Role Overview:

We're looking for a strong SEO practitioner who also understands how AI-powered search and answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini) surface content. This person will own and grow both our traditional SEO and AI search optimization (AEO) efforts, and work closely with the SEO managers to help scale visibility, traffic, and brand presence across search and AI channels. You don't need to be an engineer — but you should be comfortable using modern AI and SEO tools to get more done, faster.

Roles and Responsibilities:

SEO & AEO Strategy

• Develop and execute redBus's SEO and AI search (AEO) strategy, aligned with AOP, quarterly goals, and monthly objectives, with clear KPIs around rankings, organic traffic, AI answer visibility, and brand mention share.

• Track how redBus is referenced across AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews,

Gemini) alongside traditional search rankings, and benchmark against leading travel, OTA, and bus/train booking players.

• Maintain a simple, clear performance dashboard covering both organic search and AI visibility, so managers can see progress at a glance.

Content Optimization for Search & AI:

• Audit and optimize redBus's existing content (website, blog, learn pages, help/docs) for both traditional SEO and AI retrieval — ensuring strong on-page fundamentals, structured data, and answer-ready formatting.

• Develop content strategies that win both search rankings and AI citations — comparison pages, FAQ content, definitive guides, and well-structured product and route pages.

• Collaborate with the content team to create authoritative, well-organized content that positions redBus as a primary source for travel, bus and train booking, and route-related topics.

• Ensure schema markup, structured data, and clean page structure (clear headings, summaries, direct answers) so both search engines and AI systems can easily understand and surface redBus content.

Technical SEO & Website Readiness:

• Coordinate with engineering to keep redBus's site technically healthy for search and AI crawlers — crawlability, indexing, robots.txt, sitemaps, site speed, mobile experience, and Core Web Vitals.

• Run regular technical audits, flag issues affecting search and AI visibility (indexing gaps, stale content, broken structured data), and drive them to resolution with the right teams.

• Keep key surfaces — website, product pages, help content — well-structured and up to date so they perform in both search results and AI answers.

Tools & Measurement:

• Evaluate and manage the SEO/AEO tool stack (e.g., Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and emerging AI-visibility tools like Otterly.ai or Profound).

• Own GA4 reporting as it relates to organic and AI-referred traffic — tracking how this traffic behaves across product pages and booking flows, and connecting visibility to business outcomes.

• Build clear reporting that links SEO/AEO performance to sessions, booking initiations, and other downstream metrics leadership cares about.

• Design and run simple experiments to test content and structural changes that improve rankings and AI answer outcomes.

• Stay current on search algorithm updates and how AI search is evolving, and translate that into practical playbooks the team can act on.

AI-Assisted Workflows & Efficiency:

• Use AI tools to speed up day-to-day SEO/AEO work — content briefs, first drafts, meta tags, bulk optimizations, and audits — with human review to keep quality high.

• Build lightweight automations and templates (using no-code/low-code tools where helpful) to reduce manual reporting and repetitive tasks, so the team spends more time on strategy.

• Detect content decay and refresh opportunities, and keep high-value pages current as search trends and AI answers shift.

• Continuously look for ways to work smarter and reduce manual effort across the SEO/AEO function.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Partner with the SEO managers, Performance, Brand, and Product Marketing teams to integrate SEO/AEO into broader marketing plans and help scale execution.

• Work with Product and Engineering on website and content improvements that benefit search and AI visibility.

• Manage relationships with external SEO/AEO vendors, agencies, and platform providers.

• Present performance, insights, and recommendations clearly to managers and senior leadership.

Qualifications

Must Have

• 4 to 6 years of hands-on SEO experience, with recent exposure to or genuine curiosity about AI search / AEO and how LLMs surface and cite content.

• Strong grasp of SEO fundamentals — on-page, technical SEO, site architecture, structured data, crawl optimization, and mobile-first indexing.

• Solid working knowledge of GA4 and Google Search Console, and the ability to build clear, useful reporting (Looker Studio, Google Sheets, or similar).

• Hands-on experience with SEO tools (Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Google Search Console) and openness to emerging AI-visibility tools (Otterly.ai, Profound, or similar).

• Comfort using AI tools to improve content and workflow efficiency — for briefs, drafting, optimization, and analysis.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to work with and support managers and cross-functional stakeholders.

• Experience with e-commerce and large-scale websites is strongly preferred.

Good to Have:

• Understanding of how AI search and answer engines work at a practical level — how content gets retrieved, cited, and surfaced.

• Experience building lightweight automations or dashboards to reduce manual work (no-code/low-code tools, Sheets with APIs, etc.).

• Experience managing external agencies or vendors in an SEO/content capacity.

• People management experience — ability to mentor and eventually lead a small team as the function scales.

• A track record of experimentation — running content tests and iterating based on data.

SEO & AI Search (AEO) Assistant Manager