Have you “tried SEO” and found it to be a failed experiment or a waste of time? Are you using blog posts and guesswork instead of in-house SEO training or hiring an SEO agency? The truth is, search engine optimization doesn’t usually fail because a marketing team doesn’t care about search. It breaks down in the space between who sets the SEO strategy and who carries it out.
As executive leadership, whether you’re the CMO, VP of Marketing, Head of Growth, or business owner, you may not notice this breakdown immediately. It can look like business as usual. Everybody is “doing the doing” of digital marketing.
Teams keep publishing (so that’s good, right?) even if the content strategy lacks real direction. You keep reviewing dashboards (so stuff must be happening), even if the numbers don’t make sense. The website ranks for something, so you’re ranking, right? Even if the terms don’t match your product/service.
But eventually, progress slows, clarity fades, and nobody is quite sure why. At this point, the conclusion is often, “SEO doesn’t work.” It’s a hard pass, back to the wheel (or next SEO tool), and trying to figure out how to stand out in an already crowded market.
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Search is changing.
SEO isn’t static. Search engines have evolved in the last few years in ways that fundamentally affect how visibility turns into business outcomes. Beyond the guaranteed yearly search engine algorithm updates, targeted updates can also have unexpected or unwanted outcomes.
Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) are an excellent example of a significant change that explicitly alters how search results work. Because these AI summaries produce answers directly on the search engine results pages above traditional results, they can (and do) reduce the number of clicks to websites even if visibility remains strong in other forms.
Another example is zero-click searches. Zero-click searches, where users get answers without clicking through to a site, are now a recognized phenomenon in SEO. Thanks to search features like AIOs, rich snippets, and direct answers, zero-click searches are a real (and growing) documented behavior. In essence, search engines are now answering questions directly for users, and SEO success must adapt to that behavior.
Yet another example is local search. Traditionally, local SEO focuses on proximity (how close your company is to the searcher), relevance (how relevant your Google Business Profile is), and prominence (how much authority your site has). However, over the past couple of years, AI models and machine learning have changed, pulling from citations, reviews, specific pages, and more to determine how relevant your local business is to the search.
Rather than static listings, local visibility is being decided by context, not just keywords. Making your site easier for intelligent systems to read is an important part of having a competitive edge in 2026.
But SEO still works.
Yes, even with all these changes, SEO still works. But, just as SEO experts and agencies like Level343 had to do, you will need to shift your focus and optimization efforts beyond isolated tasks and toward how meaningful signals interact and represent value.
Today, search engines care less about isolated tasks (keyword-only tactics, meta tag edits, single page optimization). They care more about signals that show real usefulness, support user behavior, and enhance user experience. They want content creation to match the intent of your target audience at the time they’re reading your blog post, article, landing page, etc. (and so should you).
This brings us around to the main point.
Although we’ve provided SEO checklists (don’t forget steps 1, 2, and 3), these are more guidelines than a tactical action list. SEO requires collaboration between your leadership (or yourself, if you’re the leader), content, design, development, and analytics teams. Those who don’t understand intent, user interaction patterns, or strategic context will struggle.
Strategy and execution don’t always align.
I recently read a comment that said something like, “SEO is a forensics detail.” In other words, it starts with data and filters down from there. Your team’s actions should be based on what the data shows and their understanding of it.
Knowing where the SEO efforts are breaking down, and why, is the first step toward having a team that can consistently produce results instead of always starting at square one. And let me be clear: this isn’t a matter of having the right team in place; you need the right knowledge.
Strategy sets the destination, execution lays the path. But let’s face it, strategy and execution don’t always share the map. At the highest level, leaders define outcomes. You’re responsible for setting growth targets, deciding brand positioning, and outlining competitive priorities. You share revenue goals and other strategic decisions. This is the “what should be done,” painted in very broad strokes.
Meanwhile, practitioners decide how the work gets done. They define the tactics. They decide what terms to use for internal linking and how pages should be structured. They look at which keywords to target and schema markup to choose. They decide content workflows and production.
But the two sides don’t always agree on how search should contribute to the end goals. Let’s look at some common breakdowns and why they occur.
