SEO / GEO Content Strategist

Strategic Content Strategist

Cisco is seeking a strategic Content Strategist to lead our organic growth initiatives in an AI-first search environment. This role is responsible for helping ensure Cisco's technical expertise, product documentation, and thought leadership content are the primary sources of truth for both generative AI answer engines and traditional search engines. You will define what content is created and how it is structured, surfaced, and validated to meet the high standards of B2B decision-makers, establishing Cisco's Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content practice.

Why This Role Matters

As search continues evolving from blue links to conversational answers, our ability to be cited by AI models is critical to our market position. You will own the strategy for creating and optimizing our vast organic content library, ensuring that when customers ask LLMs about networking, security, observability, or collaboration, Cisco is the authoritative answer across the entire buyer journey.

Core Accountabilities

• Content Strategy & Execution: You will design and execute an enterprise-wide GEO/SEO content roadmap. This involves identifying high-impact opportunities for content creation and refreshes that align with Cisco's business objectives. You will write high-quality content and manage a pool of writers, providing training and support to influence stakeholders across the organization. You will leverage keyword research, audience data, and competitor analysis to develop search-first content plans that map to customer buyer journeys.
• AI-Native Content Systems: You will build and manage the pipeline for AI-assisted content optimization in close collaboration with the Operations & Intelligence team. This includes establishing human-in-the-loop workflows to ensure accuracy, tone, and E-E-A-T standards are maintained across all Cisco assets.
• Performance & Insights: You will serve as the primary subject matter expert on organic search performance. Collaborating with the Operations & Intelligence team, you will inform the development of dashboards to track search visibility, including rankings, impressions, AI mentions/citations, traffic, and conversion. You will translate these insights into actionable recommendations for stakeholders and leadership.
• Competitive Intelligence: You will conduct continuous analysis of the competitive landscape to identify gaps in topical authority. You will proactively recommend pivots in content strategy to maintain Cisco's dominance in key technology domains.
• Technical Literacy for Content: You will ensure all content is optimized for discoverability. While not a technical SEO role, you must understand how bots crawl and extract content. You will be responsible for checking page-level elements, including Meta Robots, Canonical tags, and Schema Markup, to ensure content is correctly indexed and understood by search engines and LLMs.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: You will partner with brand, integrated marketing, web marketing, and product marketing to ensure that content quality and technical architecture work in tandem. You will act as the internal expert on how LLMs ingest and prioritize enterprise information.

Required Qualifications

• Candidates must have 2 years of hands-on experience creating GEO/AEO content and 8 years of experience in content strategy, SEO, or organic growth, preferably within a complex B2B or technology environment.
• You must possess a deep understanding of E-E-A-T principles and how they apply to technology content.
• Proficiency in using enterprise SEO platforms such as BrightEdge and Screaming Frog is required, with a focus on using these tools to audit page-level content performance, meta data, and crawlability.
• Experience using emerging GEO/AEO platforms such as Profound, AthenaHQ, or Scrunch AI is required.
• You must demonstrate strong analytical skills and the ability to communicate complex search trends to executive stakeholders.
• A passion for AI and experience with LLM-based workflows for content production is essential.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we're revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era and beyond. We've been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you'll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $120,200.00 to $152,300.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

• U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco's plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
• U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco's policies:
• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
• 1 paid day off for employee's birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
• Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
• Exempt employees participate in Cisco's flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
• For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco's policies.
• Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:
• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;
• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;
• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and
• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.
• For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.
• The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:
• New York City Metro Area: $145,200.00 - $212,100.00
• Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $129,100.00 - $188,300.00