Job Title: Associate Director, SEO & AI SEO
Location: Remote Canada Only.
Company: Hale Digital Inc.
We are Hale.
We created Hale to be better.
We work with direct to consumer businesses that are ready for change.
We partner with consumer focused businesses poised for transformation, empowering them to experience growth, discover new directions, and reach the next level of their success.
We streamline processes to maximize results. Our efforts drive measurable and significant revenue growth through comprehensive media and digital strategies.
Our teams maintain a limited number of relationships, choosing our partners based on specific criteria. We are selective about who we work with so that we can create change for those who want it most.
The Role.
We’re hiring an Associate Director, SEO & AI SEO to lead organic growth strategy and execution across a portfolio of clients. This is a senior, hands-on role for a marketer who understands how search, content, email, technology, data, and AI work together to create sustainable business growth.
This person goes well beyond traditional SEO. You’ll own strategies that improve how brands are found, understood, recommended, and chosen across traditional search engines, AI-powered discovery platforms, and owned channels.
You’ll combine deep expertise in SEO with strong content instincts, technical capabilities, measurement expertise, and an AI-first approach to marketing. You can build the strategy, identify the opportunity, get into the details to execute it, and clearly demonstrate the business impact of the work.
You thrive in fast-paced environments, are naturally curious about how search and consumer behaviour are evolving, and are constantly looking for better ways to solve problems. You build strong client relationships, confidently lead strategic conversations, and translate complex organic opportunities into clear actions that clients and internal teams can rally around.
The Responsibilities.
The short version: At Hale we aim to be better, and part of how we achieve that is by having senior marketers actively working within our accounts. This role draws equally on your ability to think strategically, execute technically, create meaningful customer experiences, and connect organic marketing activity to measurable business outcomes.
The longer version:
- Big-Picture Thinking, Hands-On Delivery: Operate seamlessly between strategy and execution. Build comprehensive organic growth strategies while remaining close enough to the work to conduct audits, uncover opportunities, troubleshoot issues, implement recommendations, and ensure strategies translate into performance.
- Deep Client Understanding: Know your clients’ businesses so well you could work there. Understand their customers, competitive landscape, business model, growth objectives, challenges, and opportunities so organic strategy is grounded in what will actually move the business forward.
- End-to-End Organic Strategy: Own organic growth strategy across traditional search, AI-powered search and discovery, content, and owned channels. Build prioritized roadmaps that connect SEO, content, lifecycle/email, website experience, and emerging organic opportunities to client business objectives.
- Technical SEO Leadership & Execution: Lead technical SEO audits and implementation across site architecture, crawlability, indexation, internal linking, Core Web Vitals, structured data/schema, redirects, migrations, canonicals, JavaScript SEO, and other technical factors impacting organic visibility. Partner directly with developers where required to ensure recommendations are implemented correctly.
- Search & AI Visibility: Develop strategies for how brands show up across Google and emerging AI-driven discovery environments including AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other answer engines. Lead our approach to SEO, AEO and GEO, continuously testing how content, authority, technical structure, entities, and brand signals influence visibility.
- Content Strategy Leadership: Turn customer needs, search behaviour, competitive insights, keyword opportunities, and business priorities into actionable content strategies. Develop topic architectures, content roadmaps, briefs, optimization strategies, and editorial priorities that build authority and drive qualified traffic and conversion.
- Measurement & Performance: Establish meaningful KPIs and measurement frameworks that connect organic activity to business performance. Use platforms such as GA4, Google Search Console, SEO platforms, CRM/email data, and AI visibility tools to uncover insights, diagnose performance, quantify impact, and identify the next growth opportunity.
- Testing & Optimization: Build structured testing roadmaps across content, metadata, internal linking, schema, site experience, email, AI-search optimization, and other organic growth levers. Turn findings into repeatable strategies that can be scaled across client programs.
- AI-First Marketing: Use AI as a fundamental part of how you work, not an add-on. Identify opportunities to use AI to accelerate research, analysis, content development, technical workflows, reporting, automation, personalization, and optimization while maintaining strong strategic judgment and quality control.
