SEO Specialist (SEO and AI Search)
The Role
Search has changed more in the past two years than in the ten before it, and our clients feel it every week. They still want to rank in Google, but they are also asking why a competitor gets named in ChatGPT when they don’t, why the traffic arriving from AI Overviews behaves nothing like the traffic from blue links, and what they should actually do about either. We’re looking for a SEO specialist who can answer both sets of questions and own the client relationships where those answers matter.
You’ll run your own portfolio of accounts across higher education, financial services, insurance, legal, nonprofit, edtech, and ecommerce, from strategy through implementation and reporting. That means leading recurring client calls, setting the roadmap, doing the technical work yourself, and standing behind the recommendations you make. You’ll also work on SEO for sites our development team is building, where redirect logic, structured data, and a pre-launch audit are the difference between a smooth launch and six months of recovery.
The right person blends real technical depth with content judgment. You should be comfortable in Screaming Frog, Search Console, and GA4, equally comfortable explaining what you found to a marketing director who does not know what a canonical tag is, and interested in how AI search systems decide what to cite. We also work with AI tooling heavily (we build our own automations and reporting workflows with Claude), so curiosity about that is a real advantage rather than a footnote.
What You’ll Own
- Client accounts. Day-to-day ownership of several SEO and AEO retainers, including monthly reporting, recurring calls, roadmap planning, and the honest conversations when performance moves the wrong way.
- Technical SEO and diagnostics. Crawl analysis in Screaming Frog, indexation investigations in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, canonical and redirect logic, JavaScript rendering, log file review, site architecture, URL structure, and Core Web Vitals.
- Launch and migration SEO. URL mapping, redirect specifications, structured data requirements, pre-launch technical audits, and post-launch validation alongside our development and design teams on new builds and replatforms.
- AEO and GEO programs. Entity and schema strategy, content structured so that models can extract and cite it, prompt-set benchmarking against competitors, llms.txt and AI crawler access, and visibility tracking across Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Claude.
- Measurement and reporting. Search Console generative AI performance data, GA4 analysis, AI visibility platforms (we use Peec AI and BrightEdge today), and the work of turning all of it into a recommendation a client can act on rather than a dashboard they ignore.
- Keyword and content strategy. Keyword and topic research built from analytics and paid search data, content briefs and outlines, on-page and metadata recommendations, and editing client-drafted copy so it holds up in both traditional and AI search.
- Local and multi-location search. Google Business Profile and Apple Business Connect management, listing escalations, and location page templates for clients with many locations or franchisees.
- Cross-team collaboration. Regular coordination with our paid media, analytics, design, and development teams, with client-side developers, and with senior leadership, so that clients get one coherent answer instead of four.
- New business support. Prospect audits, technical findings for pitches, and input on scoping and hour estimates for SEO and AEO engagements.
- Practice development. Staying current on how AI search is changing, testing new tools, and bringing what works back to the team. We treat this as part of the job, not something you squeeze in after hours.
What We’re Looking For
- 4 to 6 years of hands-on SEO experience, ideally at an agency running several clients at once.
- Practical AEO and GEO experience, or clear evidence you have been testing and learning in it. Nobody has a decade of this, and we are not pretending to look for it. What we do want is someone who has run prompt benchmarks, argued about entity strategy, and formed opinions from their own data rather than from conference slides.
- Technical fluency. Enough HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to diagnose a problem and write a specification a developer can implement, plus real command of canonicals, redirects, robots.txt, XML sitemaps, hreflang, and JSON-LD.
- Structured data beyond FAQPage. Organization, Article, Product, and LocalBusiness markup, and a working understanding of how entity relationships (sameAs, knowledge panels, consistent NAP data) shape what search and AI systems believe about a brand.
- CMS range. WordPress, Craft CMS, and Shopify experience, and the confidence to find your way around one you have never seen before.
- Tool fluency. Screaming Frog, Semrush or Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, GA4, and at least one AI visibility platform.
- Client-facing skill. You can run a call, deliver bad news with a plan attached, and write a recap that a client forwards to their boss without editing it first.
- Comfort working with AI tools. Using Claude or similar to move faster on audits, research, and reporting, with the judgment to know when the output is wrong.
- A track record in competitive markets. Organic and AI visibility outcomes you can walk us through, including what you tried that didn’t work.
- Judgment and organization. A crawl will hand you fifty findings. We need someone who can tell which three matter this quarter and sequence the rest.
The salary range for this position is $75,000 - $90,000 per year, depending on experience
Nice to Have
- Experience in regulated or review-heavy industries (higher education, financial services, healthcare, or legal), where content approval is slow and accuracy is not negotiable.
- Site migration or replatform experience, especially the redirect and indexation side.
- Server log file analysis.
- Spanish-language SEO, or experience with bilingual content programs.
- Digital PR, link acquisition, or brand mention work aimed at AI citation rather than domain authority alone.
- Experience mentoring a junior specialist or reviewing someone else’s work.
What we offer
- Healthy work/life balance.
- A creative environment to do the best work of your career.
- An amazing team of developers, designers, marketers, and project managers. Flexible hours.
- Flexible paid vacation policy.
- Health, Dental, and Vision insurance.
- Retirement plan with company matching.
About Happy Cog
Happy Cog is a growing interactive agency of 80+ people, all working 100% remotely.
We design, develop, and market websites and mobile apps for a wide variety of clients -- everyone from small startups, to Fortune 100s. Projects we've recently worked on have included online ordering platforms for restaurants, custom content management systems for law firms, an economic mobility research platform, and many more.
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