SEO & Reputation Manager

Key Responsibilities

1. Generative & Answer Engine Optimization (GEO / AEO)

• Optimize official college content, press releases, and departmental portals to ensure the institution is cited as an authoritative primary source across AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot).
• Structure content to answer high-intent conversational queries (e.g., "Best small liberal arts colleges with undergraduate research in neuroscience" or "Direct-admit nursing programs with high NCLEX pass rates" ).
• Audit and reverse-engineer generative search outputs to identify perception gaps, inaccuracies, or absent citations, systematically refining college knowledge bases to correct hallucinations and omissions.
• Implement entities, relational mappings, and semantic clustering that AI knowledge graphs ingest during training and real-time retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) sweeps.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Technical Architecture

• Drive organic search growth across undergraduate, graduate, certificate, and athletics landing pages to support enrollment goals.
• Perform regular technical audits addressing Core Web Vitals, site architecture, crawl efficiency, mobile performance, and canonicalization across hundreds of subdomains and departmental sites.
• Execute ethical backlink acquisition through academic partnerships, faculty thought leadership, research publications, and press coverage.

3. Brand Positivity & Institutional Reputation Management

• Continuously monitor brand sentiment, sentiment trends, and discussions across higher-education review ecosystems (Niche, U.S. News profiles, College Confidential, Reddit, Glassdoor, Rate My Professors, and Google Business Profiles).
• Partner with Admissions, Student Affairs, Alumni Relations, and Campus Safety to resolve recurring student experience issues highlighted in public sentiment reports.
• Design and execute sentiment-boosting campaigns that encourage current students, proud alumni, and faculty to share verified, genuine experiences on relevant directories and review platforms.
• Act as the digital intelligence lead during campus crises, monitoring sentiment velocity, tracking misinformation spread, and coordinating rapid search mitigation strategies.

Candidate Profile & Qualifications

• Experience: 4–7 years in digital marketing, search optimization, or reputation management, with direct exposure to or focus on higher education, non-profit institutions, or high-volume multi-brand organizations.
• Modern Search Fluency: Demonstrated understanding of AEO, GEO, and Large Language Model (LLM) citation behavior, alongside hands-on mastery of technical SEO.
• Data & Technical Competence: Working proficiency with schema markup, HTML, headless CMS environments (e.g., WordPress VIP, Drupal), Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and sentiment monitoring suites (e.g., Brand watch, Mention, Sprout Social).

Performance Metrics (KPIs)

• Generative Presence: Citation frequency and brand placement rate across Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini for top non-branded academic search clusters.
• Organic Search Growth: High-intent organic traffic to admissions, tuition, and degree pages; rankings for priority academic programs.
• Net Sentiment Score: Positive-to-negative sentiment ratio across external review platforms and social forums.
• Lead Conversion: Year-over-year growth in organic inquiries, campus tour registrations, and completed applications directly attributed to search and AI discovery pathways.