Director, SEO

The Opportunity

Pillar4 Media is seeking a Director, SEO to join its fast-growing team.

The Senior Director, SEO is responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive search strategy – spanning traditional organic search and AI-driven discovery (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other answer engines) – to enhance the portfolio's visibility, increase qualified traffic, and grow revenue across its diverse library of content. This role requires a deep understanding of SEO and generative engine optimization (GEO) best practices, the analytical rigor to build and defend new measurement frameworks as the definition of "search success" evolves, and the strategic judgment to size and prioritize new content and category opportunities. The Senior Director will lead a team of SEO professionals, partner closely with Editorial and Revenue Operations on calendar prioritization, and represent search strategy to key partners and executive leadership.

Pillar4's mission is To help people live healthier lives with access to trusted resources, in depth product reviews & supportive communities. Our vision is to build the #1 content and commerce engine connecting consumers directly to the best brands in all four pillars of health and wellness: sleep, fitness, nutrition, and mental health.

What You'll Be Doing

Reporting to the President, Media the Director, SEO will:

Strategy & Leadership

• Develop and implement a comprehensive search strategy that spans traditional SEO, generative engine optimization (GEO), and answer engine optimization (AEO), aligned with overall business objectives.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Editorial, Marketplace, Product, and Revenue Operations, to ensure SEO and AI-visibility best practices are integrated into all digital initiatives.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of SEO specialists, providing guidance and support in day-to-day operations, including upskilling the team on AI search fundamentals and new tooling.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within the SEO team, particularly as search engine and AI platform algorithms evolve.

Search Performance & Reporting

• Conduct regular audits of page and website performance, identifying areas for improvement and implementing data-driven strategies to enhance search visibility.
• Oversee keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, structured data/schema, content architecture, and link-building efforts to drive organic traffic growth and improve machine readability of content for both search engines and large language models.
• Present SEO and AI-visibility performance reports to partners and executive leadership, highlighting successes, challenges, and opportunities for growth across both traditional and generative search.
• Stay updated on industry trends, search and AI algorithm updates, and emerging technologies to ensure the company remains at the forefront of search practices.

AI Visibility & Measurement

• Build and own the portfolio's AI visibility strategy: track and improve how content is surfaced, cited, and summarized within AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other generative/answer engines.
• Define a measurement framework that extends beyond traditional rankings and click-based traffic to include AI-era KPIs such as citation share and share of voice in AI answers, prompt/query coverage across priority topics, brand mention sentiment and accuracy in AI-generated responses, and referral traffic and downstream engagement/conversion from AI platforms.
• Evaluate and deploy AI visibility and brand-tracking tools alongside established analytics platforms (Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs) to build a unified reporting view across traditional and AI search.
• Continuously test how content structure, sourcing, and authority signals affect citation likelihood, and translate findings into editorial and technical guidance.

Opportunity Modeling & Editorial Prioritization

• Develop and maintain an opportunity-sizing model to evaluate potential new content categories and verticals, incorporating traditional search demand, AI/answer-engine query volume and citation potential, competitive density and gaps, monetization/revenue potential, and editorial production cost and feasibility.
• Partner with Editorial leadership to translate opportunity models into a prioritized editorial calendar, ensuring new category investments and ongoing content refreshes are sequenced by expected traffic, AI-visibility, and revenue return.
• Present category entry recommendations and opportunity/risk trade-offs to executive leadership, including go/no-go criteria and phased rollout plans for new verticals.
• Track post-launch performance of new categories against original opportunity models, refining the model's assumptions and scoring methodology over time.

