What CEOs Should Know About SEO

As a CEO, you almost certainly know about search engine optimization (SEO). The problem with SEO is that it’s constantly adapting to Google’s ever-changing algorithm, so what you think you know is probably outdated.

And that’s not the only thing you need to know. If you’re thinking about investing in SEO as a CEO, this guide is for you:

It’s Not a Short-Term Solution

Paid ads deliver instant results. You set your terms, pay your money, and then watch those metrics grow.

SEO takes time. It needs to be nurtured.

You need time to structure a plan, create content, and then wait for the results. It could be several months; it could be up to a year.

There may be some early results as obscure keywords are indexed, but you can’t know for sure if something has succeeded or failed until you give it time to work.

If You Want the Best Results, SEO Needs to Take Priority

The fact that SEO doesn’t deliver instant results doesn’t mean you should invest minimally in your campaigns, cross your fingers, and then hope for the best.

Brands are fighting hard for those search engine rankings, and if you’re not matching their intent, you won’t match their results, either.

The best results require the highest priority. If higher rankings are important—and they should be—invest appropriately from the outset.

Ranking For Your Brand Name is Just the Beginning

One of the main goals of SEO is to rank for your brand name, no matter how common it is. If someone searches for your brand, they should see your name at the top of the rankings, and not just because you’re running a concurrent Google Ads campaign.

That’s just the beginning, though. You won’t get anywhere solely with brand name rankings. You’re not just targeting the people who already know about your company and are ready to purchase from you. You’re targeting potential customers who search for your products, ones who will only learn about your brand when they click those links.

It’s Not Free Traffic, But it Can Feel That Way

When your SEO campaign is in full swing, and your rankings have improved, you’ll likely experience a significant uptick in traffic.

As you’re not paying for those impressions, engagements, and clicks, it’ll feel like free traffic. But SEO requires a significant initial investment, as well as ongoing maintenance.

You need an SEO expert or SEO training for your employees. Writing and editing fees will increase those costs, and then you have to think about designers and video editors, as SEO is more than just guides and blogs.

You Need to Collaborate

SEO requires collaboration across all departments—it’s not limited to your content creation team.

Low page speed, terrible navigation, and cluttered pages can render the best content strategies redundant. They might still work but will be greatly hindered by poor technical SEO.

Everyone needs to be reading from the same sheet, whether that means instructing all departments to attend SEO training and briefs or just involving your SEO team during every major site update.

It Takes Patience and Consistency

When a paid ad campaign doesn’t work, you can run a few A/B tests, optimize your campaigns, and then try again. If it still doesn’t work, you make a few more tweaks and keep going. You’re constantly adjusting as you’re seeing the results in real-time.

It’s a different story with SEO, though. We’ve already established that it takes time to see results, which means you can’t know for sure what’s working and what’s not until you’ve allowed everything to settle.

Refrain from making too many changes if you don’t see the results you were expecting straight away. By the same token, you need to be consistent. Unlike paid marketing, you can’t run a series of different ads and see which one delivers the best results. Everything needs to be clear and coordinated.

You can return to your strategy at a later date if it’s not working out, but if you put in the work and do everything right to begin with, it just needs time and ongoing maintenance.

It Can Go Wrong

There are a lot of SEO experts and agencies out there, but they’re not all doing the same job. The problem with bad SEO is that it can work in the short term, only to harm your reputation and rankings in the long term.

If you hire an unscrupulous agency, you could be throwing your money and reputation away, creating a bigger problem that an experienced and knowledgeable expert will need to fix.

Hire the best experts at every turn, whether you’re bringing in trainers and coaches to educate your in-house team or hiring agencies and consultants to do the work for you. Check their reviews and do your own research on the SEO agencies—they may have had some short-term results, but did those results stick?

It’s All About the User Experience

Ultimately, the goal of SEO is to provide a better experience for the user.

That’s what Google wants, and in creating an SEO campaign, your goal is to appease Google and give it what it wants to see.

If someone types product-related questions into Google, they’re not looking for the biggest brand or the one with the largest marketing budget. They want a site with clear, digestible information, one that give them the answers they seek from a source that they can trust.

That’s what you need to think about when building an SEO strategy. Focus on the user first, amplify the user experience, and worry more about helping them and less about appealing to Google, and you’ll be on the right track.

Summary: Hire an SEO Expert

There are clearly a lot of pieces to the SEO puzzle, and as a CEO, you either need to figure out how they all go together or find someone to do it for you.

At Optics In, we have experience working with companies of all sizes and across multiple industries. We can help with training and coaching if you want to build your own team or provide direct SEO services.