In SEO, like in most specialities, your work isn’t siloed. The success of your SEO efforts depends on other people in your organization, such as marketing, content, engineering, and leadership.
Because changes you make to your website can take weeks or months to drive results in Google, it’s important that you’re able to prove the ROI of SEO work to these groups — especially since SEO standards and guidelines change rapidly. That’s why being able to communicate the value of your SEO work to others who may not understand search engines is crucial to your success. Here are a few ways you can communicate the value of SEO to stakeholders around the business, or to clients.
First, start by conveying the idea that SEO is about users, not about outsmarting Google.
This is a common misconception about SEO that many people who aren’t too familiar with the field have. If your stakeholders have this mindset, they may ask you to do things you aren’t comfortable with, like black hat SEO tactics. Or, they might question your focus on the user experience and creating high quality content.
To counteract this, make sure you keep the users at the center of everything you do in SEO. When you present your work to stakeholders, keep the user top of mind. Remind everyone that your users are the ones searching for answers on your website, reading your content, and hopefully becoming leads.
Next, make your work accessible.
SEO uses a lot of jargon which may not make sense to people who don’t work in SEO. Define terms when needed, and explain the impact rather than just the action.
For example, instead of saying, “We need to implement noindex tags,” you might want to say, “We need to secure the confidential content on our website that is publicly accessible right now.”
Finally, tie everything back to business goals. How is this SEO play going to help the business bring in more revenue?
Data is your friend here. Present the data on how much traffic is being attracted organically and how these users are engaging with your website. What amount of revenue is generated by organic users?
Once you demonstrate the profitability of SEO as a channel, it’s easy to get everyone, all the way up to the CEO, bought-in to your work. Then, you can break into individual projects and how these projects impact the buyer’s journey. These are tips that apply both if you’re working with clients or if you’re the comapny’s in-house SEO specialist. Your strategies for implementing them may be different but generally, these ideas will help you better communicate the value of SEO.