What You Bring

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Marketing, Business, Data Science, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in SEO, with at least 3 years in a leadership role.
• Proven track record of driving organic traffic growth and improving search engine rankings for content-rich websites.
• Demonstrated experience with, or strong working knowledge of, generative/answer engine optimization (GEO/AEO) and AI-visibility measurement, including familiarity with how large language models source, cite, and summarize web content.
• Experience building or applying opportunity-sizing or market-modeling frameworks to prioritize content investment, ideally including new category or vertical expansion.
• Strong analytical skills, with experience using SEO and AI-visibility tools (e.g., Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and AI-tracking platforms such as Profound, Peec.ai or equivalent) and the ability to build or partner on custom measurement dashboards.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to translate complex data – including new, still-evolving AI search metrics – into actionable insights and clear recommendations for stakeholders and executive leadership.
• Experience with content marketing, digital marketing, and user experience principles.

What We Look For

• Openness to feedback and collaboration: You'll be working closely with folks across different teams, so you'll need to be open to the process and accept feedback and critique.
• Strong communication skills: You'll have the ability to build relationships with external stakeholders, report up to internal stakeholders, and foster strong alignment with your team.
• Alignment with Pillar4's culture: We live by our values and expect our team to buy in.

• Act with focus
• Get after it
• Grow without limits
• Build the team
• Obsess Over Customers
• Commit to Service

• Entrepreneurial spirit: Our team members act like entrepreneurs in that we are incredibly driven, agile, goal-oriented, and are always up for a challenge.

Why You Should Join Us

• Results: Pillar4 has built the #1 digital media company in the sleep health and hygiene space and is profitably expanding into fitness, nutrition, and mental health verticals.
• Stability: We are privately owned, have a holding period of 'forever,' and have significant cash to invest.
• Exposure: You will have a front-row seat in growing a business. Your teammates have built and sold companies, managed hundreds of employees, and run campaigns with Fortune 500 brands.
• Market landscape: The $4 trillion health and wellness market is a highly relatable industry that is transforming. There's no better time than now to be building a business in this space.
• Career growth: There is no cap on growth, promotions, or the opportunity to own and put your stamp on important projects. Prove your value and you will be rewarded accordingly.
• Learning: We are a mighty team with subject matter experts in creative, branding, content strategy, SEO, paid media, and more. The opportunity to grow new skills and learn from smart people is endless.
• Impact-focused: Opportunities to take part in our quarterly initiatives with organizations like Beds for Kids and The Green Chair Project and help respond to the critical needs of our local communities.
• Fun: The team has a high bar for excellence but also a real interest in each other and making work fun.

The Package

Base salary and performance-based bonus commensurate with experience. At Pillar4, you'll have access to competitive benefits, including health insurance, 401k, a monthly wellness stipend for house cleaning, gym membership, grocery delivery or massages, and cell phone reimbursement.

Who We Are

Launched in 2017, Pillar4 Media operates a portfolio of market-leading digital brands that help consumers make better purchasing decisions. Our vision is to help people live healthier lives with access to trusted resources, in-depth product reviews, and supportive communities. Our mission is to be the #1 content and commerce engine connecting consumers to the best brands in all four pillars of health and wellness: sleep, fitness, nutrition and mental health.

We also partner with the leading direct-to-consumer brands in our markets to grow their businesses online. Our current portfolio includes the following:

• Mattress Advisor, launched in 2017
• Mattress Nerd, acquired in 2018
• Sleepopolis, acquired in 2020
• Mattress Clarity, acquired in 2020
• The Fit House, launched in 2021
• Garage Gym Reviews, acquired in 2021
• Sleepyti.me, acquired in 2022
• Sleep Advisor, acquired in 2022
• BarBend, acquired in 2023
• Breaking Muscle, acquired in 2023
• Morning Chalk Up, acquired in 2023
• Partnerships with leading direct-to-consumer brands and media companies to grow their businesses.

All applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, gender identity, or any other discriminatory factors.

At this time, Pillar4 will not sponsor a new applicant for employment authorization, or offer any immigration related support for this position (i.e. H1B, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, F-1 CPT, J-1, TN, E-2, E-3, L-1 and O-1, or any EADs or other forms of work authorization that require immigration support from an employer).

All offers are subject to a background check.