SEO is a product, AEO is brand
The organizational structure of SEO as marketing leaves the team without the authority to get things done
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Paid subscribers can access this AEO responsibility matrix and this brand entity checklist
Every CEO I know has done the same thing in the last two years. They opened ChatGPT, typed in their company name, didn’t like what came back, and then emailed the SEO team or agency to fix it. For the leaders I have had this conversation with, I have been able to redirect their efforts. This post is for everyone else.
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That instant reaction makes sense on the surface. SEO is about visibility in search, LLMs are the new search, voila, the SEO team owns the problem. The logic checks out. It is also completely wrong, and this thinking risks making things worse.
Marketing has always owned SEO
This isn’t just an AI issue; it begins with putting SEO in a marketing org. One of the many reasons a company leaves its SEO potential unfulfilled is that it inadvertently silos the person responsible for SEO, leaving the SEO manager as a marketing individual contributor who must go through their marketing lead to get anything done.
The marketing lead then needs to negotiate for bandwidth on the product and engineering teams to get anything done. This organizational placement about where SEO even sits, especially at a time when the industry is being rewritten, pollutes every resourcing decision and budget conversation.
The organizational structure of SEO as marketing leaves the team without the authority to get things done. An SEO team that can write code has always been rare. Therefore, the best an SEO team can do is make requests of other teams, and those requests are not requirements.
