Associate Director, SEO & AI Visibility

Tombras; Knoxville (TN); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Dog-friendly offices

Flexible PTO

Generous parental leave

Medical for employee + dependents

Job summary

Tombras seeks an Associate Director, SEO & AI Visibility to lead enterprise SEO strategy and AI-enabled content workflows for national brands. This role blends technical SEO, local SEO, GEO/AEO programs, and robust measurement across traditional search and AI discovery platforms.

Reporting to senior SEO leadership, you will mentor a team, collaborate across Creative, UX, Analytics, and Paid Search, and shape the future of AI-driven visibility within an integrated agency environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in SEO, with enterprise experience.
• Strong hands-on expertise in technical SEO, content strategy, local SEO, and organic search performance.
• Clear view on how AI Overviews, LLMs, and generative discovery are changing search.
• Experience developing GEO/AEO strategies to improve AI-generated results.
• Experience designing AI-enabled workflows to speed up content development and SEO delivery.
• Knowledge of structured data, semantic search, and entity optimization.
• Ability to measure success with broader visibility metrics beyond rankings and clicks.
• Excellent client communication and leadership skills; able to mentor junior team members.

Responsibilities

• Lead SEO and AI visibility strategy for national, enterprise, and multi-location brands across technical, content, local, and emerging programs.
• Architect modern discovery strategies across Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, YouTube, and other platforms.
• Translate shifting search behavior into actionable client strategies for zero-click and AI-mediated discovery.
• Build GEO/AEO frameworks focusing on semantic clarity, entity optimization, and structured content.
• Develop AI-enabled content workflows to improve speed, quality, and consistency of deliverables.
• Ensure AI workflows are grounded in brand truth and first-party inputs.
• Partner with Content, UX, Development, Analytics, and Paid Search teams to improve signals.
• Lead technical SEO strategy across crawling, indexing, schema, hreflang, sitemaps, redirects, and site architecture.
• Oversee local SEO and reputation programs for multi-location brands with Google Business Profile optimization.
• Monitor brand presence across traditional and AI-driven experiences, including citations and mentions.
• Help define measurement frameworks for organic success including AI visibility and business outcomes.
• Collaborate with Analytics and Data Science to improve reporting tied to AI visibility and discovery.
• Lead client presentations, recommendations, and testing plans with confidence.
• Mentor and manage a team of SEO practitioners, fostering growth and performance.
• Contribute to department innovation and new business opportunities in modern SEO and AI visibility.

Skills

Enterprise SEO

AI visibility

Technical SEO

Content strategy

Local SEO

GEO/AEO

Team leadership

Tools

BrightEdge

Conductor

Ahrefs

SEMrush

Screaming Frog

Lumar/Deepcrawl

Google Search Console

GA4

Job description

Tombras is seeking an Associate Director, SEO & AI Visibility to help lead the next era of search for our clients.

This is not a traditional SEO role. Search has evolved beyond blue links, rankings, and click-through rate alone. Today, brands are increasingly discovered through AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, YouTube, Reddit, reviews, maps, and other answer-first environments that shape consumer decisions before a website visit ever happens.

We are looking for a modern search leader who is equally comfortable driving enterprise SEO strategy, building AI-enabled content workflows, guiding GEO/AEO programs, and helping clients measure visibility across both traditional search engines and LLM-driven discovery platforms.

This role sits within Tombras’ Integrated Search team and reports into senior SEO leadership. You will serve as a senior strategic partner to clients across technical SEO, local SEO, content strategy, AI visibility, and organic performance measurement.

Why Join Tombras’ Integrated Search Team?

Tombras is one of the leading independent agencies in North America, built to connect data, creativity, media, and technology in ways that drive real business results.

Our search team has long been recognized for elite performance in traditional SEO and integrated search. Now, we are building what comes next: modern SEO programs designed for a world where consumers increasingly discover brands through answer engines, AI summaries, cited sources, platform-native search, and conversational interfaces.

This is an opportunity to help define that future inside an agency that values deep expertise, innovation, and practical execution.

Where you'll be working: Atlanta, GA, Portland, OR or Knoxville, TN. Relocation Assistance may be provided.

