Associate Director, SEO

Stella Rising; New York (NY); On-site; USD 110,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision & dental

401(k) with company match

PTO & Summer Fridays

Job summary

Stella Rising is seeking an Associate Director of SEO in the New York metro area to drive organic growth for high-growth consumer brands and enterprise clients. You will own client relationships, guide projects, manage budgets, and generate insights from campaign results.

You will directly lead 3-5 direct reports and oversee up to fifteen team members, ensuring high-quality deliverables, strategic alignment, and strong stakeholder communication.

Qualifications

• Advanced understanding of complex SEO/GEO/AI concepts across technical and content domains.
• Proficient with GA4, GSC, Data Studio, Ahrefs and SEMrush.
• Strong client management and ability to communicate with senior stakeholders.
• Experience leading large multi-client accounts and migrations.
• Excellent project management and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy, deliverables, and communication for 2-4 clients, driving satisfaction, growth, and retention.
• Autonomously steer client conversations, translate objectives into SEO strategies, and align with stakeholder needs.
• Oversee implementation of SEO for GEO, on-page, off-page, and technical work; supervise teammates and create SOPs.
• Provide advanced SEO performance analysis in GA4, GSC, and Looker Studio; craft monthly reports and renewal decks.
• Foster thought leadership and cross-team collaboration; mentor junior members and train on tools.

Skills

SEO strategy

Client management

Team leadership

Analytics & GA4

E-commerce SEO

Tools

Screaming Frog

Google Analytics

Google Data Studio

Google Search Console

Ahrefs

SEMRush

Job description

Stella Rising is the leading marketing and media agency for spirited, high-growth consumer brands and service companies.

As Associate Director of SEO you will play a key role in supporting the retention and organic growth of the SEO division across multiple verticals. This role involves ownership of key client relationships, guiding and overseeing across several client projects, execution of campaign objectives, budget pacing, data analysis, and creating insights based on campaign results.

You will directly manage a team of 3-5 direct reports and oversee up to fifteen team members within your full team, providing effective team support and management to all team members.

Success in this role requires robust client communication and management skills to act as a senior voice for insights, strategies, and complex conversations, including de-escalation and retention as well as strong people management skills. In addition, the ideal candidate will have experience working with enterprise beauty brands, enterprise ecom, D2C, and brand.com (CPG) clients. Prior agency experience is a must and must be located in the New York Metropolitan area.

Regular Responsibilities but not limited to:

