SEO, GEO & AEO Lead

Publicis Groupe · Johannesburg

Overview

This is a senior, enterprise-level role for a practitioner who thinks in ecosystems, not channels. As SEO, GEO & AEO Lead for Africa, you will own and elevate organic search visibility across its three most critical and rapidly evolving dimensions — traditional search engine optimisation (SEO), generative engine optimisation (GEO), and answer engine optimisation (AEO) — delivering superiority across a connected PESO framework for a major global FMCG client.

You are not a channel specialist. You are a strategic architect who understands how owned, earned, paid, and shared media interconnect, and who can engineer search-driven demand at enterprise scale — across diverse African markets, languages, and consumer behaviours.

This role demands a rare combination: the commercial instincts of a senior marketer, the technical depth of a search engineer, and the cultural fluency to navigate the complexity of the African continent.

Responsibilities

What you'll be doing

Strategy & ecosystem leadership

Defining and owning the integrated SEO, GEO, and AEO strategy across African markets, embedded within and connected to the broader PESO ecosystem

Ensuring organic search performance is architected as a system — where paid amplifies earned, owned content feeds generative engines, and shared signals reinforce authority

Leading enterprise-level search thinking for a global FMCG client, translating brand and commercial objectives into search opportunity across the full consumer journey

Acting as the senior search authority in client relationships, contributing to C-suite and regional leadership conversations with data-led recommendations

Generative & answer engine optimisation (GEO / AEO)

Developing and executing strategies to ensure brand content surfaces prominently in AI-generated responses across platforms including Google SGE/AI Overviews, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and voice assistants

Structuring content to be cited, quoted, and surfaced by large language models — through authoritative sourcing, entity optimisation, and semantic clarity

Designing AEO frameworks for FAQ, conversational, and zero-click content across product categories, ensuring brand answers dominate high-intent queries

Monitoring and reporting on AI SERP feature ownership and generative citation rates as emerging KPIs

Technical SEO excellence

Conducting and directing comprehensive technical audits across multi-market, multi-domain environments — including site architecture, crawl efficiency, Core Web Vitals, structured data (schema.org), JavaScript rendering, and international SEO (hreflang, ccTLDs)

Setting and enforcing technical SEO standards across agency and client-side development teams

Leading the adoption and expert-level use of the full search toolstack: Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, Botify or Lumar, Looker Studio, GA4, and AI-native search monitoring tools

Owning the entity and knowledge graph optimisation strategy — ensuring brand, product, and category entities are correctly established across Google's Knowledge Graph and Wikidata

Multi-market Africa execution

Adapting global SEO/GEO/AEO strategies for the nuances of African markets, including language and dialect variation (English, French, Arabic, Swahili, Afrikaans, and others), infrastructure constraints, and mobile-first consumer behaviour

Managing in-market SEO priorities across key African hubs (e.g. South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana) while maintaining strategic coherence at a continental level

Navigating the distinct digital landscape of African markets — including the role of WhatsApp, social search, and platform-specific discovery — in shaping the broader search ecosystem

Content & PESO integration

Partnering with content, PR, social, and paid media teams to ensure organic search is embedded at the planning stage — not bolted on after the fact

Championing content that earns links, generates citations, and feeds generative AI engines: authoritative, structured, and locally resonant

Leading the development of pillar content, topic cluster architectures, and content calendars that serve SEO, GEO, and AEO objectives simultaneously

Measurement & reporting

Building and owning multi-market SEO performance dashboards that report on traditional, generative, and answer engine visibility in one connected view

Presenting performance, strategic direction, and recommendations to senior client stakeholders with clarity and commercial context

Establishing baselines, setting measurable targets, and holding the broader team accountable to them

Qualifications

Minimum 5 years in a senior SEO role, with a clear track record of delivery on global, multi-market accounts at enterprise scale — agency or client-side
Demonstrable expertise across all three disciplines: SEO, GEO, and AEO — including hands-on experience with AI-driven SERP features and answer engine strategy
Marketing-qualified with a strong commercial foundation — you understand brand building, consumer behaviour, and FMCG category dynamics, not just rankings and traffic
Expert-level proficiency across the full SEO toolstack (GSC, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, Botify/Lumar, GA4, Looker Studio) — you don't just use these tools, you extract strategic advantage from them
Deep technical SEO capability: JavaScript SEO, schema markup, log file analysis, international SEO architecture, Core Web Vitals
Experience working within or across a PESO framework, with a clear understanding of how organic search connects to paid, earned, and shared media
Knowledge of African markets and the associated digital complexity — mobile-first behaviour, multilingual environments, infrastructure variation, and platform differences
An enterprise mindset: able to navigate complex organisational structures, manage senior stakeholder relationships, and drive alignment across global and local teams
Exceptional communicator — equally at home presenting to a CMO or working through a technical brief with a developer

Nice to have

Experience with retailer and e-commerce search in African markets (Jumia, Takealot, etc.)
Familiarity with Arabic, French, Swahili, or other African language SEO
Knowledge of entity SEO, knowledge graph management, and Wikidata optimisation
Experience with headless/composable CMS architectures and their SEO implications
Exposure to programmatic SEO at scale

Additional information

What success looks like

At 90 days: a full baseline audit is complete across priority markets, a clear SEO/GEO/AEO roadmap is in place and signed off, and you've established yourself as the senior organic search voice in the client relationship.

At 12 months: measurable improvements in traditional search visibility, growing brand presence in AI-generated responses, and a fully connected search strategy embedded within the PESO ecosystem — with the data to prove it.