One seat, three interfaces, three numbers. Ask us
What Is an SEO in Business?
An SEO in business is a person, not a tactic. The role owns the work that makes a company findable in search, sits close to the revenue conversation, and answers for a small number of metrics it can actually move. If nobody in the company can name those metrics, the seat exists on the org chart but not in the business. That gap is why so many search programs quietly stall after the first quarter.
Hiring, or deciding whether to hire? Start with the seat and the metrics, not the tools.
What Does an SEO Actually Do in a Business, in One Line?
An SEO decides which pages should exist, what each one must say to match a buyer query, and how the site is built so those pages can be crawled, indexed and linked. Then the role reports whether that work produced qualified enquiries, and adjusts.
Three Interfaces Define the Seat Before Any Tool Does
A search role is shaped by who it reports to, who receives its output, and what it is measured on. Change any one of the three and you have a different job with the same title — which is why two people with identical job descriptions can have completely different weeks.
Reports to
Usually the founder in a company under fifty people, and a marketing or growth lead above that. The important detail is not the title but the meeting: does this role get a slot where budget and priorities are decided?
Healthy: a monthly review with someone who can approve both a rewrite and a redirect.
Unhealthy: reporting into a team that measures only ad spend, with search treated as free traffic.
Ships into
The output lands in three places: the site (pages and structure), sales (usable enquiry routes and message match), and product (what buyers ask for before they buy).
Healthy: a shared queue with developers and writers, ranked by expected impact.
Unhealthy: requests sent into a backlog that never returns a shipping date.
Owns
A short list of numbers the role can move without asking permission: indexed pages with intent, clicks on commercial queries, enquiries attributed to organic search, cost per enquiry.
Healthy: three to five metrics, agreed in writing, reviewed monthly.
Unhealthy: "traffic", with no split between a buyer and a student writing a paper.
What the Seat Hands Over, Month by Month
Value is easiest to see in artefacts. If you are hiring, ask what the role produced last quarter and who used it. Every one of these has a user, which is the test that separates work from activity.
| Deliverable | What it looks like | Who uses it | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Query map | One page per buying question, with the intent, the target URL and the gap. | Writers, product marketing | Rebuilt each quarter |
| Page briefs | The answer to lead with, proof to include, links out, and the one next step. | Content and design | Per page, before writing |
| Technical fix list | Indexability, speed, duplicate pages, broken redirects, ranked by impact. | Developers | Monthly, ranked |
| Enquiry report | Organic enquiries, sources, and which pages started the conversation. | Sales, founder | Monthly |
| Message tests | Two versions of a title or opening section, run for a set period. | The whole growth team | One per month |
Which Numbers Belong to This Seat
The fastest way to lose a search program is to hold it responsible for numbers it cannot influence, like total revenue, or to excuse it from numbers it can, like indexed commercial pages. Split the metrics into three lanes and the conversation stays honest.
Owned
- Indexed pages that match a buying query
- Clicks and impressions on commercial queries
- Organic enquiries with a page source
- Cost per organic enquiry
moves within 30 to 90 days
Shared
- Enquiry quality with sales
- Conversion rate with design and product
- Page speed with engineering
- Pricing clarity with the founder
moves only with another team
Observed
- Total revenue and margin
- Branded search volume
- Competitor rankings on broad terms
- Market demand shifts
report, never promise
A role measured only on owned metrics becomes tactical; a role measured only on observed metrics becomes decorative. The shared lane is where a search seat earns its salary, because that is where it changes how another team makes decisions.
The Three-Month Path That Survives a Budget Review
New search seats usually get one quarter to justify themselves. Do not spend it on a strategy deck. Spend it proving that the seat finds demand, ships an answer, and produces a number someone else in the business can repeat.
Map and unblock
Build the query map from real searches, then fix whatever stops those pages from being indexed. Publish one page end to end so the team sees the finished shape.
Proof: a ranked list of pages with intent, and a first page live.Ship and measure
Rewrite the two pages closest to the money. Add the missing section rather than a new URL. Set the reporting line so organic enquiries appear next to paid in the same weekly number.
Proof: clicks up on the target queries, tracked enquiries visible.Show the unit cost
Compare cost per organic enquiry with cost per paid enquiry on the same product. Present the trend, not the peak. Agree the next quarter's three pages and the one metric that would change the plan.
Proof: a unit-cost comparison the founder can quote without you in the room.Need the Seat Filled, or the Seat Defined?
We take the seat on a retained basis for small teams, and we leave the query map, briefs and reporting behind so the next hire inherits a system rather than a folder.
Where the Seat Sits Best in a Small Company
In a company of ten to fifty people, the search role usually cannot be full time at the start. It works best as one person with two clear hours a day, a writer they can brief, and a developer they can negotiate with. Split the role across four people and the query map never gets built, because nobody owns the decision about which pages should exist.
When there is no internal owner, the seat can be held externally without losing the accountability. Our Whats Is SEO? are built that way: one named person, the same deliverables table, and a monthly review with whoever controls the budget.
Local businesses need a sharper version of the same seat. The queries are geographic, the proof is proximity, and the page count is small, which is why the deliverable list narrows to a profile, a service page per town, and a review habit. That is the remit behind Local SEO For Small Business.
Four questions that define the seat
1. Which three queries must this business win to survive next year?
2. Who writes, and how many pages a month can they actually finish?
3. Which number appears in the Monday meeting: clicks, enquiries or cost per enquiry?
4. Who decides when a page should be deleted rather than improved?
If any answer is "nobody knows", the role will spend its first quarter on politics rather than search.
Questions About the Role Itself
Is an SEO a marketer, a writer or a developer?
Mostly a decision maker with enough of all three to brief the others. The role sets what the page must say, who it is for, and how it is built. Deep technical or editorial work is usually done by someone else on request.
Should a small business hire one or outsource the seat?
Hire when there is enough page and content volume to keep someone busy year round. Outsource when the need is a system plus monthly execution, and keep the query map internally so the knowledge does not leave with the contract.
What should a business SEO be measured on in the first quarter?
Indexed pages with intent, clicks on the target queries, and a tracked enquiry route. Revenue attribution in month one is usually noise, but an untracked enquiry route is a real failure.
Does the role need a budget for tools?
It needs one paid data source and one reporting layer. Everything else is optional until there is a page count worth analyzing. Tool sprawl is a common way for a new seat to look busy without shipping.
How does the seat interact with paid search?
They share the query data and should share the conversion tracking. Paid tells you which terms convert today; organic tells you which terms can convert for free next year. Separating the two teams usually wastes both budgets.
Who owns the website in this structure?
Usually product or engineering owns the platform, and the search seat owns the page decisions inside it. Write that boundary down. Most stalled programs are a boundary dispute, not a skills gap.