How To Secure And Defend Your SEO Budget For Executive Buy-In via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

In an increasingly difficult economy, do you know how to prove the value of your SEO and remain efficient, while maintaining the SEO budgets you need to succeed?

Will Critchlow, CEO of SearchPilot, joins me on the SEJShow to examine actionable strategies to doing more with less and maintaining the freedom to test, all while proving the positive impacts of your SEO work. 

Using insights from marketing leaders, SEO specialists, and senior executives, you’ll hear Will and Loren break down the skills you need to keep your CFO happy while driving efficiency.

If you’ve found yourself having to defend your budget, pitch harder than ever, and work more to prove your results, then you won’t want to miss this episode.

There’s more pressure on ROI calculations, there’s more scrutiny on all of those decisions. SEOs are often shy of taking on targets, quotas, goals and so forth. But even forecasting is something that I think the industry is too naive about. –Will Critchlow, 06:04

Big companies are spending tons of money on this stuff. The fact that you are out there asking for a quarter of a million dollars, half a million dollars, whatever it might be, that’s actually totally achievable. –Will Critchlow, 09:38 

Speaking of the funnel, we all know that SEO is not a direct response marketing technique. It’s not search keyword, find site buy done. There’s all kinds of touch points throughout the funnel, multi-touch attribution, which is massive. –Loren Baker, 16:16 

[00:00] – Will’s background and expertise.
[08:44] – Integration challenges in long-term planning.
[12:30] – The importance of planning when dealing with CFOs.
[13:18] – Tracking multiple attribution points.
[16:16] – Google algorithm updates and their impact on forecasting.
[21:05] – Forecasting challenges influenced by various factors.
[23:32] – Beta testing’s effects on search results.
[26:41] – The evolving impact of AI-powered tools on search queries.
[29:28] – Strategies for SEO teams to improve forecasting.

Resources Mentioned: 

SEO as a product discipline is something that we are seeing. And what that often means is squads of product managers, engineers, designers, all aligned to that objective. –Will Critchlow, 13:18 

I think almost every SEO is testing beta testing, Google, SGE, and we have in our heads that when that query is done, everything’s going to be pushed down. There’s going to be an article, there’s going to be this, there’s going to be that, but we tend to forget that we’re the ones beta testing it, right? –Loren Baker, 23:07

And so the other reason that I’m bullish on there being organic links is I think there have to be ad links because I don’t think Google is going to turn off 98% of their revenue overnight. And I think they’re not going to go with only ad links because I think that’s a degraded user experience. So I think there’s going to be a combination of advertising links and organic links, and our job is to win the organic just as it always has been. –Will Critchlow, 27:37 

Connect with Will Critchlow:

Will Critchlow is the founder and CEO of SearchPilot, a company dedicated to simplifying and improving SEO testing processes for large websites. He co-founded the SEO agency Distilled in 2005 and played a key role in expanding its services and the SearchLove conference series to the US, establishing offices in Seattle and New York. 

In February 2020, he spun out SearchPilot as an independent business while Distilled was acquired by Brainlabs. Will is recognized for his expertise in SEO and digital marketing and often shares his insights through various platforms.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willcritchlow/

Connect with Loren Baker:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker 

Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker