One of the biggest challenges in my search career has been navigating the delicate task of identifying the root cause of SEO issues and changing workstreams that span the entire web ecosystem without ruffling the feathers of the functional area owners. As I have written before, most SEOs are responsible for delivering on KPIs that depend on the performance of multiple infrastructures they don’t control. Implementing change and meeting your goals requires a UN peace negotiator’s diplomatic skills to make recommendations without dwelling too much on why they are an issue or bruising egos.
This article was titled based on a question that multiple web and market managers asked my handler on a project regarding a detailed list of observations I had written and shared with my manager, which he shared with a broader audience as valid observations. I was helping a large multinational build a “world-class” web and search program. We did a roadshow in Asia, visiting six markets: China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand. In each market, we conducted interviews and workshops to understand the digital and website strategies of each market and align them with our pre-visit audits and performance reviews.
I collected my notes and summarized them in an APAC Roadshow—Observations and Concerns document detailing over 100 different findings and insights across analytics, content, messaging, domain management, web infrastructure, and search. I shared this report and my thoughts with my boss, who, unknown to me, added his observations and passed it up the chain. Eventually, it reached Global HQ and was shared with markets worldwide.
When Search Visibility Reveals Marketing Misalignment
Three months later, one of the brand marketing managers forwarded the email chain to me, asking for information about a specific comment. Reading through the email chain, I saw multiple comments from various managers asking why “The Search Guy is butting into areas that do not concern him?” Another thought is my suggestion of looking at our web platforms as a collaborative ecosystem, stating “the web is not some biology project,” and many other highly critical comments about my insights. In all, there were a few hundred comments, questions, and concerns appended, with some managers wanting to learn how to improve, others stating I was misinformed, and many dismissed as the rantings of a disgruntled SEO hack.
At that moment, when the marketing manager asked why I was “butting in,” it became clear that SEO wasn’t the problem. It was the spotlight.
Search is uniquely positioned to expose the friction between what a company says, what it ships, and what the customer wants. When a page doesn’t rank, it’s rarely just a SEO tag issue. It’s often the symptom of something deeper:
- The product team labeled it one way
- The content team described it another way
- The UX team buried it behind a complex path
- The analytics team didn’t know it existed
- And the paid media team promoted something completely different
SEO activities made that dysfunction visible. Search engines don’t rank based on internal org charts or PowerPoint strategies. They reflect how well your ecosystem serves the user’s intent, across content, structure, speed, clarity, and consistency. And when visibility drops, it’s often because your internal alignment already has.
When Cross-Channel Truths Make People Uncomfortable
I was ultimately summoned to a global meeting of digital managers and faced some of my accusers for my heresy and not “staying in my lane“. The goal of my presentation was to reframe the conversation from one of a rogue outsider meddling in others’ business to that of a person who needs to collaborate with different stakeholders to maximize opportunities from search as much as possible.
Immediately after moving to the front of the room, I was hit with a question from a person whose market I had noted many concerns about, and asked me why those items mattered to a “search guy.”
I calmly advanced to my 3rd slide, which showed that there were over 6 billion global searches related to our portfolio of products, and we were only represented 2 percent of the time, getting only a fraction of 1 percent of the traffic. I had been given a target of capturing 10% of that opportunity.
I then explained that the number 1 barrier to achieving this target is everyone in this room and the people who report to them. Then I asked for their patience in letting me explain. I showed a slide with the generally accepted definition of SEO.
“Making changes to your site to ensure it maximizes the key elements used by search engines to score and rank pages.”
I further explained that everything is interconnected, like an ecosystem in which web infrastructure presents content; this content connects with customers and enables search engines to understand the context and relevance, making us findable. We minimize the website traffic potential if there is any misalignment with these ranking factors.
I tabbed into my presentation to illustrate how markets that have adopted this ecosystem now generate 100 times more organic search traffic than when they were not aligned. Tabbing forward again in the presentation to some of the observations and why they harmed search and web performance helped make it clear that Search activities are not and cannot be relegated to a single narrow focus, but need to be considered across every functional website element.