Timelines are unrealistic.
The results you probably focus on are often measured in quarters and campaigns. You hear terms like “growth” and “visibility” and think that adds up to immediate movement. This urgency makes perfect sense in your arena. It’s how business gets done. No shade shall be cast.
But SEO rarely behaves like a sprint and is much more often a marathon. Consider how many businesses have been around for years before they were suddenly an “overnight success.”
In reality, search visibility builds over months, not minutes. New content takes time to dominate, no matter how good it is. Authority signals accumulate slowly, not overnight.
If you’re looking for a quick win while the team is building foundations, you have two different stories. You see your team’s slow progress. The team sees a beautiful, long-term strategy. OR, the team sees unrealistic pressure while you see unmet timelines.
How to combat this breakdown
Rather than frustration, what’s needed is alignment between timelines and how SEO really works. Realistic milestones should be defined and agreed upon. Finally, it needs to be understood that SEO is a slow build that provides real, lasting value.
Using SMART goals with specific timelines and targeted results can greatly reduce the frustration and increase alignment. A campaign to rank for a specific service, for example, might have metered goals like:
- Improve organic CTR by 15% for this keyword cluster by month 3.
- Improve CTR by 15% from the landing page to payment by month 6.
- Improve revenue gains by 10% on product XYZ by month 9.
Keywords and content don’t match business priorities.
It helps to look at SEO as a guideline rather than a bag of tricks. Keywords aren’t magic spells; they’re the guide for your content. However, if your business priorities aren’t considered when keywords are chosen and content created, you have a mess on your hands.
On paper, keyword research looks objective. Data-driven. Rational. A spreadsheet full of opportunity. In practice, this is often where SEO quietly drifts away from the business.
When goals aren’t clear, or SEO isn’t understood, content creators often select keywords based on volume, difficulty, or trendiness rather than how closely those terms connect to revenue, qualified leads, or customer intent. The result is an excellent article about the history of golf balls, but no contribution to the bottom line.
From your perspective as a leader, things appear to be moving. Rankings are improving, pages get impressions, and organic traffic is increasing. From the execution side, the team is doing the do. Targeting keywords with “SEO potential”, publishing regularly, and correctly optimizing pages.
But visitors aren’t converting. Your pipelines don’t grow, and SEO just brings in low-quality traffic. So what gives?
How to combat this breakdown
Forget about “better keywords.” That’s not the issue. Instead, start by anchoring your keyword choices to business intent instead of search volume. Here’s a simple framework that works well.
1. Map keywords to revenue stages.
- In Awareness, create content that educates and use terms that frame the problem. Acknowledge their problem and educate them on the ways they can solve that problem. At this point, it shouldn’t be all about you and your product or service. It’s all about them and understanding them.
- In the Consideration stage, content marketing endeavors should center around comparing solutions (yours vs competitors) and use cases (or your case studies).
- In the final Decision phase, content should be based on the service/product you’re offering, pricing considerations, and trust building. These are sales supports that increase your conversion rate.
2. Require a business justification for every keyword cluster.
As you build keyword clusters, you want to make sure there is an associated product, service, or outcome being supported. Otherwise, it’s just noise.
Who is the intended buyer? What action do you want them to take after reading each piece of content? These should all be questions you’ve answered before you build the campaign.
3. Create a keyword-to-page model.
Having a good campaign is just one part of marketing and SEO. Connecting the dots is crucial. Each priority service or product should have a primary page, supporting content that feeds into it, and internal links that reinforce intent.
4. Remember that it’s not all rankings.
Learn to measure success in assisted conversions. Higher engagement. Movement from search to content to service/product to contact or payment.
Rankings are all well and good, but without conversions, rankings mean nothing. And, if a keyword can’t be tied to a business goal, it’s not an SEO opportunity; it’s a distraction.
Marketing campaigns have no SEO guardrails.
Campaigns move fast. SEO moves slow. This is where friction thrives. Marketing teams often launch campaigns around themes, messaging, or offers without considering how those assets fit into the company’s existing search architecture.
Landing pages go live with no long-term plan. Often, there are duplicate versions with only slight changes (if any) based on where the traffic comes from. All those URLS get retired after the campaign ends, usually without proper redirects. Without a strategic SEO partnership to review the campaign, someone knowledgeable in technical SEO, or SEO training for your marketing team, you’re left with a broken mess that needs to be cleaned up after every campaign.
Worse yet, messaging sometimes shifts without regard for historical performance. We’ve seen this happen simply because someone chose terms that sounded like they were the same thing, but meant something totally different.
From the marketing team’s point of view, everything is going strong:
- Campaigns launch on time
- Creative looks strong
- Short-term engagement is visible
From the SEO team’s perspective:
- Pages are orphaned or overwritten
- Equity is lost after campaigns end
- Reporting becomes fragmented
Over time, if not cleaned up, the site turns into a graveyard of one-off pages that never build value.
How to combat this breakdown
You don’t have to make campaigns SEO-first to make them SEO aware. The goal is to make sure your campaigns don’t sabotage the visibility and authority you’ve already built. They need guardrails.
Before any campaign launches, answer these questions:
- Is this campaign additive or disposable? Will this page live on as evergreen content? Should it be merged with an existing page after the campaign?
- Where does this live in site architecture? Does it support a core category? Is it (or will it be) internally linked from relevant pages?
- What happens when the campaign ends? What will we redirect? Will we, or how will we, consolidate the content after the campaign is over? What data do we want to keep for the next campaigns?
- Who owns SEO sign-off? One person (or role) should be responsible for ensuring proper URL structure, search titles and descriptions align with business and search targets, internal linking, and schema consistency.
When these items are decided and monitored before a campaign is launched, there’s much less chance of moving in the wrong direction.
Teams chase visibility for unimportant terms.
Visibility feels good. It’s also dangerously misleading. Teams are often rewarded for rankings, more impressions, and impressive reports. “Those numbers look great, Frank.”
This is a measurement problem disguised as an SEO problem. Over time, those feel-good rewards can encourage improper optimization for easy wins that don’t really matter to the business. Your company starts ranking #1 for useless terms that go nowhere. This is why leaders see success and teams feel productive, but revenue quietly stays the same.
In short, if teams are measured on rankings, they will optimize for rankings. If they’re measured on pipeline influence, behavior changes immediately.
How to combat this breakdown
I’ll say again, redefine success. Reward when there is a positive movement in qualified leads and pipeline influence rather than rankings alone.
You also want to segment by intent. By segmenting information searches from commercial visibility, you can have a better understanding of where the conversion breakdown is. Track these segments separately and treat them differently. They aren’t the same audience, and they shouldn’t be spoken to the same way.
Finally, regularly perform SEO audits on your site. Audit your content performance, as well. Forensic dives like these are where SEO really shines, and where your teams need a deeper understanding of what they’re looking for.
Using analytics tools like Google Search Console and SEMRush, review keywords and pages that drive traffic but not engagement. Look for terms that rank but never convert. Then, decide whether to improve, merge, or deprioritize the nonperforming pages.
The real takeaway: Search is a team effort.
Alignment sounds like one of those feel-good, kumbaya terms. Just think alike, and it will all become clear; the rainbows will come out, birds will sing, and all your search engine rankings will bring good fortune. Yet, this simple word makes a world of difference in outcomes.
If your leadership and execution team don’t share understanding, success becomes accidental. Progress depends on luck, heroics, and bursts of effort. When teams close that gap, SEO becomes easier to prioritize, measure, and sustain throughout your online endeavors.
Clarity keeps teams moving forward when rankings fluctuate and attention shifts. Search breaks down in the handoffs. It accelerates when those handoffs become shared understanding instead of separate responsibilities.
If you’ve “tried SEO” without an improvement in your company’s online presence, you have an alignment problem, and it’s time to seek clarity. We provide the clarity you need, with in-house SEO training for marketing teams and executive SEO training for CMOs and other leadership. Gain the understanding your team needs for higher SEO ROI and long-term results. Contact Level343 today.
