In this episode of the International Web Effectiveness Podcast, Bill Hunt and Bill Scully discuss the critical need for search marketing representation at the C-suite level. They break down the reasons behind the lack of representation, the strategic value of digital marketing, and how search professionals can align their efforts with broader business goals. The conversation highlights the importance of proving the financial impact of search initiatives and securing a seat at the table through meaningful contributions.
Key Takeaways
- Search marketing lacks representation at the C-suite level.
- Digital marketing should be viewed as a strategic business driver.
- Traffic alone is not a sufficient KPI for success.
- Search professionals need to align their goals with business objectives.
- Demonstrating the financial impact of search is crucial for gaining executive support.
- Earning a seat at the table requires proactive communication and reporting.
- A Chief Digital Officer could help elevate the importance of digital initiatives.
- Search should be integrated with other marketing efforts for maximum effectiveness.
- Understanding the customer journey is key to improving search performance.
- Search professionals must advocate for their value within the organization.
Catch the Full Episode
YouTube: https://youtu.be/PhcVXRB7UyM?si=6KHmcDgVrW1a_aQy
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZCVxouGfydmNaL2xgbp7x?si=b5a_RU0QTbWiTDzMFgx9Mw
Show Note Links
Bill Hunt’s article: “Why Does Search Still Not Have C-Suite Exposure?” ► https://www.back-azimuth.com/why-does-search-not-have-c-suite-exposure/
Jason Kilgore’s LinkedIn post: “Search Needs a C-Seat at the C-Suite” ► https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7279522217158131712/
Transcript
Bill Scully (00:02):
Welcome to episode 21 of the International Web Effectiveness Podcast, where Bill Hunt and I, Bill Scully, focus on the strategies and techniques needed to improve your web presence and manage global websites. In our last episode, we discussed Google’s “Search Off the Record” podcast and how they handle duplicate content.
In this episode, we’re going to address the frustration many search marketers feel about having little representation at the C-suite level. We’ll explore why this is and what we can do to elevate search. I’d also like to extend this conversation to digital marketing, not just search. There are many ways people can creatively use websites and web platforms to build their brand and improve customer experience.
Bill, you recently read an article by Jason Kilgore from FineLaw on LinkedIn, where he discusses why search needs representation. He argues that Google’s recent policy, stating that if your website receives a manual action, your paid ads could be disapproved or even suspended, highlights the need for more representation. Let’s talk about that article and why we really need representation at the C-suite level.
Bill Hunt (02:09):
I’m doing well. I had a nice holiday break in Japan, got some rest, and enjoyed some offline time. Coming back, I read a few articles on this topic. This one started out as a rant. As you know, one of my frustrations with search is that in 2025, we still don’t get the recognition we deserve.
I also agree with your point about expanding this conversation to digital. Jason’s argument about search needing more representation at the C-suite level is important. When I say “C-suite,” I’m referring to CEOs, CMOs, CFOs. Ironically, I think we get more attention from the CFO than any other C-level executive. It’s typically the CFO who deals with the negative impact of organic search issues.
I wrote an article about this about 10-12 years ago, after being called in by a company that had to report to shareholders that they were spending more money than expected to drive traffic because their SEO had tanked. The CFO had to explain this on the earnings call, and it took them from a profitable quarter to a less-than-profitable one.
Bill Scully (03:15):
Interesting.
Bill Hunt (03:38):
Exactly. This situation arose because the creative director wanted more white space on the page. To make that happen, they reduced their two-row header and started merging names. For instance, instead of “Tommy Bahama shirts,” they combined it into one word. This change negatively impacted organic search, and the CMO sided with the creative director.
The CMO argued that aesthetics matter for brand image, but in doing so, they killed the organic search strategy. The company had to pay to recover that traffic, and it was a clear example of why search should be treated as a strategic element of the business.
At the board meeting, the CTO also expressed frustration with Google’s algorithm changes, saying it was killing their business. But no one at the C-suite level seemed to care about the impact of search. This is exactly why we need search to be considered strategically.
Bill Scully (04:25):
It’s interesting that they realized so quickly that they’d lose revenue without ads. Many companies don’t rely on paid search ads.