What you'll be doing:

• Lead SEO and AI visibility strategy for national, enterprise, and multi-location brands across technical SEO, content SEO, local SEO, and emerging answer-engine optimization programs.
• Architect modern organic discovery strategies that improve brand visibility across Google Search, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, YouTube, Reddit, maps, reviews, and other platforms influencing consumer decision-making.
• Translate shifting search behavior into actionable client strategies, helping brands adapt to zero-click search, cited-answer environments, and AI-mediated discovery.
• Build and refine GEO/AEO frameworks focused on semantic clarity, entity optimization, structured content, source credibility, schema, internal linking, and answer-first content architecture.
• Develop AI-enabled content workflows that improve the speed, consistency, and quality of SEO deliverables, including content briefs, optimization recommendations, page refreshes, FAQ generation, internal linking recommendations, and other scalable workstreams.
• Ensure AI-assisted workflows are grounded in brand truth, first-party inputs, subject matter expertise, and sound editorial judgment rather than generic, low-value content generation.
• Partner with Content, Creative, UX, Development, PR, Social, Analytics, and Paid Search teams to improve the broader signals that influence both search rankings and AI citation visibility.
• Lead technical SEO strategy across crawling, indexation, renderability, schema, canonicals, hreflang, XML sitemaps, redirects, site migrations, internal linking, international architecture, and other core areas of enterprise SEO.
• Oversee local SEO and reputation programs for multi-location brands, including Google Business Profile optimization, listings consistency, duplicate suppression, ratings and reviews, local landing pages, and hyperlocal visibility.
• Monitor and analyze brand presence across traditional search and AI-driven experiences, including citations, mentions, answer inclusion, share of voice, and evolving visibility signals by LLM or platform.
• Help define and socialize new measurement frameworks for organic success, incorporating rankings, traffic, citations, mentions, AI visibility share, branded demand, local actions, and business outcomes.
• Partner with Analytics and Data Science teams to improve reporting tied to AI visibility, answer-engine exposure, and the changing relationship between visibility and clicks.
• Lead client presentations, strategic recommendations, reporting discussions, and testing plans with confidence and clarity.
• Manage workloads and quality across a team of SEO practitioners, providing mentorship, training, feedback, and hands-on support where needed.
• Contribute to department innovation, process improvement, POV development, and new business opportunities related to modern SEO, AI visibility, GEO, and AEO.

What you bring:

• 8+ years of experience in SEO, with meaningful experience leading enterprise SEO initiatives for large or complex brands.
• Strong hands-on expertise in technical SEO, content strategy, local SEO, and organic search performance.
• A clear and practical point of view on how AI Overviews, LLMs, answer engines, and generative discovery are changing search.
• Experience developing or applying GEO/AEO strategies designed to improve visibility in AI-generated results and answer-first environments.
• Experience using AI tools and workflow design to improve SEO productivity, content development, analysis, or execution.
• Strong understanding of structured data, semantic search, entity optimization, content architecture, and the signals that influence both search engines and AI retrieval systems.
• Ability to think beyond traditional SEO KPIs and help clients adopt smarter measurement frameworks tied to citations, mentions, visibility, discoverability, and business outcomes.
• Strong command of enterprise SEO platforms, site crawling tools, analytics tools, and local/listings platforms.
• Excellent client communication skills, including the ability to present complex ideas in a clear, concise, and persuasive way.
• Strong organizational and team leadership skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams and mentor junior team members.
• A player-coach mindset with the willingness to stay close to the work, solve hard problems, and push the discipline forward.

Preferred Experience

• Experience with BrightEdge, Conductor, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Lumar/Deepcrawl, Google Search Console, GA4, and major local listings/reputation platforms.
• Experience with multi-location brands, enterprise sites, and international or complex website architectures.
• Familiarity with prompt design, retrieval-aware content structuring, entity SEO, schema strategy, and emerging AI visibility tooling.
• Experience building scalable SEO or content workflows that combine human strategy with AI assistance.
• Experience collaborating closely with paid media, analytics, PR, creative, and content teams in an integrated agency environment.
• Familiarity with CMS platforms such as AEM, WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, or similar enterprise content systems.

What Success Looks Like:

• Clients see Tombras as a credible strategic leader in both traditional SEO and AI-era visibility.
• SEO programs move beyond rankings alone and evolve toward broader visibility, discoverability, and business-impact measurement.
• AI-enabled workflows make the team faster and smarter without sacrificing quality, accuracy, or strategic thinking.
• Brands improve their visibility not only in search engine results pages, but also in AI-generated answers, cited responses, and platform-native discovery environments.
• Junior team members become stronger strategists and operators under your leadership.
• Tombras continues to strengthen its market position in modern search, local SEO, and AI visibility.

Why you'll want to work at Tombras:

• Family - It comes first, on every list. Tombras has been family-run since day 1, we strive to facilitate a family-oriented environment rooted in supporting one another.
• Dog-friendly offices
• Flexible PTO
• Generous parental leave for primary and non-primary caregivers
• Medical (PPO or High Deductible option) for employee + dependents
• A company culture of promotions from within and an atmosphere allowing for varied and rapid career development.

Tombras is proud to be an equal opportunity employer dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

Tombras is an E-Verify employer and participates in the E-Verify program.

This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change or new ones may be assigned at any time with or without notice. Job may require traveling overnight, driving long distances as required and sitting for extended periods of time with occasional walking and standing and occasionally lifting or carrying articles weighing less than 10 pounds.

Remote employees must be based in the United States.