Posted 2 months ago
SEO Manager
RichmondOn-site
AI Summary
The SEO Manager develops and executes SEO strategies for mid-to-enterprise clients, owns client relationships and performance, and uses AI tools for analysis, content, and workflow efficiency.
About this role
Position Summary
The SEO Manager position operates at a high degree of autonomy and regularly pushes the team forward:
- Develop strategies and tactics that support client goals and drive strong organic marketing performance
- Build and maintain strong, deep client relationships with day-to-day contacts and senior stakeholders to ensure high client retention and growth
- Leverage AI-driven tools to accelerate data analysis, content auditing, and strategy development while maintaining high standards for accuracy
- Implement and test new capabilities to enable client growth
In addition, SEO Managers:
- Aid in the training of new hires on basic and standard concepts relating to SEO and GEO
- Identify opportunities to integrate AI into existing SEO workflows to improve team-wide efficiency.
- Provide support for client services deliverables during the sales process for upsells and new business
Responsibilities
All responsibilities are performed with a high degree of autonomy and occasional supervision from SEO management on higher-complexity issues.
Client communication and relationships
- Develop strong relationships with clients and senior stakeholders
- Attend and participate in all meetings/calls with clients
- Communicate effectively with various audiences
- Create and present insightful, meaningful, and accurate reports and analyses on complex issues
Internal communication and relationships
- Proactively seek and gracefully accept feedback
- Tactfully share feedback with colleagues
- Inform SEO management of any updates, concerns, or potential points of interest from within the digital marketing community
Business development
- Identify new opportunities for clients to meet their business goals
- Independently identify opportunities for potential case studies and coordinate with marketing for case study development
- Manage beta tests of new services for client set
- Support the sales team by assisting with RFPs, presentations, audits, and SOWs
Training
- Regularly identify opportunities to update and expand training content
- Develop original technical training content with QA
- Read industry blogs, books, whitepapers, and articles to stay current on relevant tactics, updates, and best practices
Channel management
- Identify, project, and obtain client buy-in and approval, and regularly hit the KPI targets.
- Optimize client websites by managing a holistic search approach by developing and executing local, technical, and content strategies, using AI to scale planning and execution across mid-to-enterprise accounts.
- Use AI and machine learning features within Google Analytics and third-party tools to identify trends and anomalies in organic performance
- Utilize AI tools to brainstorm, outline, and draft content at scale, ensuring all output is manually refined for E-E-A-T
- Conduct comprehensive technical, content, and local SEO audits on complex issues
- Optimize client content for visibility within AI-generated search experiences (e.g., Google Gemini/AIO, ChatGPT, etc.) by focusing on authoritative citations, structured data, and conversational relevance.
- Optimize client websites through conversion rate optimization (CRO)
- Create and prioritize strategies and supporting tactics that embody clients’ business goals
- Take ownership and accountability of client's performance by meeting and exceeding client expectations and set KPIs Setup and review Google Analytics (and any other third-party tracking software)
- Develop and refine prompts to automate repetitive tasks like meta-tag generation, schema markup creation, and initial keyword research & clustering.
Qualifications
- 3+ years of demonstrated agency experience with mid-to-enterprise level clients, with respect to:
- Building strong relationships
- Identifying, projecting, setting, and hitting client KPI goals
- Prioritizing workload with minimal support to meet deadlines
- Creating insightful, actionable, and accurate insights for client strategies and reports with minimal support
- Presenting data and insights in a way that is logical, clear, and actionable with minimal support
- Creating effective meeting agendas and leading client meetings with minimal support
- Delivering core training, as needed
- Proven track record of managing a full client workload consisting of medium-complexity clients and some high-complexity clients. Demonstrated ability to temporarily take on additional work during crunch periods
- Familiarity with AI-native search engines and LLM-based research tools (e.g., Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT).
- Demonstrated ability to evaluate AI output for "hallucinations" or inaccuracies, specifically regarding technical SEO recommendations and data reporting
- Advanced and courteous written, verbal, and visual communication skills
- Advanced-level skills in Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, particularly in Excel and Google Sheets
- Advanced-level skills with SEMrush or Ahrefs
Benefits
- Competitive salaries
- 25 days PTO, 5 days STO, 12 Holidays
- Hybrid workspace for Richmonders (only Mondays are required)
- 3 months fully paid Parental Leave
- 8 hours ofpaid volunteer timeper quarter
- 401k with 3% non-elective contributions
- A comprehensive health benefit package, including 2 medical plans, dental, and vision insurance
- Life insurance, short-term, and long-term disability
- Profit sharing
- 2x a year company-wide meetup in Richmond, VA
- Committee Membership (Community, Culture, Health & Wellness)
List of Awards
- 1x US Search Awards - Best Small PPC Agency
- 8x Outside Best Places to Work
- 8x Virginia Business Best Places to Work
- 3x Search Engi
Skills
AhrefsAI-driven ToolsGEOGoogle AnalyticsGoogle SheetsKeyword ResearchMicrosoft ExcelSchema MarkupSemrushStructured Data
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- Market overviewState of tech hiring, September 2026: up 4.8%Tech hiring rose 4.8% month over month in September 2026, with 411,122 new listings. Customer support and account executive roles led the growth.