Fifteen years in enterprise search engine optimization (SEO) is not just about understanding search algorithms; it’s about mastering human dynamics, timing, and the subtle art of influence. Observing organizations from the inside, I’ve seen what truly drives progress, or stalls it, and it often comes down to people, not tools or tactics. Here’s a behind-the-scenes perspective on what this career path taught me about navigating workplace politics, fostering collaboration, and consistently delivering results.
What People Taught Me: Power Flows from Relationships
SEO may start with data and strategy, but it scales through relationships. Cross-departmental collaboration isn’t just a buzzword, it’s the backbone of success. Product teams, engineering, and content creators often hold the keys to implementation, and alienating them only slows progress.
One of my biggest revelations was this: Respect isn’t innate; it must be earned. It’s tempting to take a confrontational route when explaining the urgency of SEO, but persuasion is far more effective when you ask questions instead of prescribing solutions. For example, discussing how improved site speed impacts user experience can bridge the gap between metrics and their on-the-ground implications for developers or marketers.
How to Win Allies in the SEO Journey:
- Start meetings by listening. Always research the team’s goals and challenges before pitching any SEO initiative.
- Keep proposals rooted in benefits that make sense to them. For a CMO, you tie SEO to revenue. For developers, you emphasize site efficiency improvements.
- Build shared wins. For example, one of my most impactful initiatives involved celebrating how an engineering upgrade led to 25% faster load times, which directly improved organic conversion rates.
Timing: Speak at the Right Moments
The urge to prove one’s value often pushes SEO professionals to constantly pitch ideas or tweak strategies. But in large organizations, timing and tone matter as much as insight.
Speaking strategically, when the room is ready to hear you, carries more weight than chiming in at every opportunity. I learned this after pushing a technical SEO recommendation at the wrong stage in a product roadmap. The resistance wasn’t because they doubted the SEO benefits; they simply weren’t prepared to shift priorities mid-sprint.
Timing Tips for SEO Teams:
- Wait for transition moments like leadership changes or quarterly resets to bring up big ideas. New goals often make people more open to revisiting old processes.
- Treat requests as invitations, not demands. A simple phrase like “how can we make this work with your current roadmap?” can work wonders.
- Record your contributions regularly, even when not presented immediately, your insights may find relevance when the timing aligns.
Lessons About Power: Visibility Isn’t a Given
Often SEOs assume that their results, like ranking boosts or a growing traffic graph, will “speak for themselves.” In reality, they rarely do. Most executives are too consumed with financial priorities and competing demands to notice efforts unless presented clearly and visually.
At one company, I successfully pitched an SEO-driven content strategy that grew organic sessions by 300% within nine months. Yet, leadership didn’t understand the impact until I connected this spike to increased sales. Narratives like, "This campaign grew traffic by X%, leading to $1M in additional sales," diminish doubts and build allies.
How to Showcase Your Impact:
- Use dashboards and concise decks that tie SEO to key business milestones.
- Pull executive-friendly metrics, like revenue attribution and lead conversions, rankings alone won’t excite stakeholders.
- Report momentum over time. For example, paired month-by-month graphs of “Cumulative Sales from SEO” helped illustrate consistent value at one SaaS company.
Progress Comes from Adaptable Processes
Organizational routines rarely align organically with SEO goals. As SEO professionals, we often have to act as educators and process-builders.
One successful approach I’ve used consistently involves clearly documenting SEO workflows for teams. For example, outlining the technical and non-technical checks involved during a site migration minimized dependencies while enhancing the project’s long-term impact.
Process Development Insights:
- Keep workflows simple. Engineers don’t want extra forms; marketers don’t need overwhelmed spreadsheets. Focus on essentials.
- Batch recommendations with action triggers. At one retailer, I introduced a monthly “SEO bake-off” process: each team brought an optimization focus (“mobile images” or “geo-specific copy”), and together we evaluated wins.
- Audit success quarterly. Nothing justifies operational tweaks like data-backed progress.
The Most Common Mistake: Self-Sabotage
Burnout runs rampant in careers like SEO. There’s always more to do, new techniques to learn, and results to chase. But constantly chasing perfectionism or pouring hours into unacknowledged efforts can lead to frustration. Early in my career, I worked until 10 PM preparing technical update reports that no one ended up reading, valuable hours, wasted. Learning to recognize diminishing returns saved my career.
How to Avoid Common Pitfalls:
- Block downtime into weekly schedules. For all the non-stop nature of SEO culture, some of the best ideas come when you allow rest.
- Push for realistic deadlines. A “perfect URL structure” today won’t matter if it breaks your team.
- Learn when it’s good enough. If a task is 90% ready to implement today, execute it and refine later. Waiting on perfect completion will slow your progress indefinitely.
A Quick How-To for Mastering Enterprise SEO
- Understand your organization’s culture. Who holds power? How do decisions get made? The better you map this terrain, the more efficiently your efforts will land.
- Think beyond rankings. Focus on SEO’s impact on customer retention, revenue, and operational improvements.
