I have worked with agencies for 7 years, seeing all sorts of organizations from MIT to Pew Trusts, and worked at organizations like Intuit, the Royal Bank of Canada, and been in SEO/AEO platforms that cater to enterprise like BrightEdge and Brandlight. I’ve seen a lot of scenarios play out, and I want to share some learnings. And not all of this is purely a search problem.
Let’s jump into it.
First, enterprise organizations have a ton of challenges moving with technology. From procurement to enablement to execution, large organizations generally move slower because of red tape. Legal. Compliance. Sign-off. So much.
Here is how I would bucket the (non-exhaustive) list:
Executive buy-in
Proving performance
Securing budget (tech)
To help with efficiency & scale
Strategy
Organizational friction
Siloed, horizontal alignment
To win, it's about integration and human alignment. Let's break down these challenges I've witnessed.
Executive buy-in
How far up (to the board) and down the ladder do people understand the shift that's happening? How prepared are any of them to talk about the titanic shifts happening in search? Do they think this is just SEO 2.0, or do they understand the speed at which this is happening?
Ask yourselves questions like this, and then think about how it ladders to organizational goals, and if it's even a priority this week, this quarter, this year. Disruption is happening all around us, but it's time we put a price tag on inaction.
Education is extremely important, as executives have far too many things on their plate and conciseness is key, so you learn to be extremely succinct when creating plans, documentations, or strategy for senior leadership.
Performance
The attribution of AI is difficult; there's no sugarcoating it. There are proxies you can use, like Google's Monthly Search Volume for your brand, but there are a lot of factors that influence that. There's referral traffic and revenue associated, but that's only a small piece of the puzzle because the value of AI search is visibility to be in the consideration set, not the subset that transacted during that exact interaction.
Due to the constant evolution of the space, the best we can get is directional at the moment. You can find your share of voice and share of citation — how often you are mentioned in the answers — and see how that changes over time and how much of certain markets you represent.
There are new metrics that are important to AI search, and they are absolutely different from traditional search. Some have a big price tag, which brings us to...
Budgets
Most organizations will evolve their current SEO strategy. They will use the same technologies that have stapled on new "GEO features."
Some will chase new solutions that crawl and query what's happening for their brand using prompts, a big market (that I was part of).
Some might look for headcount, hiring people who are AI-fluent and can help build skills and infrastructure to produce content at scale or implement SEO recommendations for better eligibility and accessibility.
Budgets should be looked at as scaler or optimization investments. Does this help from 0 to 1, or 1 to many? Does it help unburden the team and free them up to do things they want to do, or is it a build vs. buy conversation? Is it better to hire in-house or get an agency?
Soon, AI surfaces will do what SEOs have been doing for a decade: integrate paid and organic into a holistic approach, because the channels and surfaces are the same and they are competing for attention. Paid shores up weak organic, and good organic reduces the need for paid. As ad placements are introduced, teams that have become "holistic search" will be advantaged.
Strategy
Strategy should not be a list of tactics.
It should incorporate your organizational and digital goals. You need to understand how you are going to win in the context of your industry, your market, your product, or your business strategy.
Slapping together a list of best practices based on a ChatGPT ask is not a strategy. Putting together a list of "stuff to do" is not moving toward a goal; it's actually fracturing your focus.
I've seen 100-slide decks from agencies, and I've seen a tight 5 slides that cover strategy. It's not about the count; it's about the substance. Ultimately, strategy does not live in a PowerPoint — that's just for stakeholders — it lives in the micro-decisions you made to get there and the ones you'll be making after:
WHO are the people or brands we should connect with to create value-added content? Saying "content marketing opportunities" is vague.
WHAT are the websites that our consumers are using to discover us? Just saying sites like Reddit or YouTube isn't enough.
WHEN are we measuring success? What does the timetable look like for understanding incremental gains? Saying "traffic" isn't the right metric.
WHERE are we strong or weak, and what is our advantage from a business perspective? Doing "playbooks" isn't one-size-fits-all.
HOW are we aligning across teams to get this done? Usually there's a driver and a RACI; ownership is flattened with AI.
Industry and organizational friction
I've worked at Intuit, I've worked at RBC, I've worked at BrightEdge serving enterprise customers, and I've led accounts at agencies with Fortune 500 clients. Friction is everywhere; you can't ignore it, and time-to-action is often one of the biggest hurdles.
Different industries have different issues they need to face: some can't scale content, some have complex supply chains, and others have nothing stopping them but a plan. A few frictions I've seen:
Financial services? Compliance and regulation.
Ecommerce? Scale and funnel optimization.
NGO? Internal politics and membership.
Beyond even the industry-specific challenges, there's organizational friction. Getting an at-bat for a project, getting alignment for your annual OKRs, getting in front of ELTs to propose new headcount or budget — this stuff takes time, and ultimately it's about building trust.
Navigating these waters can be challenging, and hopefully some of the wisdom and headaches I've endured can help you in your journey.
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