Bill Hunt (05:10):
Exactly. If most of your traffic—and in this case, 70-80% of the revenue—comes from organic search, losing that traffic can be disastrous. If you get hit with a manual action, you’re left scrambling to buy back that traffic. That’s what happened here. It wasn’t just about the manual action but also changes made to the website’s structure, which hurt its search ranking.
The creative director wanted a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing look, but in doing so, they reduced header space and combined names like “Tommy Bahama” into one word. This change, though subtle, hurt the site’s visibility. The CMO sided with the creative team, but ultimately, the company had to pay to recover the lost traffic.
Bill Scully (06:10):
Right, and the CMO then had to answer to the board about the loss of revenue.
Bill Hunt (06:30):
Exactly. It’s a cycle. When search isn’t seen as a key part of the business strategy, it becomes reactive. You buy ads to make up for lost organic traffic, but that’s not sustainable. We need a Chief Digital Officer or someone at the C-suite level who can oversee both digital marketing and search strategy.
I think search and digital are often seen as tactical, but they should be viewed as strategic. Whether we get a “C” in front of the role or not, we need a seat at the table to have these discussions. As you said, the web is a tool, and search is just one way people find us. But there are many ways to help customers engage, like answering questions through their journey or providing easy access through QR codes.
Bill Scully (10:41):
Exactly. SEO is often seen as tactical rather than strategic. But when you think of digital more broadly, you realize it should be strategic. The KPI shouldn’t always be traffic—maybe it’s about improving customer satisfaction or building the brand.
Bill Hunt (11:59):
Right. In my article, I outlined a few reasons why search often gets overlooked by executives. One reason is that it’s viewed as tactical. I’ve attended many meetings where SEO discussions are purely about tactics. But search should align with the company’s strategic goals.
I once worked with a head of web infrastructure who reported directly to the CEO. He wanted me to assess how well his search team was performing. When I reviewed their strategy, I found that despite focusing on expanding into emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India, and China, they had no search activities planned for those markets. There was no paid search, no rank checking, nothing. This was a huge opportunity missed in an area they were prioritizing, but there was no digital strategy to support it.
Bill Hunt (15:18)
The best company in the world. And that’s not what they wanted. But when I told them that, they were like, “Where the hell did you find this out?” I said, “It’s right there in your annual report on your focus.” When I presented that in my readout to the senior executives, they couldn’t believe it—that people didn’t know. My question to the CEO was, “How did they know? How would they know?”
That’s when he realized that the senior-level guidance isn’t necessarily cascading down. A big problem in organizations is that you have C-level people, especially the CEO, trying to drive shareholder value. And shareholder value is nothing more than increasing the share price or increasing the dividend.
Bill Scully (15:56)
Yeah, that’s not uncommon.
Bill Hunt (16:12)
Even without an MBA, you know that’s a function of making more money than your costs. That’s how it works, right? It’s a function of earnings per share, however you get to that number. Everyone beneath that level has a job that contributes to one of those two equations—making money or saving money. The further down the food chain you go, the more people are unaware that their piece connects to something that connects to something else.
Coming back to your point about digital—digital helps multiple people achieve their goals. Whether it’s the CMO on the marketing side, or the CTO or COO, everything has some connection to digital in some way.
Bill Scully (17:02)
Customer service.
Bill Hunt (17:07)
Yeah. So let me ask: Is the C-suite’s lack of understanding of search primarily a knowledge gap, a prioritization issue, or do they just not connect it to results?
Bill Hunt (17:14)
It’s all of the above. It’s all of the above. In my recommendations, one of the things I suggested was that we need to radically change how we report. We need to show how we’re doing these things—how we’re making money, how we’re saving money.
I’ve been working on something interesting recently. A recruiter approached me for a job in a core program at a company focused on cost savings. One of their areas of focus is how to make customers customers quicker. How do we get more sales quickly? Or how do we take them through an onboarding process? Or how do we do this? Almost everything on their to-do list had some corresponding digital transformation or improvements to their website or digital performance to get customers faster or improve customer satisfaction—helping them find parts faster.
I thought that was interesting because now we can work with that. Can we show in search how we can acquire people faster or further down the journey in the purchase cycle? If we start reporting that back—at least putting labels on it.
