Please do not apply if you are NOT a college student in the USA and if you cannot commit to 1 weekly meeting with the Dev team and 2 hours per day during weekdays. Work your at your own pace. No set hours. THIS IS A NON PAID POSITION**. Academic credit is available if your university offers it.** MUST HAVE SEO experience.
CliquePrize® is an iPhone mobile app, helps local brick & mortar small businesses called Sponsors grow through giveaways, and other interactive promotions is seeking an SEO / AI SEO (Academic Credit only - non paid) Intern for its cliqueprize.com website. We support Brick & Mortar small businesses by capturing leads (i.e. name, email, mobile, zip) from one-click to enter giveaways which grow brick & mortar small businesses with offers, coupons and specials.
The SEO / AI SEO Intern will be responsible for improving the organic search visibility of www.cliqueprize.com, with a strategic focus on ranking for “brick & mortar small business marketing.”
This role blends traditional SEO with emerging AI search optimization techniques and is ideal for students seeking academic credit or meaningful portfolio experience.
Key Responsibilities
Content & On-Page Optimization
- Optimize existing and create new website content (articles, landing pages, images, videos, metadata).
- Conduct in-depth keyword research targeting “brick & mortar small business marketing.”
- Develop SEO-driven articles with strong internal linking structures.
- Build authoritative off-page links to support search rankings.
- Rewrite and optimize URLs where necessary.
- Identify underperforming content and replace with updated, optimized content.
AI SEO & Search Strategy
- Understand and implement strategies for ranking in AI-driven search environments.
- Research how AI search engines evaluate authority, context, and relevance.
- Apply semantic SEO and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) techniques.
- Optimize content for structured data and entity recognition.
Technical SEO
- Collaborate with the web developer to improve Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
- Optimize page speed, page load performance, and overall UX.
- Improve crawl budget efficiency and site architecture by working with web developer on reducing scripts and optimizing page load efficiency in Nuxt3.
- Create and submit image and video sitemaps.
Off-Page SEO & Authority Building
- Build citations and secure listings in relevant directories and authoritative sources.
- Develop a white-hat backlink portfolio strategy.
- Conduct competitor backlink analysis.
Analytics & Conversion Optimization
- Monitor and analyze by working with the Data Analyst on:
- Page rank & domain authority
- Keyword rankings
- Time on site
- Pages per visit
Organic lead conversions
- Identify opportunities to capture more brick & mortar small business leads.
- Recommend improvements to increase organic conversions and improve site experience with Web Developer
- Use SEO tools such as Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush (without paid subscriptions)
.
Required Skills & Knowledge
- Strong understanding of on-page and technical SEO fundamentals
- Experience with keyword research and competitive analysis
- Understanding of AI search ranking principles
- Knowledge of crawl budget management and LSI
- Familiarity with backlink building (white-hat techniques only)
- Ability to analyze SEO metrics and make data-driven recommendations
- Basic understanding of Core Web Vitals and performance optimization
- Strong writing and research skills
Preferred Qualifications
- Marketing, Communications, Computer Science, or related major
- Experience with WordPress, Nuxt3, or Storyblok CMS platform
- Familiarity with Google Search Console and Google Analytics
- Experience optimizing video and image content
What You Will Gain
- Real-world SEO & AI SEO experience on a live business website
- Portfolio-ready projects demonstrating measurable impact
- Strategic SEO planning experience
- Technical SEO collaboration experience
- Letter of recommendation upon successful completion