Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Research Analytics Associate

About Howcast

From How to Write a Resume to How to Jump-Start Your Car, Howcast provides the answer to any how-to question and engages consumers to watch and share free, useful how-to videos and guides produced in-house at Howcast Studios, as well as by innovative media partners, trusted brands, and individual contributors. This content is distributed across a growing network of web, mobile, and cable partners, including such notable destinations as YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, AOL, Yahoo!, Comcast, Apple, TiVo and Verizon. In just over a year, Howcast been named a top web site of 2008 by both TIME and PC Magazine, nominated for two Webby Awards and has had its iPhone app featured in an Apple iPhone commercial..

The Howcast Team

With offices in New York City and San Francisco, we are building a team of media and technology professionals to maintain and expand our digital presence. We’re proud to offer an environment which prizes creativity and collaboration, recognizes personal achievements, and believes in the potential of our team members.

The Role

This individual will manage all aspects of the company's SEO and Research efforts, including measuring and reporting traffic gains in organic search. This individual will also work closely with members of the senior management team to analyze and exploit site-generated, partner, competitive, and external data. Ideal candidate should have prior experience in these areas, with a demonstrated track record of growing traffic, driving change, setting strategies, and superior execution – all of which have had material impact on the bottom line. Candidates should also have experience in driving organic search traffic from all major search engines. To succeed in this role requires a combination of technical and business savvy, which will enable the ideal candidate to scope the landscape, define a vision and strategy, win acceptance of that strategy, and execute against the approved plan.

Responsibilities

• Full responsibility for white-hat organic (and possibly paid) search, meta-search, search feeds, and a suite of online marketing channel partners.
• Set SEO objectives and strategies.
• Establish and execute centralized SEO strategy across the entire site including:
  • Develop, document, and implement best practices;
  • Set milestones and deliver results for well-defined strategies and projects, including the ability to build and update ROI models and perform ad-hoc data inquiries as needed;
  • Lead development efforts for robust analytics capabilities to closely monitor the effectiveness of all SEO efforts, including site traffic reporting, and work with internal stakeholders to establish a broader vision for web analytics, data sharing, and tools and techniques for driving site performance improvements;
  • Establish and manage senior relationships with internal, cross functional stakeholders, as well as external stakeholders;
  • Play the role of leading internal expert, staying on top of cutting-edge search engine trends and practices, evangelizing same to appropriate members of the internal team;
  • Closely and constantly monitor competitor and related sites to ensure competitive advantages in all of our SEO and SMO initiatives;
  • Work closely with editorial team to help draft relevant metadata for our content.
• Lead Howcast's efforts to be a data-driven company:
  • Track and manage all data related to Howcast performance on howcast.com as well as all other various distribution platforms, combined with any and all relevant information from all other available sources, and extract insights
  • Distill into strategic intelligence/recommendations that are digestible and actionable..
  • Become expert in all internal available research tools (google analytics, proprietary data dashboard, internal tracking)
  • Research and evaluate potential external sources of data and integrate them into a cohesive data analysis and reporting framework
  • Establish internal and competitive benchmarking
  • Provide daily intelligence on what has happened, is happening, what it means, and impact on where the company should go

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree required, preferably in Mathematics, Computer Science, or other appropriate majors
• Prior experience in SEO or related work a plus, but not required
• An understanding of what it means to analyze and optimize web sites, including images and videos for algorithmic search
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills
• Ability to manage large amounts of quantitative data, provide in-depth analysis and translate into clear and actionable insights regarding content and search performance.
• Ability to utilize existing information and/or create cost-effective yet meaningful methodologies in order to understand trends, attitudes and patterns
• Experience working with online media sites, social networking, social media or community websites with knowledge and understanding of top players
• Understanding of SEM campaign optimization, conversion, split testing and ROI
• Understanding and ability to synthesize and effectively communicate SEO standards and best practices and insights based on research effectively and strategically to company at large (including the ability to translate technical details into language that non-technical people can understand)
• Strong project and people management skills
• Proven ability to work across departments to reach company goals; a real team player
• Ability to inform, educate and engage marketing teams in emerging digital marketing methods
• A real team player

To Apply

Send resume (copied into body of email as well as attached) with cover letter to jobs+seo@howcast.com.