Who You'll Work With
You are someone who thrives in a high-performance environment, bringing a growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit to tackle meaningful challenges that have a real impact.
In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we’ll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities to help you quickly broaden your expertise, grow into a well-rounded professional, and contribute to work that truly makes a difference.
When you join us, you will have:
- Continuous learning: Our learning and apprenticeship culture, backed by structured programs, is all about helping you grow while creating an environment where feedback is clear, actionable, and focused on your development. The real magic happens when you take the input from others to heart and embrace the fast-paced learning experience, owning your journey.
- A voice that matters: From day one, we value your ideas and contributions. You’ll make a tangible impact by offering innovative ideas and practical solutions, all while upholding our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity. We not only encourage diverse perspectives, but they are critical in driving us toward the best possible outcomes.
- Global community: With colleagues across 65+ countries and over 100 different nationalities, our firm’s diversity fuels creativity and helps us come up with the best solutions. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from exceptional colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
- Exceptional benefits: On top of a competitive salary (based on your location, experience, and skills), we provide a comprehensive benefits package to enable holistic well-being for you and your family.
Your Impact
You will help establish and elevate our thought leadership to connect readers and clients with McKinsey insights through both traditional and AI-powered search channels.
You will join our Audience Development team, working directly alongside the Head of Search & Discovery, the core Publishing team, Technology & Development, Brand, Paid Media, and other communications colleagues.
You will be based in one of our North American offices as an integral part of McKinsey Publishing & Marketing. You will collaborate within a global team of more than 100 editors, producers, and digital media experts who partner with McKinsey authors to develop and distribute distinctive thought leadership across a growing spectrum of digital, print, audio, and video platforms.
As an SEO & Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Specialist, you will play a pivotal role in supporting and executing McKinsey's global search and discovery strategy. You will enhance content visibility, expand our readership, and ensure our publishing program continuously adapts to the evolving landscape of organic search and GEO.
In the area of content optimization, you will execute priority article optimizations by performing targeted keyword research, formulating title and meta description recommendations, optimizing images and video, and structuring strategic internal linking. You will also deliver pre-article SEO and GEO guidance to editors and content creators during early ideation and drafting to directly address target audience search intent and establish topical authority.
For technical SEO and site auditing, you will perform quarterly technical SEO audits to monitor overall site health, diagnose crawlability and indexation issues, and implement performance improvements such as optimizing Core Web Vitals. Furthermore, you will lead technical troubleshooting and partner closely with engineering teams to embed and enforce technical SEO and GEO best practices across our digital architecture.
In advancing GEO, you will design and implement optimization strategies tailored for Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative search experiences, ensuring McKinsey's editorial insights are cited, surfaced, and synthesized effectively. You will actively monitor and evaluate the impact of generative AI on search behaviors, identifying emerging trends and establishing best-in-class GEO standards for the publishing organization.
Within analytics and reporting, you will track, analyze, and report on organic search and discovery metrics using enterprise platforms including Google Search Console, Adobe Analytics, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and Profound. You will build and maintain comprehensive performance dashboards to deliver actionable insights and communicate organic search milestones to key stakeholders and publishing leadership. In addition, you will conduct ongoing competitive intelligence and trend analyses to pinpoint high-impact content gaps, market opportunities, and evolving search patterns.
Through strategy and collaboration, you will actively participate in weekly SEO and GEO planning sessions to assess performance metrics, refine priorities, and advance broader discovery initiatives. You will drive high-impact strategic projects, including cross-site internal linking programs, testing novel AI search workflows, building purpose-driven optimization agents, and piloting innovative discovery technologies. Throughout your work, you will champion organic discovery firmwide, educating and empowering editors and content creators by designing practical training, guidelines, and streamlined editorial workflows.
This job posting is for an existing vacancy.
Artificial intelligence systems (AI) may be used to assist recruiters in the screening and/or assessment of candidates for this role. AI is neither the sole determinative factor at any stage of the application process nor the decision-maker. All AI-generated assessments are reviewed by a McKinsey recruiter before any decision is made regarding a candidate’s candidacy.
Your Qualifications and Skills
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience required
- 7+ years of professional experience in search engine optimization (SEO), gained in-house at a large publication or in an agency setting
- Knowledge of search engine algorithms, ranking factors, and technical SEO practices
- Proficiency using analytics and SEO platforms, including Google Search Console, Adobe Analytics, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and Profound
- Ability to analyze and synthesize data and communicate clear, actionable insights to editors, content creators, and senior leaders
- Ability to organize and prioritize multiple projects and meet deadlines
- Understanding of emerging search trends, including generative engine optimization (GEO) and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on search
- Experience building and using AI agents and working with platforms such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini to streamline SEO and GEO workflows
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively with colleagues across teams and engage effectively with a range of stakeholders
- Ability to engage with senior leaders and subject-matter experts and build consensus across stakeholders
- Ability to solve problems and apply industry knowledge to critically review and constructively challenge client service content
- Fluent level language skills in written and spoken English are required; proficiency in additional languages are an advantage