Everyone was sitting up in their chairs, paying attention as I explained the different elements that impact search performance, thus preventing us from being seen and clicked by those who want the very products we offer. At the end of the hour, I went from being someone summoned to explain myself for stirring up trouble to someone they wanted to work with.
Reframing the conversation to demonstrate opportunity and how much more effective we can be in many areas when the pieces are aligned and collaboration helps them see how the puzzle pieces fit together.
Collaborating on Alignment
There was still a regional digital manager who did not buy it. He argued that the search was negligible for him, and dedicating time and resources to focus on search marketing was not a good use of his time. I resisted the temptation to delve into my backup notes and explain why his region received “negligible benefit from search,” precisely because they did not do anything to earn it.
He wanted to know how search could benefit what he was already doing. That was a brilliant question, and it helped me have another epiphany: we need to make search work with everything. I spent a few hours working on a new presentation that focused on how search can support multiple forms of marketing and advertising. The next day, I presented to the broader team how search can align with every other form of marketing they do and how it stimulates interest that prompts search and engagement, ultimately increasing performance across all forms of marketing and advertising. The combination of showing them how search fits into the web ecosystem and other marketing channels won them over, kicking off a multi-year effort to maximize our performance globally.
Fragmented Teams and Process
Companies often have fragmented processes or hierarchies of influence that hurt overall web performance. I have worked with companies that could only present text in images because the creative director insisted on using their custom font or gigantic photos that you need a gigabit connection to download, all in the name of brand image. In other cases, the UX team dominates, forcing flows and infrastructure, making it impossible for search engines to crawl content or for merchandising teams to implement overlays or different in-your-face messaging that negatively impacts the mobile experience.
Eventual Alignment
Despite all the critical comments regarding my 100 different findings, nearly half were turned into actions and workstreams to improve. For example, my question about why we were renewing old campaign domains, especially for products we no longer sell or for year-specific campaigns, prompted the global domain manager to learn that the company collectively owned over 50,000 domains, with ninety percent of them parked. She estimated that just this one discovery and the retirement of these systems would save over $750,000 per year, thereby forcing the centralization of domain management.
Conclusion
When a manager has to ask, “Why is the Search Guy butting in?” It reflects a broader issue: the siloed nature of many organizations’ web strategies. SEO cannot be viewed as an isolated discipline; it thrives—or fails—based on the performance of an interconnected ecosystem comprising infrastructure, content, UX, and marketing. Every decision, from web infrastructure to creative choices, directly impacts search visibility and, consequently, the company’s ability to reach its audience via search engines.
Helping companies achieve world-class search performance is not about completing an SEO checklist but fostering cross-functional collaboration. SEOs, developers, content creators, and other web teams must collaborate to align their efforts toward shared objectives. When these pieces come together, the result is better search rankings and a more seamless, effective, and impactful web presence that benefits the entire organization.
By reframing the narrative, showing the interconnectedness of web elements, and emphasizing the opportunity for mutual success, we can shift the perception of SEO from a meddler to an indispensable partner in achieving business growth. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring that every function sees its role in the bigger picture: creating a digital ecosystem that works harmoniously to maximize results for the company and its customers.
From SEO to Something Bigger
Writing this article forced me to confront a truth I hadn’t fully articulated until now.
The very nature of SEO work puts us in the position of system stewards. We inspect how sites are built. We trace breakdowns across teams and tools. We fight for clarity, structure, performance, and relevance—not just for algorithms, but for real people. We diagnose misalignment before the business feels the impact. We don’t just optimize pages—we optimize digital effectiveness.
So maybe the next time your SEO manager seems like they’re poking their nose where it “doesn’t belong”—in content, in CMS workflows, in design meetings, in site migrations—they’re not meddling.
They’re already doing the job of a Digital Effectiveness Officer. We just haven’t called it that. Yet.
