SEO is a waste of time if it doesn't focus on scale
Most SEO is a waste of time.
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Too many SEO roadmaps are a waste of time and force teams to be sucked into tweaking meta descriptions on obscure blog posts or chasing keywords nobody searches for. It feels like progress, but it's just busywork. While you're fussing over fixing soft 404s, site-wide issues like broken CTAs and mismatched content are killing growth.
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Instead, the solution is to focus on ruthless prioritization and execute at the largest scale. Identify the few changes that deliver massive results across your entire site. Don't optimize for the sake of optimization just because you've read that it's a best practice on X or LinkedIn. Instead, align your SEO with your product's unique strengths, turning your website into a growth engine that attracts the right customers. This is about working smarter, which is how you achieve the most results.
All is not equal
The biggest mistake in SEO prioritization is treating every task as equal. Rewriting a title tag on a low-traffic page might check an SEO requirements box, but if that page gets ten visitors a month, who cares? You're painting the house while it's on fire. Real wins come from projects that impact hundreds or thousands of pages at once. Optimize the templates that drive category pages or build a tool to update sitemaps automatically.
Scale beats perfection every time. Instead of patching individual pages, focus on the systems that power your entire site. An innovative linking structure can distribute authority to every page, thereby lifting your entire site's visibility. Using your limited engineering capital to improve architecture should always be a priority.
Scale vs busywork
Compare that to the busywork most SEO teams obsess over. Updating a privacy policy page’s title tag might feel productive, but it's of negligible value. Chasing low-value tasks burns resources and distracts you from the big things that drive tangible business outcomes.
To find the most significant opportunities, start with your performance data. Dig into your analytics to identify your top-performing pages, which are already driving traffic, leads, or sales. These are your targets where even minor improvements can deliver outsized results. These pages should also give you ideas on what you can learn to improve other pages.
Consider the user experience beyond just speed and mobile-friendliness. Are your navigation paths intuitive? Can users easily find the information or products they need? Are there information gaps that might force a user to conduct additional searches outside of the website?
A well-structured header/footer navigation, explicit internal linking, and logical categorization contribute not only to SEO but also directly to user satisfaction and conversion rates. Search algorithms attempt to mimic human thought, so this means looking at your site through the eyes of a potential customer, identifying friction points, and smoothing them out.
Rigorous prioritization matters more than technical smarts. Optimizing your checkout page (even if it’s behind a login wall) or revamping a high-traffic category page should be your top priority. These early successes build momentum for larger projects, such as restructuring your site's navigation or developing a new product-led SEO strategy.
This phased approach means you see tangible results quickly, which generates political capital, confidence, and provides a clear return on effort. Each step builds on the last, creating a compounding effect on your SEO performance. The little things earn the right to work on the big stuff.
Execute like a pro
Execution requires alignment among engineers, product, and marketing teams, who must work together seamlessly. A developer fixing a technical issue, like broken redirects, can unlock more SEO value in a day than a writer churning out ten blog posts. A content team crafting a programmatic content template around an offering’s niche can drive more qualified traffic than a hundred long-form posts. Most importantly, a product team that prioritizes SEO efforts aligned with conversion needs is substantially more effective than merely checking off one-off best practices.
When everyone understands the overarching SEO objectives and their role in achieving them, the entire process becomes more efficient and effective. This means that goals must be shared across all teams, rather than each team having its own siloed goal. I recently worked with an organization where each cross-functional team impacting SEO efforts had individual goals that conflicted with those of the other teams.
The SEO team was measured on closing SEO tickets, which motivated them to create lots of easy tasks. The engineering team was tasked with launching a new section of the site that was previously behind a login wall, and the product team was developing a new feature that the board had requested.
In this instance, winning required finding a point of synergy where the work by the teams would satisfy the individual goals that each team had to reach. (Email me to learn about the unified goal I developed.)
Thinking big by acting small
An iterative and flexible approach means your SEO strategy evolves with your business, staying focused on what delivers results. A continuous feedback loop enables rapid adjustments and optimization, ensuring that resources are always directed toward the most productive efforts. Most companies don’t linearly think about SEO over a long period; instead, they focus on a short window of time, such as a week, a month, or a quarter.
The goal is something at scale, but sometimes you need micro goals to get there. Once you've developed a major goal, such as launching a new category template, a new CMS, or a new site structure, you can create micro goals to help you achieve that significant outcome.
Some of the micro goals might be steps in the overall journey, while others might be initiatives that earn the capital to expend on the big goal. By focusing on these micro improvements, you build a robust and resilient pipeline that can serve as the foundation for scalable SEO.
Each step builds on the work you have already done, creating a flywheel effect. Eventually, your SEO becomes a strategic asset, rather than a list of accomplishments that few understand.
SEO should drive success, not keep an SEO manager busy
Focus on the big changes that lift your entire site and align with your product's unique value. You have a finite amount of resources; you might as well allocate those resources to the initiatives with the most significant impact.
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..
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