Senior In-House SEO & Discovery Strategist

NOVUS Media LLC•Berwyn, IL

About The Position

We are seeking a senior-level In-House SEO & Discovery Strategist who can operate equally well at the strategic and executional levels. This role is designed for a practitioner with a strong point of view on how modern discovery works across traditional SEO, AI-powered/AEO discovery, and social-led discovery, and who can confidently represent that thinking in new business pitches and senior client meetings. At the same time, this is a hands-on role. The ideal candidate is comfortable writing schema, optimizing metadata, auditing technical foundations, and experimenting with AI-enabled workflows to scale and improve quality. This person will help define our long-term discovery roadmap while staying agile enough to adapt to shifting client needs, platforms, and technologies - without chasing every trend at the expense of traction and results. This role is central to how we help clients win in an increasingly complex discovery landscape. You will shape not only how we execute SEO, but how we think about discovery as a whole - today and in the future.

Requirements

7+ years of hands-on SEO experience, with increasing strategic responsibility.
Demonstrated success leading SEO or discovery strategy for complex brands or organizations.
Deep understanding of:
Technical SEO fundamentals
On-page optimization and schema
Content-driven discovery
The evolving role of AI in search and answers
Experience presenting to senior stakeholders and participating in new business or pitch environments.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate a clear POV.

Nice To Haves

Experience with major ad servers, tag managers, and verification tools.
Familiarity with offline trafficking or cross-channel activation workflows.
Experience documenting and scaling operational processes.
Strategic thinker who is still willing to get hands-on.
Comfortable operating in ambiguity and change, without losing focus or direction.
Curious, pragmatic, and disciplined—excited by new ideas but grounded in results.
Strong communication skills with the ability to explain technical QA or tracking issues to non-technical stakeholders.
Collaborative partner who elevates teams and clients through clarity and confidence.

Responsibilities

Serve as the senior SEO and discovery authority across the agency, shaping POVs for SEO, AEO, and social discovery.
Lead discovery strategy development for key clients, ensuring recommendations are grounded in business objectives and measurable outcomes.
Participate in new business pitches, contributing strategic narratives, audits, and forward-looking discovery frameworks.
Represent the agency confidently in senior client meetings, translating complex discovery concepts into clear, actionable guidance.
Balance innovation with discipline—helping clients invest in durable discovery initiatives rather than reactive trend-chasing.
Own and execute core SEO fundamentals, including:
Writing and optimizing meta titles, meta descriptions, and headers
Developing and implementing schema markup
Conducting technical SEO audits and collaborating on fixes
Supporting content optimization and internal linking strategies
Identify opportunities to leverage AI tools and workflows to support and scale SEO tasks while maintaining quality and governance.
Perform ongoing performance analysis and diagnostics to understand what is driving (or limiting) discovery.
Maintain a well-informed, opinionated view of how discovery is evolving across:
Search engines and AI-driven answers (AEO)
Social platforms as discovery engines
Emerging search experiences and interfaces
Evaluate and recommend emerging technologies, tools, and platforms that improve discovery performance or operational efficiency.
Test and pilot new approaches responsibly, with clear success criteria and learning agendas.
Partner closely with media, content, analytics, and technology teams to integrate discovery into broader marketing strategies.
Adapt strategies to changing client priorities, organizational dynamics, and market conditions while maintaining consistency in execution.
Establish repeatable processes and best practices that enable discovery initiatives to compound over time.

Benefits

NOVUS offers a full array of health care and wellness benefits, which currently includes medical, prescription, dental, vision, life and accidental death & dismemberment insurances, short and long-term disability, pre-tax flexible spending accounts, a health savings account, legal services, identity theft protection and an employee assistance program.
A group retirement savings plan is also available to all salaried employees.

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