Understanding a SEO Business Strategy to align SEO and Business Goals
By Gabrio Linari, Last Updated on 24 February 2025
This is not going to be yet another article about SEO strategy in the same way other websites on page #1 have approached it, because to me those are all great articles but they’re not really telling you how to approach this from the business angle so that will be the goal of this SEO strategy piece which we could even call it your business’ seo strategy.
A strategy is an higher piece, something you can and should be discussing with your CEO or business owner or your client. Then for the tactics, that’s what goes down on the executional side of things which feeds from whatever the strategy said. A strategy isn’t a mere collection of “Content, Technical and Backlinks”, it’s the overarching high level thinking that will drive your business forward, the way you planned it and envisioned it.
And the most difficult question is usually: How do you align an SEO strategy with business goals? This question is the key of a successful SEO business strategy. It’s easy to get caught up in the technicalities and forget that SEO isn’t just about search engines, enough of that in 2024, it’s about your business ROI.
The key is to remember that SEO is a tool, not the end goal. Your end goal is to drive your business forward, whether that means increasing revenue, expanding market share, or boosting customer engagement. Without a clear alignment with business objectives, even the best executed SEO strategy can fall flat, delivering traffic but not the tangible business results that matter.
Aligning SEO Strategy with Business Goals
As previously mentioned, aligning your SEO strategy with business goals starts with asking the right questions. Sit down with your business owner or client and dig deep into the core objectives. Start with high level questions like:
“What are we trying to achieve here?”
“What is the scope of our product or service?”
“Who is our ideal customer, and what problem are we solving for them?”
“What does success look like for us in the next 6 to 12 months?”
These questions help you frame the SEO strategy within the broader context of the business’s mission and vision. Without this foundational understanding, any strategy you create will be more of a shot in the dark than a calculated plan for success.
Once you’ve clarified these key points, your next step is to immerse yourself in the product or service you’re promoting. Get hands on with it, understand its strengths and weaknesses, and study the competition. Attend planning meetings with other stakeholders, and observe how different departments interact with the product. It’s like being a detective, you need to gather all the clues before you can solve the puzzle. This thorough understanding will ensure your SEO strategy is not just effective but deeply integrated with the business’s overall goals.
Then once you know those things, if there’s already a product you need to immerse yourself with the product, learn its highs and lows, study the competition, participate at planning meetings, with the other stakeholders, your new colleagues, be like a fly on the wall before you start.
I remember a number of years ago when I was working at this good agency in London; we had a new CEO just in and I was surprised that for the first 2-3 weeks he didn’t say anything much at all (former CEO was still in), and later on I really understood why: he was just observing, analysing what was working and what wasn’t working, only in due time he started with his strategic vision on how to drive the agency forward. That was pretty cool, but I must admit that at some point I was wondering: what is he doing? That was all part of his business strategy in fact.
Core Components of a Successful SEO Business Strategy
For the core components of a successful SEO business strategy, you need to begin with a solid benchmark. This involves assessing where the business currently stands. Often, clients don’t have clearly defined goals (or they even have the wrong ones), which can be a challenge. In such cases, it’s your responsibility to help them articulate these goals. For instance, you might need to ask, “Are we focused on brand awareness, lead generation, or direct sales?” or “What are the most critical KPIs for this campaign: traffic, conversions, or something else?”
Once you’ve set a benchmark and clarified the business goals, you can move on to deciding which tactics will best support those goals. This might include content creation, technical SEO, local SEO efforts, or link building strategies. But remember, these tactics should always be chosen based on how they contribute to the overarching business strategy. For example, if the goal is to increase local sales, focusing on local SEO and building relationships within the community might take precedence over a broader content strategy. Each tactic should be a piece of the larger puzzle, fitting together to form a coherent and effective strategy.
I reviewed the top ranking articles on SEO strategy out there and Hubspot does a good job with a step by step article on how to create an SEO Strategy in 2024. I liked this one because it offered practical advice, you even have a ready made template included.
Watch the video below to learn how a consultant can support startup CEOs, particularly those in Series A funding, and business owners seeking growth. It highlights the critical questions a consultant should ask to ensure that a growth strategy aligns with business goals. I break it down into four key steps:
1. Questions
2. Benchmark
3. Strategy
4. Honesty!
Leveraging SEO Data for Business Decisions
Measuring SEO success goes beyond just tracking organic traffic and search impressions. While these metrics are important, they don’t always tell the full story, especially when it comes to aligning with business goals. For instance, if the primary business objective is to increase online sales, then conversion rates, average order value, and customer lifetime value might be more relevant metrics. Alternatively, if the goal is to build brand awareness, then tracking social shares, brand mentions, and engagement rates could be more telling. The key is to tailor your metrics to what truly matters for the business at hand.
