Victor.Ijomah
All roles
Open to UK AI Search Specialist roles

AI Search Specialist for the era that has already arrived.

I'm Victor Ijomah. I work specifically on the AI Search layer: llms.txt implementation, AI crawler management, entity optimisation, and schema designed for citation. Most SEO teams are still learning what these mean. I have been building for them since they started emerging. Based in the UK, available now.

Experience4+ years hands-on
Published50+ articles
Notice4 weeks
Right to workUnited Kingdom

The role, as I see it

What an AI Search Specialist actually owns.

An AI Search Specialist owns the new layer of search work that did not exist three years ago: making your content discoverable, parseable, and citable by AI search engines. The role sits adjacent to technical SEO but is not the same. AI crawlers behave differently, measure differently, and respond to different signals than Googlebot.

In practice, that looks like:

  • Implementing and maintaining llms.txt with proper syntax and content prioritisation
  • Managing AI crawler access: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, and the next ones
  • Designing schema markup specifically for AI citation, not just classical rich results
  • Building entity structures that AI engines can use to understand your brand
  • Tracking AI bot crawl behaviour through log file analysis
  • Monitoring citation appearances in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews
  • Translating AI Search work into business outcomes for leadership reviews

It is the role that did not exist on most org charts in 2023, but will be standard by 2027. Hiring one now means hiring someone who has been in the work since before it was a category.

What I bring

01

Working in AI Search since the standards started emerging.

llms.txt, AI crawler management, entity optimisation, schema for citation. I have been working with these tools and standards from when they were experimental drafts to where they are now. The depth comes from time spent, not from a course completed last month.

02

Builds for citation, not just ranking.

Classical SEO optimises for clicks. AI Search optimises for citation: getting your content quoted in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude responses. The technical work is different, the measurement is different. I do both, but I lead with citation thinking because that is where attention is moving.

03

Hands-on with the AI crawler layer.

Most teams have not even checked which AI bots are crawling their site. I do that with log analysis as a starting point on every engagement. From there: GPTBot rule management, Google-Extended decisions, ClaudeBot tracking. The bot rules layer is where most AI Search readiness is won or lost.

04

Documents and teaches the work.

I publish weekly at the Technical SEO Library, specifically on AI Search topics. That habit forces me to clarify my own thinking and pressure-test it with the wider community. The work I deliver is well-documented because the documentation has already been drafted in public.

The stack

Tools and platforms I work with daily.

AI Search and AI crawlers

llms.txtai.txtGPTBot rule managementClaudeBot trackingPerplexityBot managementGoogle-Extended decisionsCCBot rulesManual citation tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews

Schema and structured data

Schema.org vocabularyJSON-LDEntity markupYoast SEORankMathSchema App

Log file analysis

JetOctopusCustom BigQuery pipelinesAI bot user-agent filtering

Crawling and indexing

Google Search ConsoleBing Webmaster ToolsScreaming FrogSitebulbCloudflare

Research and benchmarking

AhrefsSemrushMozSimilarWeb

Analytics and reporting

Google Analytics 4Looker StudioBigQuery

Selected work

Recent Technical SEO projects.

{
"@type": "Article",
"author": {...},
"publisher": {...},
"sameAs": [ … ]
}
Content Publication · 200k monthly visits

Schema migration for AI Search citation

Editorial site had basic Article schema but was invisible to AI Search. Designed the richer Article + Author + Organization entity graph with explicit sameAs links, added citation-friendly markup on long-form pieces, and tracked appearances in ChatGPT and Perplexity through the rollout.

Outcome

Citation appearances in ChatGPT and Perplexity went from rare to weekly within the tracking window.

/feature-a/use-case/solutionuncrawled
SSR rollout →
/feature-a  ✓/use-case  ✓/solution  ✓indexed
B2B SaaS · 40k monthly users

AI crawler access audit and llms.txt rollout

Site had 60% of programmatic landing pages hidden from AI crawlers behind client-side render, plus no llms.txt declaring intent. Diagnosed the render gap via Search Console and AI bot log analysis, partnered with engineering on SSR rollout, then designed and deployed the llms.txt file for the AI search era.

Outcome

Indexed page count up 4x in one quarter, AI bot crawl coverage tripled.

