Associate Newsroom SEO Editor (Contract)

About Us

Powered by one of the largest global newsrooms in sports media, The Athletic brings sports fans the most comprehensive stories about the teams, sports and athletes they love. The Athletic’s newsroom of 450+ full-time staff delivers in-depth coverage of hundreds of professional and college teams across more than 47 North American markets and all 20 football clubs in the English Premier League, as well as many Championship clubs.

About the Role

The Athletic is looking for an Associate Newsroom SEO Editor to join our audience team. Search is a growing driver of readers to The Athletic. The Associate Newsroom SEO Editor will help grow The Athletic’s audience by optimizing the news of the day, evergreen stories and sections and by guiding on live journalism, and helping to further create a newsroom that is

audience focused.

The ideal candidate will preferably have newsroom experience and understand how to monitor performance and changes in Top Stories and organic rankings. They will be expected to continuously maintain visibility on major storylines and plan in advance for major tentpole events. On a daily basis, the candidate will also need to give clear action-oriented SEO advice to busy journalists and help us to find new growth opportunities. They will be a confident communicator with an interest in sports and believe in the mission of The Athletic as a brand.

This role will be contracted through 2/8/2026.

This role requires working evening and weekend shifts. It also requires schedule shifts during major sporting events.

This role is 100% remote for candidates in the United States and Canada.

• Manage and monitor real-time and long-term audience trends to identify opportunities for news coverage.
• Regularly pitch and communicate strategic recommendations with evening editors to provide them with coverage ideas based on audience insights from Google Trends, social media and other tools we employ for tracking news moments.
• Continuously manage and maintain ranking in Top Stories carousels during the night and in-games and provide recommendations for improved positioning on the most important storylines of the day.
• Work in conjunction with programming and social media teams so that we surface top-performing search content across all channels.
• Provide guidance to editors for live and breaking coverage during live events.
• Optimize a minimum of 20 pieces of content on a daily basis both before publication and after. This includes suggesting headlines, URLs, format, body text, photos and more.
• Optimize editorial output using keyword research and on-page optimization.
• Help journalists plan for major tentpole events by analyzing historical data, editorial coverage plans and related searches.
• Help with daily reporting on our search performance, as well as in-depth reporting on specific breaking news moments and tentpole events.
• Monitor and react to changes to search engine algorithms.

• SEO experience at a major publisher, sports, or news organization.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Understanding of SEO strategy and best practices for live, breaking news and evergreen.
• Familiarity using Google Search Console, SEMRush, SimilarWeb, Chartbeat, Botify, or other similar tools.
• Clear and effective written and verbal communication skills.
• Collaborative and able to work across editorial and analytics teams.
• Passion for the sports journalism world is an asset.

The annual base salary range for this role is $67,000.00 - $73,000.00 USD. The total compensation offered for this position may vary based on factors such as education, experience, skills, and location. It may also include non-cash rewards and benefits. The base salary range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

The Athletic offers unique perks and benefits to all full-time employees based on their country of residence. Our comprehensive US benefits package includes:

- Highly competitive, employer-contributed medical, dental, vision, basic life and disability insurance plans.

- Savings accounts for medical, wellness, and childcare expenses.

- 401k retirement savings plan and employer match.

- Paid time off including paid sick leave, 12 paid holidays, 15 days of accrued vacation to start, and up to 20 weeks of Paid Parental Leave.

For international candidates: Our global benefits packages offer similar benefits and perks, competitive to the local market.

The Athletic Media Company is an equal opportunity employer and enthusiastically encourages people from all backgrounds and experiences to apply. The Athletic will consider all applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.

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