Why is the Search Guy Butting In?

One of the biggest challenges in my search career has been navigating the delicate task of influencing workstreams that negatively impact SEO performance without ruffling feathers or bruising the managers’ egos of these functional areas. SEOs often deliver KPIs that depend on multiple infrastructures they don’t directly control. Achieving success requires diplomacy skills worthy of a UN peace negotiator to make recommendations tactfully and effectively.

The Backstory: An APAC Roadshow

This story began when I helped a large multinational build a “world-class” web and search program. As part of this effort, we conducted a roadshow in Asia, visiting six markets: China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand. The goal was to align digital and website strategies with our pre-visit audits and performance reviews.

We conducted interviews and workshops in each market, then summarized over 100 findings in an APAC Roadshow—Observations and Concerns report. The report covered analytics, content, messaging, domain management, web infrastructure, and search. I shared it with my boss, who added his insights and sent it up the chain. Surprisingly, it made its way to Global HQ and was shared across markets worldwide.

A brand marketing manager forwarded me an email chain discussing my report three months later. It was packed with comments from managers worldwide—some asking why “The Search Guy” was butting into unrelated areas, others dismissing my insights as “SEO rants,” and a few curious about improving their market’s performance.

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Eventually, I was summoned to a global meeting of digital managers to address the observations criticisms. My goal was to shift perceptions—from being seen as a rogue outsider meddling in other departments’ business to a collaborative partner working to unlock search and digital potential for all brands and markets.

The meeting began with one manager’s sharp question: “Why do these items matter to a ‘search guy’?”

I calmly advanced to my third slide, which showed a staggering statistic:

• 6 billion global searches related to our products, yet we appeared in the search results for only 2% of them, capturing a mere fraction of less than 1% of the traffic.

I explained my assigned target: capturing 10% of that opportunity. Then came the hard truth:

“The number one barrier to my achieving this target is everyone in this room and the people who report to you.”

This bold statement only frustrated the attendees further, and I asked them for their patience in letting me explain.

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To shift the narrative, I displayed 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 emphasized that everything—web infrastructure, content, UX, and marketing—is interconnected, forming an ecosystem. Misalignment in any area to how the search engines ingest and process information undermines our search visibility. To illustrate, I presented:

1. Aligned Markets: Examples of markets that had embraced this ecosystem approach, achieving 100x more traffic than before.
2. Misaligned Markets: Examples showing how certain current practices harmed search and web performance and explained why they were detrimental to search performance.

By the end of this segment, the room’s tone shifted. Stakeholders began to understand how SEO touches nearly every functional website element and how, if we can collaborate to integrate the required components into their workflow and find common ground, giving them the aesthetics, messaging, and user engagement flows they require in a search-friendly manner, we can drive exponential results.

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The rest of my presentation focused on how search aligns with other marketing activities and is not a stubborn one-trick pony. SEO stimulates interest, prompting engagement and boosting performance across all digital channels. I highlighted examples of fragmented processes that hurt web performance:

• Creative Roadblocks: Insistence on using custom fonts or oversized images for branding that compromise usability and page load speed.
• UX-Driven Obstacles: Complex JavaScript navigation and flow that make content difficult for search engines to crawl.
• Merchandising Conflicts: Overlays and intrusive messaging that harm the mobile experience.

I explained that these are not only “SEO problems” but symptoms of siloed processes that prevent optimal web performance. It is part of my role to try to find ways to make the website search-friendly while incorporating all of the creativity, user experience, and merchandising elements. It may not be the easiest implementation, but if we compromise, we can find a great win-win balance.

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When someone asks, “Why is the Search Guy butting in?” it reflects a broader organizational issue: fragmented and siloed web strategies. SEO cannot thrive as an isolated discipline; it depends on an interconnected ecosystem of infrastructure, content, UX, and marketing.

Achieving world-class search performance isn’t about completing an SEO checklist. It’s about fostering cross-functional collaboration. When SEOs, developers, content creators, and web teams align their efforts, the result is a more effective, impactful digital presence. This benefits not just search rankings but the entire organization.

By reframing the narrative and emphasizing shared opportunities, we can shift perceptions of SEO—from meddler to indispensable partner. Ultimately, success comes when every function sees its role in creating a harmonious digital ecosystem that maximizes results for the company and its customers.