Don't be a roadblock, SEO needs to say yes
I have seen many organizations where the SEO team has earned an unfortunate reputation: it is the Department of “No.”
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by North Star Inbound and Otterly
Sponsor this newsletter on LimelightHQ
I have seen many organizations where the SEO team has earned an unfortunate reputation: it is the Department of “No.”
They have relegated themselves to being the gatekeepers of best practices, ready to strike down anything for using a non-optimized URL or delay a product launch because of a suboptimal site structure that breaches “best practices of SEO”. While this function is often born from a genuine desire to protect and grow organic visibility, it creates a powerful and destructive side effect: friction.
[Sponsored by Otterly]
From SEO to GEO: AI Search Is Rewriting the Rules. Ready to Win?
Google’s still big - but it’s not alone anymore. ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews: AI search engines are rewriting how your audience finds you.
Good thing you’ve got OtterlyAI in your corner. Trusted by 5,000+ SEO pros, OtterlyAI helps you monitor, measure, and ride the AI search wave — without getting swept away.
True story: Bacula Enterprise is floating at #1 on ChatGPT for their key topics. Powered by OtterlyAI.
Now, OtterlyAI 2.0 takes it even further, giving you the tools to outsmart AI search and secure your share of tomorrow’s traffic.
✅ Monitor your AI visibility
✅ Optimize for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
✅ Stay otterly unstoppable
🔗Start your free 14-day OtterlyAI trial — and make your AI Search rankings Otterly untouchable. otterly.ai
This friction grinds momentum to a halt and fosters resentment between teams. When I consult companies where this has happened and facilitate conversations between teams, some real anger gets aired in these meetings.
Roadblocks are avoided
To avoid SEO gatekeeping, marketing and product teams often learn to work around the SEO team, launching initiatives without consultation and creating issues that need to be cleaned up months later. The more an SEO team says “no,” the less they are consulted on strategic decisions, redefining their role to a last-minute technical check-off rather than a partner in growth, which is what they should be.
When the SEO team becomes a roadblock, it doesn’t just slow down projects; it creates compounding organizational debt.
If the official path is blocked, teams will inevitably create their own. As examples, this is the source of off-brand microsites and poorly structured content hubs outside the core domain.
As an aside, when these rogue efforts succeed without SEO guidance, they can serve as weaponized counterpoints to the value of the SEO team. You will not be invited to create. The most critical strategic decisions will be made without you, and you’ll be left to optimize the consequences.
When I meet with these SEO teams and they complain about their reduced visibility and role, they often have only themselves to blame.
The other way
Conversely, the most effective teams operate under a different philosophy. They are enablers, not gatekeepers. They understand that their role is not to police the requests of other teams, but to find a way to help those teams achieve their goals in a way that generates a positive SEO outcome. They have a bias for action, and their default response is not “no,” but “yes, and here’s how we can do it right.”
I am not suggesting that the team blindly accept every request. Instead, they need to fundamentally change the nature of the conversation. Instead of leading with objections, this SEO team leads with alignment. The goal is to reframe every request as an opportunity to collaborate and architect a better solution together. This kind of SEO team understands the value of political capital in achieving results.
The very first thing you should do is align on the goal immediately. Recognize that no other team sets out to do things adversarial to SEO success and is just attempting to achieve its own team goals.
Say yes
Therefore, the first response should be a form of “yes,” acknowledging the validity of the underlying business objective. When the sales team requests a resource-intensive landing page, your initial response should be, “Yes, enabling the sales team with better collateral to close deals is a critical priority.”
Bite your tongue and don’t spit out your objections to it being on a new vanity domain that allows for tracking, or don’t immediately point out that the brilliance of replicating a page one hundred times will lead to duplication issues.
Starting with a simple act of alignment instantly changes the dynamic from adversarial to collaborative. You have demonstrated that SEO is on the same side of the table with a desire to achieve the overarching company goals.
You peel the onion on the SEO issues only after alignment is established. With rapport built, you can now function like a product manager, digging deeper to understand the “why” behind the “what.”
Find out the WHY
Why does the team want a specific vanity URL? Is it for brand recall in a podcast ad? By understanding the core driver, you can separate the stakeholders’ proposed solution from their problem. Their proposed solution is often suboptimal, but the situation they are trying to solve is real and essential.
If you had immediately objected to their solution, you would appear to be denying their problem. Acknowledge the situation, and you have the space to propose a different, agreeable solution to both SEO and the requesting team.
This is the crucial step where you use your expertise to build a bridge from their goal to a different execution path. You transform a potential “no” into a strategic “yes, and…” You are not rejecting their idea; you are improving it. You are adding your specialized knowledge to achieve their goal more effectively, positioning you as an expert enabler, not a blocker.
Into practice
Applying this framework transforms daily interactions, and you will earn capital you can cash in on when something conflicts with SEO. When you use a strategic objection after having a track record of many “yes, and…”, you don’t have to put so much effort into that “no.”
Shifting from a "no" to a "yes, and..." culture requires more than a language change. It requires a change in process and outlook. Proactively schedule time with other teams to show how SEO can help them achieve their goals. You can be assured that if SEO is seen as helpful, they will also turn to you when they have new ideas that they might otherwise not have brought to the SEO team.
What success looks like
True success at this effort happens when SEO goals are integrated into the OKRs of other teams. I know some SEO teams are frustrated when they hear about SEO being included as a goal in products they have not yet heard about, but don't view that as a failure; look at it as an opportunity.
This “yes, and” approach is a deliberate strategy to increase influence and integrate SEO into the company's overall operations. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you have a technically perfect site if nothing gets launched because SEO holds back progress.
I think it’s a huge win when a team schedules time to discuss a new logged-in experience and its impact on SEO. Obviously, if this experience is logged in, it likely has no impact on SEO, but the fact that they bring it to me without making the determination on their own means that they respect the guidance of SEO input.
True success comes from enabling the entire organization to move faster and smarter. By becoming the team that finds a way to get things done, you transform SEO from a technical bottleneck into the company’s most valuable accelerator for growth.
Post script
I “stole" this idea of operating an SEO team from one of the best chief legal officers I have ever worked with, who told me that she believed the goal of a legal team was to enable the business to succeed, not be a roadblock. Unlike every other in-house legal team I had ever worked with, her team quickly turned around contracts and didn’t drag red pens on every word just because they could.
Generally, legal teams are not revenue drivers in most companies, and I had an epiphany that if legal can figure out how to enable rather than disable growth while still mitigating risk, it is imperative that SEO, which is a revenue driver, do the same.
Brought to you by North Star Inbound—the sales enablement SEO agency.
Drive High Intent Leads with SEO.
What happens when you combine best-in-class SEO with conversion optimization?
BigRentz's traffic increased by 186% (85k), added 1950 conversions in 12 months.
Self Financial's traffic increased by 50k/month, and added 685 new customers.
Lastly, Secure Data added 1968 phone calls.
North Star Inbound’s SEO strategies earn leads, conversions, and revenue..
Book a call for a free content audit and 10% off any engagement.