• Lead strategy, deliverables, and communication on 2-4 clients (depending on the scope and number of direct reports) resulting in strong client satisfaction, growth, and retention.
• Autonomously spearhead client conversations to discern business objectives and ad hoc requests, translating them into holistic SEO strategies aligned with industry best practices. This includes the ability to quickly adjust to shifting client priorities and gaining stakeholder buy-in.
• Expert-level experience in relevant SEO tool suite (Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, AI visibility tracking, etc.) and ability to leverage the advanced capabilities of each platform, such as MCP connections, API configurations, and custom extractions. Additionally, the ability to train junior members to utilize these tools in more advanced ways and identify and evaluate new tools and platforms; working with the leadership team to integrate them into workflows.
• Manage and execute the implementation of SEO strategy for all department deliverables (GEO, on-page SEO, off-page authority building, and technical SEO). This includes overseeing and providing feedback for the work product for others on your team, ensuring compliance with all processes, assisting with the development of new deliverables, and creating SOP documentation and videos to assist with team training.
• Provide advanced analysis of SEO performance metrics in GA4, GSC, and Google Data Studio, such as organic traffic, rankings, conversions, and user engagement; generate comprehensive and insightful monthly reports and renewal decks for clients.
• Provide thought leadership across (1) the team; creating time and safe space for knowledge sharing, Q&A, brainstorming, discussion of client case studies/issues, and team summits, as well as (2) the agency including blog posts, webinars, whitepapers, etc.
• Collaborate with development teams on SEO initiatives like site migrations, redesigns, and all tasks requiring dev assistance.
• Create strong partnerships with necessary internal and external teams to implement client-approved strategies, provide insights on campaign performance, and resolve client issues for your clients and the clients of direct reports.
• Maintain awareness of new SEO trends and applications for relevant campaigns and train others.
• Hold regular meetings with direct reports addressing client accounts, personal development and growth, strategic support, career advice.
• Manage 3-5 direct reports including managers with their own direct reports. Provide guidance, mentorship, and training to direct reports to enhance their SEO knowledge and skills and develop SEO strategies.
• Participate in team brainstorming meetings to share innovation ideas, including assisting with case studies and award entries, developing and leading learning and development, researching new SEO strategies to support innovation, and contribution to the company blog and other social media communities.
• Lead renewal conversations and presentations ensuring we have a winning deck and pitch. Manage renewal timelines, ensuring the team is prepared and on time with end of year/campaign recaps and follow up with clients on signatures to lock in SOWs.
• Proactively identify organic growth opportunities for incremental budget or servicing.
• Periodically attend direct reports’ client calls to provide support, give feedback, and establish relationship with client, this includes regular pulse checks on each account to ensure strong results and client relationship.
• Support managing direct reports in leadership, conflict resolution, client retention and strategy.
• Meet with managers across divisions to discuss strategy and operations across the team as singular unit vs pods.
• Lead regular team, pod, and/or department meetings.
• Work with clients to understand KPIs, create SEO forecasts, set goals and metrics for each account, track, conduct SEO testing, and report on progress.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• Exceptional skills and understanding of complex SEO/GEO/AI Search principles (including technical SEO and language related to web development) and of new developments in search landscape, such as social SEO, agentic search, etc.
• Mastery of SEO tools such as Screaming Frog, Search Console Indexing reports, GA4, Data Studio, Ahrefs, and SemRush and an understanding of complex ways to leverage these tools.
• Exceptionally strong understanding of how to unpack meaningful insights from data to support SEO recommendations and organic growth opportunities, including cross-channel and single-channel opportunities and problem-solving.
• Exceptional project management skills, attention to detail, and ability to manage multiple tasks and timelines. Must have demonstrated ability to handle large and complex client accounts and experience successfully managing migrations.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, to collaborate effectively with team members and stakeholders, including non-SEO and/or senior leadership client members.
• Exceptional client management skills, including effectively communicating SEO recommendations and their impact and independently managing timelines and projects.
• Mastery level ability to execute deliverable processes and create result-driving custom deliverables that map back to client OKRs and true-north KPIs.
• Advanced experience managing e-commerce and lead-generation clients.
• Advanced experience managing multi-year SEO campaigns and experience with the following client campaign cycle touchpoints: onboarding, retention, QBRs, OKRs, escalations.
• Advanced experience uncovering clients’ strategic goals and using that to inform SEO work.
• Advanced experience with Google Analytics 4 and Looker Studio.
• Advanced ability to develop strategies for clients that are outside the box and go beyond our normal course of deliverables.
• Demonstrated conflict resolution and client retention skills.
• Experience managing team members and providing guidance on SEO deliverables, campaign management, and data analysis. Previous experience in managing direct reports required.

Stella Rising is a women-led company that prizes diversity, creativity, hard work and intelligence, while keeping warmth, balance and human understanding at the core of our values. Named an Ad Age Best Workplace and Inc. Best Workplace for five consecutive years running, the company fosters an energetic and collaborative work environment where employees come first. In addition to surprising and delighting our team, we offer an environment where employee learning and recognition is prioritized. We take care of our team through a highly competitive benefits package that includes health, vision, dental, life insurance, a 401k with company match, wellness and technology reimbursements, home office setup support, over 8 weeks of PTO, plus Summer Fridays.

Due the volume of candidates, we will only contact qualified candidates. THIS COMPANY IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER.

Salary range: $110,000 - $130,000