In the article, I mentioned a report we used to do called the Kamea Report, which stood for Keyword Maximization and Effectiveness Report. But it was nothing more than a revenue generation report. It was a simple line item that showed, by market, how much revenue was directly driven from search—both paid and organic search. For the haters, they might say, “Well, Bill, you can’t track it at a keyword level.” But I never said we tracked it at a keyword level. We looked at pages and the source coming from search.
Because we worked with the analytics and conversion teams to give search some credit, we broke it into two buckets: direct search revenue and search-influenced revenue. We presented a report showing that by week 23, we had generated a billion dollars. That’s all we were saying—search was responsible for a billion dollars in direct revenue.
Bill Scully (19:51)
Thank you.
It’s a beautiful life.
Bill Hunt (20:17)
And then, we also had another $3 billion of search-influenced revenue, meaning they came from search but didn’t convert directly. Instead, they went into a lead queue where a salesperson converted them. So we just got a share of that conversion. The moment we introduced that report, it ended up on the CEO’s dashboard.
Bill Scully (20:48)
Nice.
Bill Hunt (20:49)
There was another time at IBM when I had the opportunity to present what search was driving. I was the last person to present—at 6:30 PM one evening, on all the quarterly reports. I just happened to have some really impressive numbers, and the CEO said, “We should have that on my dashboard.” Again, I was tying things back to business results.
Bill Scully (20:58)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (21:20)
Another initiative we tied back was how much money we saved by making things more efficient. For example, using common templates and reducing duplication—doing things without repeating them 90 times. If we can do that, it gets percolated up to the C-level. Meanwhile, we’re still generating those semi-worthless reports about ranks and impressions.
I think if we can show strategic value in a way that resonates—whether it’s revenue, cost savings, or efficiency—we can move the needle.
Bill Scully (22:15)
Yeah, I like that idea a lot. Too many times, the search strategy is built on increasing traffic. But traffic doesn’t pay the bills, and it doesn’t connect to your strategic objectives. As you were saying, it’s about contributing to revenue.
If you were to take a holistic approach, you’d be working with the CRO person or maybe even, as the digital guy, you’d be focusing on CRO first. You already have traffic—so why not focus on converting more of it? There’s this two-level process: We need representation, but we also need the ability to make those changes, and they shouldn’t be done in the final hour.
Bill Hunt (23:21)
We need to earn it. That’s the case I make: we have to earn that representation and awareness. We do it through the four or five methods I mentioned earlier. Another one I suggest is securing an executive sponsor. Find a C-suite person, figure out how you contributed to hitting their KPIs, and then get them to sing your praises in meetings. Maybe it’s the CFO or the CTO—who benefited the most from this? Did speeding up the web and improving our Core Web Vitals save money?
I remember ESPN made a statement about how improving SEO, fixing scripts, and streamlining processes made their website so much more efficient. They saved a million dollars a month in server overhead. They did some SEO work and cut their server costs by a million dollars a month, which adds up to $12 million a year. That’s the kind of praise we need to get from these folks.
Bill Scully (23:28)
Mm-hmm.
Bill Hunt (23:49)
You can only do that through performance. How did we save money? Did we cut steps in the customer journey? Did we do X, Y, and Z? Another tactic I’ve used is leveraging site search customer satisfaction scores. If you improved site search, now you can say, “Our customer satisfaction score is now 92% for site search.” These kinds of things can help us.
The last point I want to make is leveraging risk management. If you’ve got a Google warning statement, or if search is changing and AI answers are becoming more prevalent, fine. Let’s leverage that to show how we’ve put in preventative measures. How did we fix it? How are we getting ahead of it? A nice soundbite here is: you’ve now entered the risk statement section of the report, but we’ve remediated these risks, and we’re now embracing AI and answer search results because we have a person specifically focused on answering questions.
Bill Scully (25:46)
Great.
