About Alpha Key Digital
Alpha Key Digital is a Cleveland-based digital marketing and advisory firm working with a focused roster of high-trust, expertise-driven businesses — primarily in aesthetic medicine. We’re not a volume agency. We take on fewer clients, go deeper, and tie our work to outcomes that actually move the needle: booked consults, recovered revenue, and growth our clients can feel. The bar for the work we put our name on is high, and we keep our team lean on purpose.
The Role
We’re looking for an organic search manager who owns how our clients get found — in Google and in the AI engines that are quietly eating search. This is half classic SEO (technical, on-page, local, content) and half what the industry is starting to call GEO: getting our clients cited and surfaced inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. This is a results-accountable seat, not a checklist seat. We hand you a goal and the keys to the strategy, and we expect you to run with it. You’ll work directly with the founder, and you won’t be managed task-by-task — we’re hiring you precisely so we don’t have to. We care about rankings that convert, qualified organic traffic, and visibility in AI answers — not vanity keyword counts.
What You Actually Do
You’d Be a Great Fit If You Were…
- The kind of person who audits a site and immediately sees what’s holding it back — thin content, a technical issue, a local listing that’s quietly leaking trust — before anyone has to point it out
- Already paying attention to how AI search is changing discovery, and genuinely curious about how to win citations in answer engines, not just blue links
- Someone who takes a goal and just runs, without needing a queue of tasks or a manager checking in
- Energized when a page breaks onto page one, or shows up as a cited source in an AI answer, and a little obsessed with the why behind it
- The type who reads the data first and forms an opinion second — you test and measure, you don’t chase tactics on faith
- Honest when something isn’t working, and quick to flag it with a recommendation attached rather than letting it ride
- Detail-obsessed about the things that quietly make or break rankings — schema, site speed, internal linking, E-E-A-T signals
- Reliable without being reminded — content cadence, audits, and reporting happen because you own them, not because someone follows up
- Current on algorithm and AI-search changes because you actually find this stuff interesting, not because someone told you to
Key Responsibilities
- Own organic search strategy and execution for AKD clients end to end — technical, on-page, local, and content
- Drive visibility in AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) — structure content and signals to earn citations and surfacing
- Run technical SEO audits and fixes: site architecture, crawlability, Core Web Vitals, schema/structured data
- Own local SEO for service-area businesses: Google Business Profile, citations, reviews, location and city pages
- Plan and direct content strategy built to rank and to be quotable by AI engines (clear, authoritative, well-structured)
- Conduct keyword and intent research across both traditional search and AI-driven query patterns
- Monitor rankings, organic traffic, AI-search visibility, and conversions; report on what’s working and what you’re changing next
- Coordinate with the founder and other contractors to keep organic aligned with paid and the broader client strategy
Qualifications
Required
- 3+ years managing SEO at a professional level (agency or in-house) with results you can speak to
- Demonstrated mastery of technical, on-page, and local SEO
- A genuine, hands-on understanding of how AI search / answer engines surface and cite content — and a point of view on how to win there
- Proficiency with the core toolkit: Google Search Console, GA4, and an SEO platform (Ahrefs, Semrush, or similar)
- Strong grasp of structured data/schema, Core Web Vitals, and E-E-A-T
- Proven ability to run organic programs independently with minimal oversight
- Ability to work as an independent contractor (own equipment, own taxes, reliable availability)
Preferred
- xperience with local or service-area businesses, lead generation, or aesthetic medicine / medspa / healthcare verticals
- Hands-on experience optimizing for AI Overviews or generative answer engines
- Content strategy and editing chops
- Familiarity with CMS platforms and basic implementation (WordPress, etc.)
Key Skills & Abilities
- Mastery-level technical, on-page, and local SEO
- Forward-leaning fluency in AI search / GEO — you understand where discovery is going
- Analytical fluency — comfortable living in the data and drawing the right conclusions from it
- Self-direction and ownership — you manage yourself and the strategy
- Strong content judgment — what ranks, what converts, what earns a citation
- Clear, no-fluff communication and reporting
- Strong organizational discipline and reliable cadence
What We Offer
- Contract / freelance engagement with flexible, remote work
- Compensation negotiable based on experience and scope (hourly or per-client retainer)
- A focused client roster and a lean team where your work directly drives outcomes — no agency bureaucracy, no busywork
- Direct working relationship with the founder, real autonomy over how you run organic, and room to grow with the firm as it scales its advisory model
How to Apply
- Send a short note about your SEO experience along with 1–2 examples of sites or campaigns you’ve driven results on. Tell us how you’re thinking about AI search and where you’ve seen it matter.
