Senior Manager SEO/AEO

Upbound Group•Plano, TX

1d•Onsite

About The Position

We’re looking for a strategic yet hands-on Senior Manager of SEO & Organic Acquisition to lead our organic growth across traditional search and maps platforms, answer engines, and emerging discovery surfaces. This role sits within our Media (Acquisition) & Partnerships team or our Brand team, driving visibility and performance through technical excellence, high-impact storytelling, and advent GEO/AEO strategies. The ideal candidate is equal parts search scientist and brand storyteller—someone who understands how algorithms, LLMs (large language models), and generative search are reshaping discoverability. You’ll partner closely with product, content, merchandising, social and analytics teams to shape how our brand shows up organically everywhere our customers are searching, browsing, or asking questions.

Requirements

6–8+ years of hands-on SEO experience (in-house or agency), with proven results driving measurable organic growth
Deep expertise in technical SEO, including structured data, crawl optimization, and site performance – candidate must be capable of executing here independently (despite possibly having agency support)
Mobile-first mindset with attention to core vitals across all organic and campaign entry pages
Working knowledge of GEO, AEO, and LLM-driven search environments, and experience testing visibility in generative results
A storyteller’s mindset — you know what makes content resonate and how to align it with user and AI intent
Familiarity with tools such as Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Ahrefs, DeepCrawl, schema.org, and AI-enhanced SEO workflows
Strategic thinker who connects organic visibility with larger marketing and brand goals
Ability to pivot across a house of brands – understanding each’s unique brand and acquisition objectives
Keep a pulse on competitors’ SWOTs
A winning together mindset that excels in a collaborative and matrixed environment

Nice To Haves

ASO – App Store Optimization experience in Apple App Store and Google Play is a plus

Responsibilities

Establish, own and enhance our Discovery (DO) strategy as it relates to organic search customer engagement across traditional SEO, Google Maps/Local, and emerging Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) surfaces
Lead technical SEO initiatives—schema markups, structured data, site architecture, crawling, indexation, and page performance optimization – upon an agile release cadence.
Experiment with and optimize for LLM-driven experiences (e.g., ChatGPT, Google SGE (search generative experience)/Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity) to ensure our content is discoverable and trackable, and accurately represented in AI-generated results helping to educate and move from discovery to commerce
Drive a formal testing roadmap in partnership with other members of the Growth team to validate discovery, content and UX hypotheses
Collaborate with content and brand teams to ensure every story we tell aligns with what searchers—and algorithms—are seeking through thorough research and analysis
Maintain a pulse on influence of social platforms in search results (i.e. Reddit, Meta) and how to impact change
Participate in feedback loops with performance media (paid search) and brand (above the line) teams to share in insights
Use enabling tech (e.g., Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Search Console, DeepCrawl, Ahrefs) to monitor, analyze, and enhance performance
Partner with analytics and engineering to measure and evolve organic conversion paths, from awareness to acquisition. Report out on goals weekly to monthly.
Stay ahead of evolving search behaviors, particularly how LLMs are changing query intent and information retrieval. Produce ongoing best practices documents and participate in Beta’s as available.
Lead and mentor a junior team member(s) and educate cross-functional partners on the next generation of organic acquisition powered by AI and automation
Partner with agency, service provider (i.e. local listings and reviews) and platform subject matter experts to form a group of trusted advisors
Share out repeatable quantitative and qualitative progress updates