Bill Hunt (26:01)
Again, we have to earn that position. I also want to bring up Jason’s comment. It’s still surprising that in 2025, we don’t have better integration between search, broadly speaking. I just put up an article where I dusted off some 20-year-old concepts—one’s 24 years old—about the four pillars of search. I also referenced an Adobe model, which covered three pillars: how we strategically integrated paid, organic, and site search under one manager. My argument in the article is that doing this strategically gives us a bigger footprint. Now there are three areas we can take credit for, with synergies we can leverage.
I was speaking to someone recently who’s been trying to get keywords from their paid agency for seven months.
Bill Scully (28:02)
Trying to get in the room.
Bill Hunt (28:02)
Yeah, just trying to get the paid agency to provide the keywords. My advice was: escalate it, because they work for you. Tell them you’re going to fire them if they don’t cooperate. The reason they’re resisting is probably because the advertising people like the agency, and they want to go all-in on PMAX without even knowing what the keywords are. This is the kind of issue we’re facing. It’s the same problem with site search.
Bill Scully (28:13)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (28:32)
The insights we can gather, though, are crucial. As we think about answer engines, we’ll discuss whether we need an Answers VP or someone specifically managing this globally. Are we answering the global set of questions? Do we have the information that ties everything together? But ultimately, the question I’m trying to answer is: Why don’t we have representation? How do we change that? What are five or six things we can do to achieve this?
Bill Scully (30:24)
One thing we haven’t discussed yet is leveraging the money being spent on other campaigns. How many times have you seen a TV ad and then searched for more information, only to find that the brand doesn’t have a proper online presence, or their website doesn’t rank? That just burns me. Companies spend millions on campaigns but hardly anything on search. To be truly customer-centric, you need someone responsible for this integration.
Can a customer search for a product number and land on the product page with customer service details for that product? That doesn’t come from search, and search would never waste time on individual products because they don’t have the volume that major campaigns do. That’s why traffic is not a great indicator of success.
Bill Hunt (31:57)
Right. It’s about performance. At IBM, we had what we called “smart ads.” One example: people would search for “IBM T20,” and we didn’t know if they wanted to buy one, get parts, or have it repaired. We created smart ads that displayed options: buy the T30, get parts and accessories, or request repairs. We could upsell into the next generation. We also sold these spots back to the brand.
Site search data is a goldmine for monetization. Most people search for a part number or error code on Google, and if they’re lucky, they come to your website. But it’s about customer satisfaction and upselling. When I worked with Cisco, we did extensive data mining and found that people searching for “Cisco 8550 BTUs” were IT professionals trying to adjust cooling in their data centers. We brought this to the sales team and asked, “Why isn’t this information on the product page?” They said it was in the PDF specifications, but that wasn’t helpful to customers.
Bill Scully (35:25)
Right, right.
Bill Hunt (35:26)
That’s a hyperlink off the product page. It’s in a PDF stored on a server somewhere with a license plate domain that nobody really notices. When we brought all that data out of the repository and put it on a page—like we’ve discussed before—it had these Visio diagram pictures of the server and the schematics for connecting all the components of a piece of hardware. People wanted those.
Bill Scully (36:02)
Let me describe what you’re talking about, because I had to ask you the first time you mentioned it. Imagine building a diagram with icons representing different pieces of equipment. They created a library for all their products, so you could download that and use it in presentations. I think it was Visio.
Bill Hunt (36:27)
Visio is a Microsoft product. It’s basically a flow chart builder. It was literally a plan to build out a data center. They had it laid out in an A-to-Z format, I think, and it was probably 5,000 printed pages long. We created a link to pull it up, and we started integrating that into the product as they were selling solutions.
We also had hardware diagrams, like the optimal data center layout. Even if customers weren’t fans of certain servers, the diagram already had everything laid out, which made it easier for them to drag it into their planning software.
When we looked at the data, it wasn’t hundreds of thousands, but collectively, across all the products, it was a lot. We noticed this shortened the purchase journey, and we could see people actively searching for it.
Bill Scully (37:38)
Yeah, and it probably created a search demand eventually, right? People started searching for it.
Bill Hunt (37:44)
Eventually, yes. People knew they could find it and use it. They would assemble these documents, put them into the budget, and while we weren’t going to make direct sales from it or get a ton of traffic, it did make customers happy. They could find what they needed easily, and we could show them that.
