Manager, SEO AEO

The Impact You Will Make

In this role, you will directly influence organic growth by improving how prospective students discover, engage with, and convert on Risepoint’s university partner websites. Through rigorous content auditing, on-page optimization, and technical SEO execution, you will strengthen topical authority across priority subject areas and ensure our content ecosystem is aligned to real search demand. Your work will drive measurable gains in organic visibility, traffic, and qualified leads across a complex, multi-site portfolio of 70+ university partners.

You will also play a critical role in preparing Risepoint’s digital properties for the future of search. By optimizing content and site experiences for AI-driven and generative search environments, and by enabling high-quality execution from the specialists you lead, you will help build scalable, repeatable SEO and AEO practices that deliver sustained performance.

What You Will Do

• Project Management & Leadership – Oversee planning and day-to-day execution of SEO and AEO initiatives across assigned university partner websites, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy and priorities.
• On-Page Optimization – Audit and evaluate existing content to identify optimization opportunities, refresh or pruning needs, and content gaps. Partner with Content teams to inform creation of new content that builds authoritative topic clusters and improves organic visibility and performance.
• AI Visibility Improvements – Implement optimization tactics for AI overviews, generative engines, and answer-focused search experiences, including structured data, entity optimization, and content enhancements.
• Technical SEO & Site Health – Lead technical SEO analysis and implementation including site architecture, crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals, schema markup, and CMS/DXP best practices in partnership with MarTech and UX teams.
• Performance Analysis & Reporting – Analyze organic performance trends, diagnose issues and opportunities, and communicate insights to internal stakeholders.
• People Management & Enablement – Manage, coach, and develop SEO Specialists. Set clear priorities, review work quality, and support skill development aligned to team standards.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Partner with Content, UX, CRO, Paid Media, and Analytics teams to ensure integrated optimization strategies that drive discoverability, engagement, and conversion.

What Success Looks Like

Assigned partner websites show sustained improvement in organic visibility, engagement, leads, applications, and enrollments that consistently meet or exceed forecasted annual goals. Content ecosystems built for discoverability, where innovative strategies and tactics you’ve helped define, result in pages that perform across traditional search results, rich features, and AI-generated answers. A culture of continuous learning and adaptability, where everyone is prepared to evolve their skills as search platforms, AI-driven discovery, and optimization techniques change.

How Impact Will Be Measured In The First Year

• Measurable improvements in organic visibility, engagement, leads, applications, and enrollments that meet or exceed 2026’s forecasted goals for your assigned university partners.
• Contributions to improvements of SEO processes, templates, and reporting, the establishment of foundational AEO workflows and measurement, and the adoption of AI-enabled workflows that improve efficiency, consistency, and execution speed.
• On-time delivery of high-quality work and growing demand for SEO and AEO support from cross-functional partners.

Experience That Matters Most

• 5-7 years organic performance optimization for enterprise, agency, or multi-site ecosystems that demonstrates experience driving measurable gains in organic traffic, conversion, and visibility.
• 2+ years of management or team lead experience, including coaching, prioritization, and quality assurance of organic projects.
• Strong analytical capability, with experience translating performance data into prioritized, actionable SEO recommendations.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively and present insights to cross-functional and senior stakeholders.

Experience That's Great To Have

• Demonstrated experience using AI to improve SEO operations, including automating research, analysis, and reporting workflows.
• Experience supporting Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) initiatives in evolving search environments.
• Experience working in higher education, or similarly complex, multi-brand ecosystems.

Key skills/competency

• SEO Strategy
• AEO Implementation
• Content Auditing
• Technical SEO
• Performance Analytics
• Project Management
• People Leadership
• Structured Data
• Core Web Vitals
• Cross-functional Collaboration