Build content structured for answer visibility inside AI assistants and answer engines.
Lead AEO strategy that aligns content with customer questions, conversational search behavior, and intent-based journeys.
Implement GEO practices that improve brand presence in generative AI platforms, LLM search experiences, and AI-generated recommendations.
Track emerging shifts in search and AI discovery and adapt strategy proactively.
Design, test, and maintain the prompt libraries and templates that generate PDP, landing page, and campaign copy at scale.
Direct and quality-control AI agents and tools across the content workflow, from drafting through optimization.
Build and own the AI-assisted copy workflow: intake, generation, human review, and publishing.
Establish guardrails, evaluation criteria, and QA processes so AI output meets brand, accuracy, and compliance standards.
Continuously evaluate new AI tools and models and integrate the ones that improve speed or quality.
Apply the brand voice and messaging standards owned by the Brand team, adapting copy for digital and retailer contexts only where necessary.
Maintain content guidelines continuously across key retail accounts (Amazon, Walmart, Target, and others), DTC sites, and TikTok Shop, and keep a current library of gold-star examples.
Refresh SEO, AEO, and GEO best practices at least quarterly and fold them into standards, guidelines, and prompts.
Encode brand and retailer standards into prompts, guidelines, and review criteria so AI output holds to spec.
Set the copy quality bar and serve as final review on AI-drafted content.
Ensure consistency across websites, product pages, landing pages, emails, and campaigns.
Translate business objectives and customer insight into messaging that converts.
Partner with the digital shelf lead to evaluate measurement partners and tools, and set the measurement and report-out strategy across organic, AI-search, and content performance.
Set KPIs and measurement frameworks for organic visibility, AI-search visibility, and content performance.
Apply customer insight, behavioral data, and test results to improve content effectiveness, including A/B testing across copy and content structures.
Analyze traffic, rankings, engagement, conversion, and revenue to guide content investment.
Deliver regular reporting and clear, actionable recommendations to leadership.