In some cases, customers logged in—especially the big ones—and we could connect that to our CRM system. This was fascinating because when we built the final model, we identified nearly $300 million in missed opportunities. When you find that much money lying around, it gets someone’s attention.
Bill Scully (39:04)
Yeah. Right, right. When I was a product manager at Siemens, most sales were done through contractors bidding on specifications written by consultants. I was able to create an 80% design.
Bill Hunt (39:08)
And then…
Bill Scully (39:31)
We could send that design out within an hour. Often, they’d just take it without editing and put it into their requirements. Then they had to buy our stuff because it was part of their requirements: our drawings, our sizing, all of it. There’s so much more to consider beyond just head terms and traffic.
Bill Hunt (39:44)
Exactly. Exactly.
Bill Scully (39:59)
If you’re helpful, people think of you first. You’ll always be included in the three reviews, and you might even get an advantage, even if you’re more expensive, because you’ve been helpful.
Bill Hunt (40:15)
Right. At the end of the day, we need to reframe search and digital as a strategic business driver. We need to communicate its value effectively and tie it to the big initiatives we’re working on. Then, we need to find ways to get those nuggets of information out there—those sound bites.
I learned a big lesson when I was leaving after selling the agency. During my final meeting with IBM, I realized that none of the senior executives had seen the search reports we had prepared. They were being sanitized by junior and mid-level managers. So, we decided to do a 335 report video, which was like the short videos you do.
We focused on one or two key takeaways, or maybe three. For example, we had a 77% increase in people searching for blue widgets. We’d also talk about things that didn’t work. These were consumable facts—like cocktail party facts—that senior people would then repeat in meetings. It was more effective than long reports.
Bill Hunt (40:53)
The senior executives started parroting those facts because they were short and easy to consume. It’s a great way to get the message across.
Bill Scully (40:59)
Exactly. It’s like that nugget you mentioned. The CEOs of Wayfair and Panera
Bill Scully (42:39)
Yeah.
Yeah, and they want to take credit for it. And they want to take… yeah, sure.
Bill Hunt (43:02)
I think they were on some business news segment being interviewed, or maybe it was in a company-wide meeting. They were both really upset that the average employee, like the frontline worker, had no concept of or care for shareholder value. Both of them mentioned this—like, they just don’t care about it. And if you think about what their job is, they’re so far removed from that concept that they probably don’t even know what it means. Their job is to ring the cash register, answer the phone, do whatever. But that contributes to their manager’s KPIs, the regional manager’s KPIs, the North American manager’s KPIs.
Bill Scully (43:43)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (44:00)
And so, I think… but we never enable people to understand how everything connects up the food chain. So, if you take that moment and think, “How is what I’m doing contributing to my boss’s KPIs? But how might I also be contributing to someone else’s KPIs?” If we could just put that out there… hopefully, it will get noticed. I mean, if you’re in a huge company and you’re a junior search person, it may never see the light of day. But I think the more you can tie your work to something that someone else cares about, that will help raise awareness.
Bill Scully (44:59)
Yeah, I’ve always tried to think about how to make my boss look good. So, that’s a great first step. Cool. I think that was enough. Any closing comments before we wrap up?
Bill Hunt (45:17)
No, just think about how you’re showing love and value to the company. Anything you can do to highlight that—think outside the box. And if you have any ideas or things you’ve done to gain senior-level exposure, let us know in the Facebook group. If you want us to dive deeper into this and talk more about how to gain awareness, let us know there. Some of our recent ideas have come from articles other people have written, so if you come across something you think we should discuss, send it over. We’ll be happy to dig into it. But yeah, watch, share, and like, and let us know how we’re doing.
Bill Scully (46:10)
Yeah, if you’re looking for us, search for International Web Mastery on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X. We love doing this stuff and we hope you’re finding value in the conversations. We’d really appreciate it if you take a moment to rate and review the podcast. Also, we have both free and paid courses on the site. One of them is about how to make a business case for SEO, which is timely now as people are going through their budgeting and trying to secure more funds. Thanks, Bill. Good seeing you.
Bill Hunt (46:58)
Thank you. Yeah, see you next time.
Bill Scully (47:00)
Okay, bye.