Audience Development Strategist (Search & AI Discoverability)

Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to a fair and just marketplace for all. CR is known for our rigorous testing and trusted ratings on thousands of products and services.  We report extensively on consumer trends and challenges, and survey millions of people in the U.S. each year. We leverage our evidence-based approach to advocate for consumer rights, working with policymakers and companies to find solutions for safer products and fair practices.   

Our mission starts with you. We offer medical benefits that start on your first day as a CR employee that include behavioral health coverage, family planning and a generous 401K match. Learn more about how CR advocates on behalf of our employees.

OVERVIEW

Our Audience Development team operationalizes Consumer Reports’ mission to create a safe, fairer, and more transparent marketplace by ensuring our trusted, independent guidance is visible wherever people make decisions—across search, AI-generated answers, and emerging platforms. In a time of information overload, this is more important than ever.

The Audience Development Strategist will help grow CR’s audience and membership base through search engine optimization as well as generative engine optimization, coordinating and aligning those efforts as they develop along the burgeoning AI frontier, with an emphasized and outsized lean into GEO. 

Reporting to the Associate Director, Audience Development, the Strategist will create a search-first culture, and influence stakeholders with a collaborative spirit to leverage search as a powerful driver of business goals, including membership revenue.

This hybrid position with in-office collaboration (Yonkers and/or Yonkers) just once per month provides excellent flexibility.  This position is not eligible for relocation assistance or sponsorship.

How You'll Make An Impact

Working in tandem with the Associate Director and SEO Specialist, you will help CR’s digital presence evolve in parallel with consumer’s changing needs.  Areas of focus will include:

• Lead and drive the day-to-day audience development program, roadmap, and growth.
• Keep current on  SEO/GEO trends, best practices, and search news.
• Lead the procurement and briefing process for external partners; prioritize findings with internal stakeholders.
• Evaluate, select, and onboard new technical search tools.
• Utilize technical tools to analyze and identify technical SEO/GEO/AI search site issues.
• Manage search projects from start to finish.
• Work with external partners to establish and maintain a review process for schema and other technical search factors.
• Perform periodic analysis of core web content.
• Partner  with the Acquisition team  to ensure aligned search marketing and conversion efforts.
• Develop and execute  training sessions that promote org-wide implementation
• Facilitate  budgeting, forecasting and re-forecasting, and vendor invoicing.

ABOUT YOU

You’ll Be Highly Rated If:

• You have the experience--7+ years experience in audience development, content strategy, or audience insights roles
• You have optimized high-volume, consumer-facing platforms for both traditional search engines and/or AI-driven answer engines.
• You’ve developed audience strategies focused on un/structured data, entity authority, semantic and agentic search, and citation visibility—and doing so for paywalled, subscription-based, membership-driven sites and content.
• You know the tools of the trade, i.e. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and bring a proficient understanding of zero-click behavior, AI-driven traffic shifts, and answer inclusion metrics.
• You have deep, demonstrable experience with major SEO platforms (SEMRush, Conductor, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Lumar).
• You have hands-on experience onboarding and implementing GEO monitoring and AI visibility tools with measurable results.
• You can lead the development and execution of prompt testing, citation audits, and AI visibility assessments across major platforms.

You'll Be One of Our Top Picks If:

• You are entrepreneurial, digitally savvy, creative and experimental. 
• You have the passion for SEO, GEO, AEO—and the growing list of acronyms across this space
• You have the ability to guide and influence teams (internal and external) to work on projects from inception to completion while meeting deadlines
• You have a strong quantitative orientation and ability to mine data to drive strategy and tactics and can translate these into pitch-oriented presentations.

FAIR PAY AND A JUST WORKPLACE

At Consumer Reports, we are committed to fair, transparent pay and we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation informed by location, as well as the candidate’s particular combination of knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience. It is expected that most qualified candidates will fall near the middle of the posted salary range. We have three locations: Yonkers, NY, Washington, DC and Colchester, CT. We are registered to do business in and can only hire from the following states and federal district: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, DC.

Salary ranges

• NY/California: $00K-$000K annually
• DMV/Massachusetts: $$00K-$00KK  annually
• Colchester, CT and additional approved CR locations:  $$00k-$00K

At Consumer Reports, we are committed to fair, transparent pay and we strive to provide competitive, market-informed compensation.The target salary range for this position is $134,457.73 - $134,457.73 . It is anticipated that most qualified candidates will fall near the middle of this range. Compensation for the successful candidate will be informed by the candidate’s particular combination of knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience.  We have three locations: Yonkers, NY, Washington, DC and Colchester, CT. We are registered to do business in and can only hire from the following states and federal district: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, DC.