A CMO’s Guide To SEO: Myths, Challenges and Realities

As a CMO, SEO should be a key part of your overall digital marketing strategy. However, there are plenty of misconceptions about how it works, and many challenges you’ll have to overcome when implementing a strategy.

So, in this guide, we’ll debunk some of these myths and discuss the realities of SEO. We’ll also cover the obstacles you’ll encounter if you try to create a strategy yourself and show you why it’s best to hire consultants instead.

What does SEO actually mean for CMOs?

SEO involves optimising your site to generate high-quality traffic, improve search engine rankings and increase revenue.

The primary focus of SEO is to rank highly for search terms related to your business’s products/services. Doing so drives more leads, generates sales, and builds brand awareness.

To achieve this, we create and execute an SEO strategy tailored to target users at each stage of the buyer’s journey and ensure it’s aligned with your broader digital marketing campaigns.

SEO is particularly important for B2B CMOs as it has a significant impact on brand visibility, customer acquisition, and overall revenue generation. In fact, it’s the most used marketing tactic by B2B companies.

To give you an even better idea of why SEO is so important for CMOs in the B2B space, take a look at these stats:

• 66% of B2B buyers rely on organic search when researching products/services they plan to buy.
• 23% of B2B marketers say organic search is the most effective channel for driving revenue.
• B2B buyers spend 27% of the buyer’s journey using organic search.
• B2B companies generate double the amount of revenue from organic search than any other marketing channel.

Generally, the most effective way to achieve SEO success is to hire experienced consultants like Growthack. We can assess your business’s overall goals and craft an SEO strategy that helps you accomplish them.

SEO myths vs realities for CMOs

There are various myths about SEO and its processes. To help you better understand how it works and set your expectations, we’re going to debunk a few of these misconceptions.

	Myth	Reality
Timescales	One of the most common myths we come across is that SEO delivers instant results. A lot of CMOs, and marketers in general, assume that once an SEO strategy is in place, their rankings will improve immediately. They also often expect to see a surge in traffic and conversions within a very short timeframe (two to four weeks). This myth creates unrealistic expectations and can lead to frustration when these immediate results don’t materialise.	The reality is that SEO strategies take time to produce significant results. They require patience and persistence and are designed to achieve long-term, sustainable success. Generally, it takes around three to six months for SEO to have a significant impact. However, this is highly dependent on numerous factors, like the age and authority of the site. We set realistic timescales for your campaigns. We outline when you can expect to start seeing results and how our strategy will get you there.
Cost	Another common myth among digital marketers is that SEO is a one-time investment that delivers results indefinitely. It’s often assumed that you can invest in an initial SEO campaign and experience a steady stream of organic traffic and conversions without further investments. This misconception can lead to lost opportunities and disappointing results.	In reality, SEO is an ongoing investment for CMOs as it requires continuous effort. It’s not a case of simply creating a strategy and then leaving it in place. Instead, this strategy must be adjusted and updated regularly to ensure it continues to deliver results. One reason for this is that search engine algorithms are constantly being updated. These updates, like Google’s March 2024 Core Update, can have a big impact on sites’ rankings. SEO requires ongoing investment so that these changes can be closely monitored and strategies can be adjusted accordingly.
Rankings	There is a common misconception that the only real aim of SEO is to get your site ranking in the coveted top position of the organic search results pages. Of course, ranking highly is a very important part of SEO but if this is the sole aim of a strategy, it’s unlikely to achieve the desired results.	While high rankings are beneficial, SEO objectives go far beyond this. The core goals are to drive relevant traffic to your site and turn that traffic into conversions. High rankings alone do not count as success. For example, a website might rank number one for a broad search term, but this may not translate to qualified traffic and increased conversions. Broad search terms attract a wide audience, and many of these users may not be interested in the specific products/services offered by the brand. This is why our consultants conduct thorough keyword research to ensure the terms we target are highly relevant to the search intent of your target audience. By understanding search intent, we can then create highly valuable content that’s relevant to these terms. When this content starts ranking, it attracts qualified leads who are already interested in what your brand has to offer. It’s vital we ensure this content ranks highly as 67.6% of organic traffic clicks originate from the top five organic search results.
Content quality vs quantity	Content is the bedrock of any successful SEO strategy. However, some agencies focus on generating high volumes of content in an attempt to send positive signals to search engines. The issue with this is that quality is often sacrificed so that content can be pumped out at a rapid pace. Now, that’s not to say that quantity isn’t important. In any content strategy, consistency is key. Publishing relevant content regularly keeps your audience engaged and helps to improve your site’s visibility in the search results. It sends signals to Google that the site is active and is being maintained. Still, quantity is not the most important factor in content creation.	When it comes to SEO, quality is more important than quantity. If you focus on quantity, it can lead to repetitive, shallow content that fails to address search intent and doesn’t engage your audience. Google prioritises content that’s valuable and helpful to users. This means that high-quality content designed to match the search intent and address the common pain points of your audience is far more likely to rank than low-quality, unhelpful content.
In-house vs outsourced SEO	The final myth we want to address is that keeping your SEO operations in-house is always more cost-effective than outsourcing them. Many CMOs assume that it’s less expensive to assemble an in-house SEO team than to outsource their SEO efforts to a consultant. One reason for this is that they underestimate the complexity involved in creating and executing an effective SEO strategy.	In fact, it’s usually much more cost-effective to outsource your SEO operations to a consultant. There are a number of costs associated with building an in-house team. To give you an idea of how expensive it can be, here’s a breakdown of the average salaries for the employees you’d need to hire: SEO Manager: £39,709 per year SEO Analyst: £32,125 per year Technical SEO Specialist: £32,593 per year Content Writer: £28,596 per year Plus, you’ll also have to pay for any SEO tools and software your team needs, such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Let’s say you went with Ahrefs’ “Advanced” package which starts at £359 per month. That would put your estimated in-house SEO budget at £137,331 per year. Besides being expensive, performing SEO in-house is also incredibly complicated and time-consuming. Our Enterprise SEO services are tailored to the unique needs of your business and are priced to align with your budget. So, let us take care of all the hard work for you and allow us to create a winning strategy that helps you achieve your goals.