- Performance Accountability: Own organic performance. Prioritize activity based on expected impact, continuously evaluate results, and adjust strategies when the data tells us something isn't working. Go beyond reporting rankings and traffic to demonstrate how organic marketing contributes to leads, customers, revenue, efficiency, and long-term growth.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with paid media, creative, analytics, CRO, development, client strategy, and other channel specialists to create integrated programs. Bring organic insights into broader marketing conversations and identify opportunities where channels can make one another stronger.
- Growth & Innovation Mindset: Stay ahead of how search, AI, technology, platforms, and consumer behaviour are changing. Proactively bring new ideas, tools, methodologies, and opportunities forward that can improve client performance and evolve Hale’s organic offering.
The Qualifications.
- Do you have 7–10 years of experience across SEO, organic growth, digital marketing, or content strategy, including experience owning strategy for sophisticated brands or multiple client accounts?
- Are you equally comfortable setting the strategy and getting into the work, rather than simply handing recommendations to someone else to execute?
- Do you have deep expertise across technical SEO, on-page SEO, site architecture, crawl/indexation, internal linking, structured data/schema, keyword and topic strategy, and content optimization?
- Can you conduct a technical SEO audit, clearly prioritize what matters, and work directly with developers and technical teams to get recommendations implemented?
- Have you built content strategies that connect customer intent, search demand, competitive opportunity, brand authority, and conversion rather than simply producing content for traffic?
- Do you have experience developing and executing email and lifecycle marketing strategies, including campaigns, automated journeys, segmentation, testing, and performance optimization?
- Are you actively thinking about AI search, AEO and GEO, including how brands earn visibility and citations across Google AI experiences, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other emerging discovery platforms?
- Are you an AI-first marketer who actively uses AI tools to improve research, analysis, content workflows, technical execution, reporting, automation, and productivity?
- Are you highly proficient with platforms such as Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs and/or Semrush, and comfortable evaluating and adopting emerging SEO and AI-visibility tools?
- Are you confident building measurement frameworks, analyzing data, uncovering meaningful insights, and connecting organic performance to revenue, leads, customer acquisition, conversion, and other business outcomes?
- Have you worked across DTC, e-commerce, lead generation, retail, or multi-location businesses, and can you adapt your organic strategy to different customer journeys and business models?
- Can you translate complex technical or search concepts into clear, compelling recommendations that senior client stakeholders can understand and act on?
- Are you naturally curious and constantly experimenting with new approaches as search engines, AI platforms, customer behaviour, and marketing technology evolve?
- Are you highly collaborative, comfortable leading when needed and equally comfortable working alongside specialists across paid media, creative, analytics, CRO, development, and client strategy?
The Perks.
- A refreshingly honest and real culture.
- Good people who enjoy what they do and who they do it for.
- A-players that are focused on moving the needle for their clients and themselves.
- A focused, experienced, and innovative team that thrives on collaboration.
- Opportunities to shape the future of a growing agency.
- Competitive total compensation package ranging from $90-120K, including:
- Base salary – Fair pay based on your experience, skills, and value.
- Commission – Earn commission based on your individual contributions and results.
- Profit sharing – When the company succeeds, you benefit.
- Fully funded benefits – Full coverage for health, dental, and vision at no cost to you.
- Flexibility to work in a way that empowers your best performance. We support an adaptive, agile work-life balance.
Ready to help us redefine better?
We’d love to learn more about you! Please fill out the application below.
Hale welcomes applications from all qualified individuals. We’re committed to employment equity and diversity in the workplace, and welcome applications from all individuals, including but not limited to members of visible minorities, persons of any gender identity or expressions, or any sexual orientation, Aboriginal persons, and persons with disabilities.
Hale is an equal opportunity employer and vows to make any necessary disability-related accommodations, upon request, throughout the entirety of the recruitment and selection process. Need support in your application? Just let us know.
