Sr. Spclst , GEO Content

Job Description

Job Summary

The Senior Specialist, GEO Content supports our Company's GEO & AI Discoverability program within the Web Experience & Discovery Product Team by advising global brand and marketing teams on how to structure, optimize, and govern approved content so that it is more findable, understandable, and citable by generative AI and answer engine platforms.

This role connects content decisions to AI visibility and citation outcomes. The successful candidate will partner closely with analysts within the broader Digital Channels & Orchestration team to review AI discoverability performance across global HCP and consumer websites, conduct GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) content audits, identify content gaps and citation opportunities, and translate findings into actionable recommendations for brand and marketing teams.

Key stakeholders are global brand and marketing teams. This role operates at the intersection of content strategy, AI discoverability, performance analysis, and compliance-aware content governance across markets.

Key Responsibilities

AI Content Advisory

• Advise brand and marketing teams on structuring content for AI citability, including answer-first content flow, clear claims, evidence-based structure, fact density, source clarity, and easy-to-parse formats such as FAQs, summaries, bullets, and tables.
• Review content briefs, page drafts, FAQs, and priority content assets against GEO content standards before MLR submission, identifying content structure, clarity, or evidence gaps that may limit AI discoverability or citation potential.
• Guide teams in shifting content style from broad marketing prose to clearer, evidence-based, question-led formats that AI platforms are more likely to understand and reference, without altering approved messaging.
• Partner with medical affairs and regulatory teams to distinguish content restructuring from net-new content creation, ensuring GEO recommendations remain aligned with approved claims, fair balance, and compliance expectations.
• Advise on content consistency across brand, disease, mechanism, and audience-facing materials to support clearer entity recognition and more consistent representation across AI-generated answers.
• Provide recommendations on how content can better address the questions HCPs, patients, and healthcare consumers are likely to ask through AI search and answer engines.

GEO Content Audit and Measurement

• Conduct GEO content audits across priority brands and markets, including ghost brand assessment, AI visibility review, content structure analysis, message clarity review, and content gap assessment.
• Perform AI-focused keyword and query research to identify the questions HCPs, patients, and healthcare consumers are asking AI platforms, and map these questions to existing content assets and gaps.
• Monitor AI citation share of voice, brand presence, AI Overview visibility, and answer engine representation using available GEO, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and analytics tools.
• Report visibility gaps, competitor benchmarks, and content opportunities to brand, marketing, and digital stakeholders.
• Track off-platform citation signals, including coverage in scientific publications, professional body materials, patient advocacy sources, and other authoritative third-party content sources.
• Provide recommendations to strengthen authoritative content presence and improve the likelihood that our Company's content is accurately represented or cited in AI-generated answers.
• Identify content opportunities to improve answer quality, citation relevance, brand presence, and consistency of representation across AI search experiences.
• Deliver market-level and brand-level audit findings in formats suited to regional marketing and brand teams, prioritizing recommendations by business value, customer relevance, compliance feasibility, and implementation effort.

Content Recommendation and Governance

• Translate GEO audit outputs into practical content recommendations that brand and marketing teams can use to improve AI discoverability while staying within approved messaging and governance boundaries.
• Develop content guidance for answer-first content structure, evidence placement, FAQ development, claim clarity, source referencing, content freshness, and consistency of terminology.
• Support the development of GEO content standards, market-level publishing checklists, and MLR-aware content guidance across regions.
• Partner with brand and marketing teams to define content remediation plans based on AI visibility findings, content gaps, and priority customer questions.
• Help ensure GEO content recommendations are practical, scalable, and aligned with market workflows, approval processes, and regulatory expectations.

Stakeholder Enablement

• Act as a GEO content practitioner embedded within brand and marketing workflows, serving as a key point of contact for AI discoverability and content optimization questions from brand teams.
• Develop and deliver enablement materials, guides, playbooks, and working sessions to help brand, marketing, and medical affairs teams build practical GEO content competency.
• Apply repeatable AI search readiness assessment methods across inline and pipeline brands, including ghost brand assessment, prompt and query analysis, baseline AI visibility review, and content opportunity mapping.
• Partner with brand and marketing teams to build internal GEO capability, translating assessment outputs into content actions that teams can apply independently over time.
• Collaborate with analysts, web teams, and external partners to ensure content recommendations are informed by performance data and can be appropriately reflected in content planning and publishing workflows.
• Contribute to governance documentation supporting GEO content standards, market-level publishing checklists, and MLR workflow alignment across regions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Communications, Digital, Life Sciences, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience in content strategy, SEO, digital marketing, brand content, content governance, or a related discipline, with practical understanding of how content structure affects search and AI platform performance.
• Strong understanding of content strategy, content optimization, and how AI search platforms retrieve, summarize, and cite information.
• Familiarity with AI search platforms including ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, or similar answer engine experiences.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret SEO and AI visibility data, identify content gaps, and translate findings into prioritized recommendations.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to advise non-technical brand and marketing teams on AI-friendly content practices.
• Proven ability to work across cross-functional teams in a global, matrixed organization.
• Experience supporting content review, content governance, advisory, or enablement activities within a regulated or compliance-sensitive environment.
• Strong ability to translate complex AI discoverability concepts into practical guidance for brand, marketing, and medical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in pharmaceutical, healthcare, or life sciences digital marketing, including familiarity with MLR review processes, fair balance requirements, and promotional versus non-promotional content boundaries.
• Hands-on experience with AI visibility, SEO, or content performance tools such as SEMrush, Google Search Console, BrightEdge, or equivalent platforms.
• Familiarity with GEO practices, including ghost brand assessment, AI citation analysis, entity consistency, content gap analysis, and answer engine visibility monitoring.
• Understanding of HCP versus consumer audience segmentation and the content governance implications for each in a regulated environment.
• Experience supporting global or regional content programs across multiple markets with varying regulatory and approval requirements.
• Exposure to scientific, medical, professional body, patient advocacy, or other authoritative third-party content ecosystems.
• Experience creating content guidance, playbooks, training materials, or working sessions for brand and marketing teams.

Competencies

• Strong content strategy and AI platform fluency
• Ability to translate AI visibility insights into actionable content guidance
• Advises and influences without owning final content decisions
• Compliance-aware and governance-minded
• Globally and cross-functionally collaborative
• Data-driven and analytically rigorous
• Clear and confident communicator
• Detail-oriented and precise
• Builds capability through coaching and enablement
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity

Role Purpose

This role exists because AI systems now influence how HCPs, patients, and healthcare consumers discover, evaluate, and act on health information. For our Company's brands to be represented accurately and consistently by AI platforms, content must be structured, evidence-based, clear, consistent, and governed in ways that support AI discoverability.

The Senior Specialist, GEO Content closes that gap by embedding AI discoverability discipline directly into brand and marketing content processes. This role helps teams understand how content choices affect AI visibility, where citation gaps exist, and how approved content can be improved before it goes to MLR review, before it is published, and before AI systems decide whether to reference it.

Required Skills:

Analyst Relations, Analyst Relations, Asset Management, Benefits Management, Brand Alignment, Building Capability, ChatGPT, Content Analysis, Content Development, Content Management, Content Marketing, Customer Segmentation, Geofencing, Global Coordination, Identifying Sources, Management System Development, Managing Ambiguity, Marketing Content Strategy, Product Management, Questioning Techniques, Requirements Management, Search Analytics, Spot Light, Stakeholder Relationship Management, Strategic Planning {+ 1 more}

Preferred Skills:

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US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

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As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

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The salary range for this role is

$117,000.00 - $184,200.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

09/3/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.

Requisition ID:R413108