/products/shoes
├─?color=red✓ canonical
├─?color=red&s=8✗ blocked
├─?s=8&color=red✗ blocked
└─?brand=nike✓ allowed
E-commerce Brand · 1,200 SKUs

AI bot crawl budget and entity work

AI crawlers were burning budget on filter URL combinations producing near-duplicate pages. Mapped the waste via log analysis split by AI bot user agent, designed a robots and canonical strategy that protected the entity-rich product pages while collapsing the noise, and reviewed each branch before merge.

Outcome

Crawl waste cut by 78%, important product pages re-prioritised by Googlebot and AI bots within weeks.

Where this role is heading

AI Search is here. Most sites have not adapted.

Three years ago, llms.txt was a proposal. AI crawlers were rumours. Citation in chat responses was an edge case. None of that is true now. AI Search has become a primary discovery surface alongside Google.

The technical work to be visible in this layer is specific: llms.txt that declares intent properly, schema that survives AI parsing, log file analysis that tracks who is reading your site and what they are doing with it, entity work that helps AI engines understand your brand.

Most teams have not started on this work. The teams that have started often started six months ago and are still working out where the leverage is. The teams that hire specialists who already know the territory are pulling ahead, and will keep pulling ahead.

This is the work I have been building for. Hiring me means hiring someone who has been in the AI Search work since before there was a name for it.

Continuous learning

Confidence comes from competence.

So I completed every major SEO course in the field. Each one verifiable.

Kristina Azaranko

Tech SEO Pro

Ahrefs

Academy Certification

Moz Academy

SEO Essentials

Semrush

Academy Certification

HubSpot Academy

SEO 2

HubSpot Academy

SEO 1

Plus broader marketing credentials: Google Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, Google Online Marketing Fundamentals, HubSpot Inbound Marketing.

Recommendations

From people who have shipped work with me.

Victor took our crawl efficiency issues seriously and shipped fixes inside two weeks that previous consultants had told us would take months. The reporting was clear and the team trusted him from day one.

LM

Laura Mitchell

Head of Growth, B2B SaaS Platform

Working with Victor on our SSR rollout was rare. He understood our codebase, knew exactly what SEO needed, and translated between the two without friction. Most marketing people slow engineering down. He sped us up.

MT

Marcus Tate

Senior Engineer, SaaS Platform

We brought Victor in for a schema migration on our editorial platform. Six weeks later we were being cited in ChatGPT responses for the first time. Specific, technical, gets the work done.

RA

Rachel Adeyemi

Editorial Director, Content Publication

Victor publishes some of the clearest writing I have read on llms.txt and AI crawler management. I have sent his posts to clients more than once when explaining what is coming next in search.

TA

Tobi Adekunle

SEO Consultant, Independent

Victor approached his M.Sc dissertation with rigour and a practical focus that stood out across the cohort. His grasp of Technical SEO concepts was notable.

CB

Dr. Catherine Bell

Course Leader, Digital Marketing M.Sc, University of Chester

Recommended reads

From the Library.

Common questions

Things hiring managers usually ask.

Four weeks notice from my current role. Available to begin within four weeks of an accepted offer.

No. I hold right to work in the United Kingdom. No sponsorship required, now or in future.

Open to all three. Currently based in the UK. Comfortable with travel for on-site days where the role requires it.

It is becoming real. Three years ago, no one had this title. Now it appears in growth teams at media companies, e-commerce brands, and B2B SaaS, anywhere search visibility matters. The job is real because the work is real, and the measurement is becoming clearer every quarter.

Citation appearances first: how often is your content quoted in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. Traffic from AI surfaces second. Entity strength third (knowledge graph presence). All three are improving as standards mature, and the measurement playbook is getting clearer every month.

Reading the actual specs as they emerge, talking to other practitioners, running experiments on my own properties. I publish what I learn at the Technical SEO Library so the thinking stays sharp. Most of the field is still working out what to measure. Being early helps with that.

Both. Permanent is my preferred path for the next two-plus years. Open to contracts of six months or longer where the work is the right fit, especially for focused AI Search rollouts.

Yes. The recommendations above are a preview. Full references with direct contact details are available on request after an initial call.

Ready to talk?

Download the CV for the full work history, or jump straight to a 30-minute call.