Here are three reasons SEO is a long-term process

• Building authority: The authority of a website has a big impact on its search engine rankings. To build authority, we use strategies like creating high-quality, authoritative content. Establishing authority is a gradual process, especially for new sites or sites that haven’t yet built user trust by publishing authoritative content.
• Competition: The competitiveness of your niche also has a big impact on how quickly you see results. If your brand is competing against established sites with strong SEO practices, it can take a significant amount of time to gain traction in the search engine results pages.
• Search engine indexing: When new content is published on a site, it doesn’t appear in search engine results immediately. First, search engine bots need to crawl and index the pages, which can take a long time. To make it easier for bots to crawl and index your site, agencies like ours use technical SEO to improve your site’s architecture, which is a relatively gradual process.

These are some of the ways we ensures your content is of the highest quality:

• We conduct thorough keyword research to identify topics that are relevant to your audience.
• We create valuable content that targets these keywords and addresses your users’ interests, needs, and pain points. Our content is designed for users first and search engines second.
• We include insights and solutions in your content that can’t be found elsewhere. This helps to establish your brand as a voice of authority within your niche.
• We create content that demonstrates E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). This is an important component of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG) and demonstrating E-E-A-T gives your site a boost in the search results pages.
• We enhance engagement and readability by using clear headings and subheadings and by breaking up walls of text with bullet points. We also design your content so that it has a logical flow of information, which is important for both users and search engines.
• We incorporate target keywords naturally into the content.
• We optimise titles and meta descriptions.
• We incorporate relevant CTAs and internal links strategically to increase your conversion rates.

In-house vs outsourced SEO

4 Challenges Of Implementing SEO For CMOs

As mentioned, SEO is a complex process that requires plenty of time and resources. It’s not easy to build an effective strategy that engages users and wins favour from search engines.

As a CMO, there are several key challenges you’ll face if you decide to handle your brand’s SEO yourself. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Integrating SEO with your other marketing strategies

SEO shouldn’t be an isolated marketing channel. Instead, it needs to be integrated into your broader marketing strategy. This can often be a challenge for CMOs, especially if they have little SEO experience.

However, integration is important as it prevents a fragmented marketing approach in which the various channels (SEO, email, social media, paid advertising) don’t align.

This is an issue because users interact with your brand across multiple touchpoints, which means consistency is key.

If you choose to outsource your SEO, you’ll need to collaborate with your consultant to ensure integration. This means that:

• Your brand messaging is consistent across all of your marketing channels.
• The consultant’s SEO content is designed to be repurposed across other channels like social media.
• Your SEO strategy targets the same audience segments as your other marketing strategies.

