Discoverability SEO Lead - AI

Posted Tuesday 17 February 2026 at 01:00 | Expires Wednesday 18 March 2026 at 00:59

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world.

JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally.

We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Discoverability Lead - AI SEO

Responsible to: Head of SEO

Department: Digital

Location: Hollinsbrook Way, Pilsworth, Bury, BL9 8RR

Role Overview

As a JD Discoverability SEO Lead at JD PLC you will manage the SEO Discoverability team, operating within a wider group SEO team, to maximise the contribution of JD earned content in influencing and/or driving customer engagement to drive clicks and/or positively influence performance of other channels (including paid). Ultimately contributing to an uplift in the sales funnel. This will include traditional off site SEO tasks such as outreach and Digital PR (the creation of high quality back links from content to targeted landing pages), maintaining long form content in our blogs, and helping to optimise other non-transactional earned channels (eg. YouTube, Tik Tok etc). In addition to managing a specialist team writing, curating and editing content to target emerging Large Learning Models and AI technologies.

In conjunction with the JD Operational SEO Lead, your role will be to maximise profitable traffic from the Organic Search channel and various emerging AI channels. Together with the various Multichannel Leads, and wider SEO team, you’ll be responsible for delivering against various traffic & revenue targets, with the aim to improve the efficiency from the channel.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead a team of content specialists and develop the team into a high performing unit
• Identify, develop & implement strategies to grow the search visibility of JD owned and earned long form content in search, via Outreach and Digital PR, as well as optimising visibility of JD content in the various AI tools.
• Develop strong relationships with department & channel Leads to ensure AI and off-site SEO is front of mind
• Liaise with Country level Managers, Execs and Copywriters to implement the AI and off-site SEO strategy on a per country basis
• Contribute to the group SEO leadership meetings & planning sessions
• Manage third party agency relationships and work to maximise efficiency and effectiveness of these
• Become an expert in how AI can influence search and wider performance marketing, and regularly feed this to digital teams
• Work with our Head of SEO, and other Senior SEO Managers, to implement best practice technical changes
• Work with our content marketing , PR and Social Media teams to develop off-page campaigns
• Build strong relationships with third party media publications and journalists
• Create, track and report on campaigns and visibility to senior stakeholders
• Consistently hit campaign KPIs

Ideal Candidate

• Strong knowledge of all aspects of SEO, including on-page, technical & Digital PR
• Strong knowledge of emerging AI technology and its impact on search and potential for growth. (Generative AI, Agentic AI, GEO)
• Highly developed communication skills
• Strong writer
• Data-driven and highly analytical
• Experience using the following tools (or similar): Search Console, Google analytics, Ahrefs & Screaming Frog, SEO Monitor, Lumar/DeepCrawl & location management tools (eg. Yext, RIO etc)
• Experience using AI monitoring tools such as Profound will be a plus
• Passion for SEO, fashion & ecommerce
• Demonstrates an interest and an understanding of others
• Adapts to the team and builds team spirit
• Recognises and rewards the contribution of others
• Listens, consults others and communicates proactively
• Supports and cares for others
• Develops and openly communicates self-insight such as an awareness of own strengths and weaknesses
• Establishes good relationships with suppliers, agencies and staff
• Builds wide and effective networks of contacts inside and outside the organisation
• Relates well to people at all levels
• Manages conflict
• Uses humour appropriately to enhance relationships with others
• Writes clearly, succinctly and correctly
• Writes convincingly in an engaging and expressive manner
• Avoids unnecessary use of jargon or complicated language
• Writes in a well structured and logical way
• Structures information to meet the needs and understanding of the intended audience

Learning and researching

• Rapidly learns new tasks and quickly commits information to memory
• Gathers comprehensive information to support decision making
• Demonstrates a rapid understanding of newly presented information
• Encourages an organisational learning approach (i.e. learns from success and failures and seeks staff and customer feedback)
• Manages knowledge (collects, classifies, and disseminates knowledge of use to the organization)
• Sets clearly defined objectives
• Plans activities and projects well- in advance and takes account of possible changing circumstances
• Identifies and organises resources needed to accomplish tasks
• Monitors performance against deadlines and milestones

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.