- Keep the user in the center. No amount of optimization will matter if the user experience fails. Even as search engines rely more on AI, user engagement will remain vital.
- Evolve with technology. Add tools like advanced data analytics and automated SEO optimizers to free up time for strategy work.
- Treat collaboration as king. Your expertise matters, but without implementation support from tech and content teams, your ideas rarely last long.
Conclusion
Being in the enterprise SEO world for over a decade helped me understand the trifecta that truly drives long-term growth: collaborating effectively with people, mastering timing to deploy effort wisely, and relentlessly pushing clear processes. Success as an SEO means more than executing optimizations. It’s about aligning with a company’s goals, building influence, and showing how SEO drives business.
What I hope others take from my experience is this: as much as SEO is about improving rankings, its deeper purpose is steering an organization toward understanding its users better and meeting them where they are. Focus on the “why” behind the work, embrace partnerships, and never forget that your progress is intertwined with how you communicate it.
FAQ on What 15 Years in Enterprise SEO Taught Me
1. What are the key insights from 15 years in enterprise SEO?
The most important lessons include mastering organizational dynamics, building cross-functional relationships, aligning SEO with business goals, and showcasing value through measurable impacts like revenue attribution. Explore more about these lessons
2. How important are relationships in SEO success?
Relationships are critical because cross-departmental collaboration ensures seamless implementation of SEO strategies. Building trust and aligning with team goals is foundational. Learn how relationships power enterprise SEO
3. Why is timing important in SEO recommendations?
Presenting SEO suggestions at the right moments, such as during leadership changes or planning phases, ensures they’re better received and implemented. Acting strategically carries more weight than constant pitching. Understand when to speak up in SEO
4. How should SEO professionals communicate results to leadership?
Use dashboards and executive-friendly metrics that connect SEO improvements to business outcomes, such as revenue or conversions. This makes the value of SEO clear and tangible for decision-makers. Learn to showcase SEO success
5. What are the “Four Pillars of SEO” mentioned by Jenn Mathews?
The four pillars are People, Process, Platforms, and Performance. They emphasize collaboration, clear workflows, effective tools, and measurable impact to achieve enterprise SEO goals. Discover Jenn Mathews’ Four Pillars framework
6. How can SEO professionals avoid burnout?
Maintaining realistic deadlines, setting boundaries, and prioritizing rest can help prevent burnout. Recognizing diminishing returns on effort and being selective about tasks are key strategies. Explore ways to prevent burnout in SEO
7. Are metrics like rankings sufficient to show SEO progress?
No, rankings alone rarely excite executive teams. Results must be tied to tangible business metrics like sales growth, customer retention, or operational efficiency to demonstrate SEO’s broader impact. Find out how to connect SEO to business outcomes
8. What is the first step to mastering enterprise SEO?
Understanding the company’s culture, how decisions are made and who holds influence, is crucial. Aligning SEO efforts with the organization’s goals is the best way to ensure progress. Learn how to start with enterprise SEO
9. How should SEOs influence implementation teams?
Listening to their goals, framing SEO benefits in terms of their priorities, and celebrating shared successes are effective ways to gain buy-in from product, engineering, and marketing teams. Explore collaboration strategies in SEO
10. How can SEO professionals adapt to organizational change?
By documenting processes, staying flexible, and committing to continuous learning about new technologies and methodologies, SEO professionals can remain effective amidst change. See how to navigate organizational changes in SEO
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta Bonenkamp's expertise in CAD sector, IP protection and blockchain
Violetta Bonenkamp is recognized as a multidisciplinary expert with significant achievements in the CAD sector, intellectual property (IP) protection, and blockchain technology.
CAD Sector:
- Violetta is the CEO and co-founder of CADChain, a deep tech startup focused on developing IP management software specifically for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data. CADChain addresses the lack of industry standards for CAD data protection and sharing, using innovative technology to secure and manage design data.
- She has led the company since its inception in 2018, overseeing R&D, PR, and business development, and driving the creation of products for platforms such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, and SolidWorks.
- Her leadership has been instrumental in scaling CADChain from a small team to a significant player in the deeptech space, with a diverse, international team.
IP Protection:
- Violetta has built deep expertise in intellectual property, combining academic training with practical startup experience. She has taken specialized courses in IP from institutions like WIPO and the EU IPO.
- She is known for sharing actionable strategies for startup IP protection, leveraging both legal and technological approaches, and has published guides and content on this topic for the entrepreneurial community.
- Her work at CADChain directly addresses the need for robust IP protection in the engineering and design industries, integrating cybersecurity and compliance measures to safeguard digital assets.
Blockchain:
- Violetta’s entry into the blockchain sector began with the founding of CADChain, which uses blockchain as a core technology for securing and managing CAD data.
- She holds several certifications in blockchain and has participated in major hackathons and policy forums, such as the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum.
- Her expertise extends to applying blockchain for IP management, ensuring data integrity, traceability, and secure sharing in the CAD industry.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the "gamepreneurship" methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the POV of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.