Why Enterprise SEO Is Treated Like a Janitor With a Magic Wand

You know what happens when no one knows what you actually do at work?

They either ignore you—or assume you can fix everything.

Welcome to enterprise SEO.

The Most Misunderstood Function in the Org

You can build a $20M funnel.

You can 5x organic traffic.

You can save the company from an algorithm update no one else even noticed.

And still, someone will say:

“Can we just have Bob from Dev handle the SEO? He’s technical.”

Bob wrote JavaScript once. In 2016. In college. On a whiteboard.

Bob is not your SEO strategy.

I’ve seen this play out at every level—startups, scale-ups, Fortune 500s.

One time, I was sitting in a boardroom with a C-suite team after delivering a killer SEO strategy presentation. The CEO was pumped. He turned to his team and said:

“This is awesome. What do we need now to be a world-class SEO team?”

Their response?

“We’ll get back to you.”

That moment? That was the spotlight. And they didn’t know how to stand in it.

They expected to be ignored—so when they were finally asked to lead, they had nothing ready.

The Quiet Experts No One Hears

Let’s call it what it is—many SEO practitioners are introverts. Detail-driven. Pattern-focused.

They’re not the ones raising hands in town halls or sending “look what I did” emails to the CMO. 

BTW: So many folks in the SEO industry will tell you that countless of the best SEOs in the world are folks no one has ever heard of. 

They do the work. They do it well. And then they vanish into a spreadsheet.

That quiet? It gets misread.

As disinterest. Or worse - lack of value.

I’ve led people like this. Incredible talent. But here’s the truth: if you’re in a marketing org fighting for time, budget, and attention—being invisible isn’t a virtue.

If you want SEO to get taken seriously, you can’t just show up with problems. You have to show up with solutions. Business-first language. Not a wall of canonical tag logic and log file crawl stats.

Most SEOs need to learn how to speak “exec”—and fast. Here’s some help up front. If you say canonical in a room with most execs you’ve lost. You raised more writwatches than eyebrows.

Honestly, it should be a Duolingo course.

If You’re Not Promoting, You’re Getting Buried

SEO is one of the only roles where doing the job well isn’t enough.

You also have to:

• Teach others how it works

• Prove how it ties to revenue

• Defend it from being absorbed into someone else’s job

• Re-explain it to every VP who thinks SEO is just a line item under “website stuff”

If you’re not promoting SEO inside your company, someone else will rewrite the narrative.

And not in your favor.

You’ll get looped in late, consulted never, and blamed early.

Why Bob From Engineering Keeps Getting the Job

This happens because SEO is seen as “too technical for marketing.”

So companies hand it off to whoever’s adjacent to it.

The content team doesn’t want to deal with it. The dev team doesn’t prioritize it.

SEO ends up stuck in the middle, playing translator between two teams who both think it’s someone else’s job.

So SEOs retreat into the one thing they think they can control—technical audits.

Because getting editorial support feels like pulling teeth, and engineering drops their tickets into sprint hell.

You know what that creates?

An SEO program optimized for nothing—and blamed for everything.

The Industry Hasn’t Helped Either

Let’s be honest—SEO has a PR problem.

Too many vendors sold snake oil:

• Guaranteed rankings

• “Top of Google in 30 days”

• Auto-generated backlinks, spun content, AI blogs before AI could even spell

We’ve all seen it.

And now, companies assume SEO is either a scam, or something you “check off” when you hire an agency.

It’s made real SEO harder to sell, and even harder to sustain.

Practitioners are fighting for results—but also for trust.

So, What Actually Works?

What’s cracked it open for me?

Talking business first.

Start with what the org already believes:

Who their customers are. What they value. Why they buy.

Then map that to what they’re actually searching for. Show the disconnect. Bridge it.

Build strategy around business problems, not just keyword gaps.

Show the traffic, yes—but more importantly, show how that traffic moves users, leads, revenue.

That’s when you go from “SEO janitor” to strategic partner.

Practical Takeaways

Here’s what I’d recommend to any enterprise SEO stuck in the shadows:

1. Make internal SEO education part of the job.

Lunch-and-learns. Case studies. Short decks. Don’t wait to be asked. Share proactively.

2. Reframe SEO as strategy, not support.

You’re not there to clean up old blog posts. You’re there to shape how content performs—and why.

3. Get louder. On purpose.

It doesn’t have to be flashy. Just consistent. Dashboards, internal wins, a POV on strategy.

Show you’re not just doing SEO - you own it.

And I’ll help. This series is going deep on every one of these.

If You Don’t Lead the Story, Someone Else Will Write It

Usually badly.

Usually with Bob.

So if you’re in SEO - enterprise or otherwise - start talking more.

Start teaching. Start showing your work.

Because being good at SEO means nothing if no one knows what SEO is doing.