SEO data can be a goldmine for informing broader business strategies. For example, by analyzing which keywords drive the most conversions, you can gain insights into what your customers are really looking for and adjust your product offerings accordingly. Similarly, understanding which pages have the highest engagement rates can help you identify what type of content resonates most with your audience, guiding your content marketing strategy. This data driven approach ensures that your SEO efforts are not only improving search rankings but also contributing to the overall growth and success of the business.
SEO Business Strategy in Different Business Contexts
When developing an SEO business strategy, it’s essential to shift the focus away from traditional metrics like traffic volume. The real value lies in understanding and targeting buyer intent. Not all traffic is created equal, what really matters is attracting the right audience, those who are ready to take action and convert. This approach prioritizes quality over quantity, aiming for strategic content that drives revenue rather than just increasing visitor numbers.
Consider this: By reducing overall traffic but focusing on high intent keywords and creating targeted landing pages, a business can see a significant increase in revenue. It’s not about how many people visit your site, but about how many of those visitors are genuinely interested in what you offer and are ready to engage or make a purchase.
For example, a SaaS startup might initially be tempted to chase high traffic numbers to show rapid growth. However, by zeroing in on content that directly addresses the needs of potential customers, such as detailed guides, case studies, and product comparisons, they can attract users who are much more likely to convert, leading to sustainable growth. This is where understanding what are the best SEO strategies for tech startups becomes crucial.
A consultant is very important for a startup, as early stages startups often lack the in house expertise to craft a comprehensive SEO strategy that aligns with their unique business goals.
On the other hand, an enterprise level company with a global reach must consider a more complex strategy. Here, aligning the SEO efforts with international market nuances becomes crucial. This is where an international SEO specialist plays a pivotal role, ensuring that the strategy is not only tailored to local markets but also supports the company’s broader business objectives of global expansion.
Understanding why an international SEO specialist is important is key for enterprises. They help navigate the complexities of different languages, cultures, and search behaviors, ensuring the SEO strategy is effective across multiple regions.
In both scenarios, the overarching theme is the same: Your SEO strategy should be a direct driver of business growth, tailored to the specific needs and goals of your business context. It’s about moving beyond vanity metrics and focusing on what truly contributes to your bottom line.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
When it comes to discussing business objectives for your seo strategy, there’s a tendency of focusing on what we call vanity metrics. A good example is publishing content for the sake of traffic without a solid alignment with the business KPIs and establishing an ROI for the business.
It’s very tempting to go hey we’ve done 20x on traffic, we’re achieved our KPIs, when in fact we’ve not focused on activations or whichever is your main KPI (phone calls, purchases, orders of shoes at checkout, booking on courses, book sales, etc).
One of the most common pitfalls in developing an SEO strategy is the focus on vanity metrics, those numbers that look impressive on paper but don’t necessarily translate into business success. It’s easy to get caught up in celebrating increased website traffic or higher search rankings, but if these metrics don’t lead to tangible business outcomes like sales, leads, or customer retention, they’re ultimately meaningless. For example, an SEO strategy that drives a 20% increase in traffic but doesn’t improve conversion rates or customer engagement is missing the mark.
The key to avoiding this pitfall is to align SEO metrics with business goals from the start. For instance, if your business goal is to increase online sales, your SEO strategy should focus on metrics like conversion rate, average order value, and revenue per visitor rather than just traffic volume. Similarly, if the goal is lead generation, then the number of form submissions or the quality of those leads should be your primary focus. By keeping the emphasis on metrics that matter to the business, you ensure that your SEO efforts are driving real value.
How do you avoid making big mistakes when aligning a seo strategy with the higher business goals? When you’re discussing with your director of marketing of CEO, having a split between “marketing” goals and “business” goals can go a long way, in fact while there certainly are common areas, they’re not the same thing.
When you write down a strategy, you can do it in a variety of ways, it could be VERY high level or more detailed. The more detailed way of doing it would be a word document (example) where you describe in details all the goals and objectives BUT you don’t describe the tactics. That’s for later and that’s what many articles can help you with, for example ahrefs blog does a great job at that.