Consistent messaging across your marketing channels improves user experience and brand awareness, leading to increased conversions and enhanced credibility.

2. Performance data analysis

Tracking and analysing performance is a fundamental part of any successful SEO campaign. Yet, if you lack SEO experience, this can present a big challenge.

To track your campaign’s performance data effectively, you’ll need to use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to analyse metrics like:

• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Organic traffic
• Keyword rankings
• Leads generated

If you’ve never done this before, it can be very confusing to work out how your campaign is performing. As a result, you’ll be unable to identify the areas of your strategy that are working and those that need improvement.

Our consultants provide clients with regular performance reports that clearly demonstrate the progress of your campaign.

We include data on all of the important metrics you need and give you insights into how we’re achieving success for your business. This means performance data analysis will be one less challenge to worry about.

3. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is vital for improving the performance of your site and enhancing user experience. It includes a wide range of complex processes that are difficult to execute, which means you’ll require an expert with lots of experience to get it right.

To demonstrate how complex it is, here are just some of the things involved in technical SEO:

• Conducting technical SEO audits of your site to identify any issues.
• Optimising for Core Web Vitals to ensure your site provides a great user experience.
• Improving site speed with tactics like compressing images and minifying JavaScript and CSS files.
• Implementing responsive designs to ensure mobile-friendliness.
• Fixing crawling and indexation issues.
• Fixing broken links, 404 errors, and setting up redirects.
• Optimising URL structure.
• Adding schema markup to enhance rich snippets.
• Optimising your internal linking structure.
• Addressing security issues like a lack of SSL certification.

As you can see, there’s a lot involved, and a beginner simply can’t handle these processes.

At Growthack, we provide advanced technical SEO services that ensure your site is fully optimised for the best possible user experience. We take care of everything, from indexation issues to web migrations, so users and crawlers can navigate your site with ease.

4. Staying ahead of competitors

As with your other marketing channels, SEO involves using various strategies to get ahead of your competitors and stay there.

To maintain a competitive edge, your strategy needs to be adjusted consistently based on analyses of competing strategies—which requires an expert. If you fail to keep up with your competitors, you’ll lose out on qualified leads and sales.

Our consultants are highly experienced in analysing our clients’ competitors and utilising the data to enhance their campaigns. This involves:

• Using SEO tools to identify your direct and indirect competitors.
• Analysing the structure, design, and content of their sites.
• Identifying the keywords your competitors are targeting that are driving traffic to their sites.
• Evaluating the types of content that are the most successful for your competitors.
• Conducting a keyword and content gap analysis to find relevant topics your competitor has missed or topics that are currently missing from your strategy.
• Analysing the technical SEO of competitor sites to identify areas for improvement on your site.

We then take all of this information and feed it back into your campaign. This helps us boost your traffic and rankings and ensures you stay ahead of your competitors. This means outranking them in the search results, attracting more organic traffic than them, and getting leads to buy your products/services instead of theirs.

What unethical SEO practices should CMOs be aware of when hiring an agency?

When hiring an agency, CMOs should avoid those that use unethical practices (known as black hat SEO tactics) to manipulate search engine algorithms.

These tactics can sometimes deliver fast results but they aren’t sustainable, and they run the risk of incurring Google penalties.

Some of the most common black hat tactics to look out for include:

• Keyword stuffing.
• Buying backlinks from link farms.
• Using redirects to send users to a different page than the one they clicked on.
• Using private blog networks (PBNs) for link-building.
• Displaying different content to search engine bots than the content displayed to users, which is known as cloaking.

How will Google’s SGE affect SEO?

Google’s SGE (known as AI Overviews) is already having a big impact on SEO. Many sites have noticed a decrease in organic traffic and visibility since it was introduced. This is because SGE results appear at the top of the search results pages and are designed to answer user queries without them having to scroll down and click on other results.

Agencies like ours are implementing various strategies to combat the negative effects of SGE like targeting longer-tail keywords and focusing on E-E-A-T even more than usual. However, SGE will continue to be a challenge that SEO agencies will have to overcome.

Final Thoughts

There are many myths about SEO that circulate among CMOs. Some think it’s cheaper to keep it in-house rather than outsource it. Others believe the results are immediate instead of long-term.

While neither of these assertions is true, one thing certainly is—SEO is a complicated process that requires continuous effort.