The way a SEO strategy document should be written is a view high enough for your main stakeholders to understand what you and your team will be doing. It should not detail tactics in a zoomed in level.
Having a clear distinction between marketing goals and business goals can go a long way and prevent misalignment in your SEO strategy. For example, a marketing goal might be to increase social media followers by 20%, while a business goal might be to drive 15% more revenue through online sales. A good SEO strategy would bridge these goals by focusing on increasing high intent traffic that’s likely to convert, rather than just boosting social media engagement. On the flip side, a poor strategy would focus solely on increasing traffic without considering whether that traffic is likely to result in sales, leading to a disconnect between what the SEO strategy achieves and what the business actually needs.
Example: “Scaling up Content Marketing”
To attract unique visitors and convert users in X, we’ll do Y activity half yearly and perform Z refreshes on a regular basis. We’ll take advantage of “low season” X for this demanding and lengthy task to ensure we’ve got a solid plan to work on during the high season.
This isn’t saying in detail what we’ll be doing yet gives a view on what we’ll be doing in order to “scale up content marketing”, etc
Other Examples
Case 1: A recruitment business aimed to improve its performance in closing candidates, particularly in a competitive market. To support this goal, I developed a targeted content strategy that increased their organic traffic by 25% YoY. This strategy wasn’t just about driving more visitors, it was about attracting the right candidates who were more likely to convert. By identifying and addressing key conversion bottlenecks within their sales funnel, we improved the client’s ability to close candidates, leading to a 14% enhancement in their overall sales funnel performance. This was achieved by aligning content efforts with the recruitment business’s core objectives, ensuring that the increased traffic translated directly into tangible business results.
Case 2: A content marketing agency needed to scale up its operations efficiently to meet growing client demands. Their primary business goals were to increase production and improve task management within their team, enabling faster and more scalable growth. I led a project focused on product optimization, which boosted overall productivity by 25%. Additionally, I launched an AI driven capacity prediction system that enhanced monthly planning accuracy to 75-80%. These improvements allowed the agency to manage its resources more effectively, scale up production, and meet its ambitious growth targets, all while maintaining high client satisfaction.
Case 3: A propTech company with a housing platform sought to increase both user acquisitions (traffic, content, etc.) and activations (subscriptions to their service). To achieve these business goals, I led a content marketing team that strategically increased article production by 120%, resulting in a 340% boost in peak visitor traffic across key markets (IT, ES, and DE). These efforts were directly linked to the company’s acquisition strategy, driving more potential users to the platform. Furthermore, by refining conversion strategies, we enhanced daily user activations by 220%, significantly improving the platform’s ability to convert visitors into paying subscribers. This comprehensive approach ensured that the increased traffic led to meaningful growth in user engagement and revenue.
In Conclusion
A successful SEO business strategy goes beyond the traditional SEO tactics of content creation, technical optimization, and link building. It’s about aligning these efforts with your business’s overarching goals, whether that’s driving revenue, increasing market share, or enhancing customer engagement. While a standard SEO strategy might focus on improving search rankings and driving traffic, an SEO business strategy takes it a step further by ensuring that these improvements translate into tangible business outcomes.
The difference lies in the intent: a standard SEO strategy is often about the “how”, how to rank higher, how to get more clicks. But an SEO business strategy is about the “why”, why these efforts matter, why they align with the business’s long term goals. This strategic alignment ensures that your SEO efforts contribute directly to your business’s success.
If you’re looking to develop an SEO business strategy that truly drives results, consider consulting with me. With a focus on aligning SEO with business objectives, I can help you create a strategy that not only boosts your search rankings but also drives meaningful growth for your business.
For those who want a deep dive into the technical aspects, Backlinko offers a solid guide, though it can be overwhelming for beginners. Search Engine Journal also has a great resource. However, if you’re in love with SEMrush, this guide is for you, just be prepared for a heavy dose of self promotion. Lastly, Google’s SEO starter guide is handy but comes with a fair bit of bias, as expected from the search giant.
About The Author
I have over 15 years of professional experience spanning SEO, strategic digital transformations, and business growth initiatives. My expertise lies in aligning SEO efforts with business goals to drive meaningful results. I regularly post on LinkedIn about Growth Marketing, remote work, and inspirational topics. Check out my latest posts on Gabrio’s Thoughts, which is regularly updated. You can discover more about me here and don’t forget to subscribe to ROCK SEO YouTube Channel, featuring Rocky 🐶.