Sometimes, the Hardest Part of SEO Is Actually Getting It Done

Psst … I’ve got a secret: It may not be the algorithm that’s holding you back.

Sometimes the hardest part of SEO is implementing and getting that momentum you truly need.

In this article, I’ll explore why execution breaks down in SEO and what to do about it.

• Analysis Paralysis: More Data, Less Action
• How to Break Through (Analysis Paralysis)
• Politics: Too Many Cooks, No Clear Owner
• How to Break Through (Politics)
• Vendor-Led, Internally Stalled: Paying for Advice You Don’t Use
• How to Break Through (Vendor-Led)
• Final Thoughts
• Quick Solutions
• FAQ: How do I consistently implement SEO audit recommendations for long-term business growth?
• About Us

Analysis Paralysis: More Data, Less Action

You’ve got dashboards, SEO audits, and a multitude of other datapoints, but no clear path forward. There’s a strategy somewhere in there, it just hasn’t been clearly defined.

This can happen for a variety of reasons:

• You haven’t fully connected the dots between the datapoints.
• You’re stuck in a cycle of endless requests for “just one more report.”
• Your website SEO audit gives you 100 “critical” issues with zero guidance on what to do first.
• You want to make big changes to see the rapid progress you want, but you aren’t ready for those big steps.

Instead of taking the first step, everyone is left wondering which fixes lead to quick wins, which fixes are foundational, and which require a longer term investment.

Then comes the paralysis.

You absolutely need clarity around the strategy before moving forward. You need to know what the data means and which things to prioritize.
After that, you need to execute. As Tony Robbins says, “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

This applies to SEO. Consistent, incremental improvements move the needle. Paralysis does not.

A study from WebFX found that 91% of businesses are satisfied with the return on investment they received from the updates they made based on their SEO audit. So get to it!

How To Break Through

1. Identify one primary KPI per campaign or page type.
2. Create or ask for a timeline-based plan to implement audit findings.
3. Prioritize action items as quick wins/long-term impact, and start with a small win! You can use a prioritization framework like impact vs. effort. Start with SEO tasks that offer high impact with relatively low lift.
4. Set deadlines for decisions and implementation, not just deliverables.

Imagine what could happen if your team felt confident about exactly what to do next, and in what order. One well-prioritized step can get your momentum going.

How do I prioritize SEO audit tasks for quick wins?

Politics: Too Many Cooks, No Clear Owner

Even with a solid SEO strategy, execution is wishful thinking when no one owns the SEO project, or too many people think they do.

Here are some common scenarios:

• Technical SEO updates are put on the back burner by IT teams that are focused on other initiatives. (Pro tip: Reframe SEO items as “bugs” or site health issues the IT team can’t ignore.)
• Other teams with more clout don’t see an urgent need to divert resources to SEO.
• Legal teams slow or block content updates with long review timelines.
• Marketing wants results, but can’t prioritize SEO over campaigns.
• Content teams are ready to move, but have no authority to start, move content reviews forward, or push changes live.

When these things happen, implementation gets delayed, deprioritized or dismissed.

And without clearly defined roles to move an SEO strategy forward or foster cross-team alignment, SEO recommendations can sit untouched for months.

SEO buy-in needs to happen at the top, and the resources you need will often follow (sometimes with some extra effort on your part).

That means assigning ownership, building trust across teams and making sure SEO has a seat at the table in every department that matters. (For more practical tips, watch my on-demand webinar on how to get company-wide buy-in for SEO.)

I tell this story a lot. We had a client once who prioritized SEO at the board level because they saw the potential impact of it on business success.

They gave a company-wide directive that every team was to prioritize and support the SEO initiative.

As a result, they were able to apply every recommendation we gave them — including moving away from their in-house servers and going to a better scalable IT solution — and the results from the SEO program couldn’t have been better. Their traffic went from 1.7 million unique monthly visitors to 16.4 million unique visitors a month within 32 hours after implementation!

(By the way, you can read more about how we’ve helped clients achieve better SEO results.)

How To Break Through

• Make sure SEO is seen as a strategic business initiative.
• Create a shared SEO implementation map: who reviews, approves and executes each type of change.
• Loop SEO folks into planning conversations early. When their goals match things the whole team cares about — like bringing in more traffic or leads — it’s easier to work toward the same finish line.
• Make those goals meaningful. Tie SEO efforts directly to outcomes the whole business cares about — more traffic, stronger leads, higher revenue.
• And if you’ve had SEO wins in the past, bring them up. Real results speak louder than strategy slides, and they help build trust across teams.
• Get stakeholders enrolled in SEO training so everyone better understands SEO and their role in it.

SEO works best when it’s championed from the top of the organization. Getting everyone in the company to buy in takes strategic alignment, communication and trust.

How do I secure top-level support for SEO as a strategic initiative?

Vendor-Led, Internally Stalled: Paying for Advice You Don’t Use

Bringing in an expert SEO consultant or agency can be one of the most strategic moves you make — until no one implements their recommendations.

It happens, and here’s why:

• Internal teams don’t understand where implementation responsibilities begin and end.
• SEO recommendations aren’t understood.
• People get busy, and there’s no internal champion to push work forward or integrate SEO into active workflows.
• Teams view the audit as the final step, not the beginning of the real work.

Then nothing changes. Rankings stagnate. And six months later, everyone’s wondering why the results haven’t improved.

Investing in expert SEO guidance is life-changing for a website. But without execution, the true value of the investment won’t come to fruition.

This is human nature. People buy books they never read and invest in courses they’ll never watch.

To make progress, you need internal ownership and accountability. That means making SEO a two-way partnership with your vendor.

How To Break Through

• Ask vendors to prioritize actions.
• Assign internal owners for each recommendation, with realistic deadlines.
• Make time for regular check-ins with your SEO partner — it’s your chance to ask questions, stay aligned and keep things moving.
• Approach SEO like any other high-priority project: get clear on the goals, know who’s doing what and follow through.

Proper execution should be seen as a partnership. When clients and SEO vendors align on ownership, timing and what to do next, you’ll start to see real results happen.

How do I ensure clients follow through on our SEO recommendations?

Final Thoughts

With so many teams, tools and goals to juggle, it’s easy for SEO to feel like one more thing. But it’s not just another task — it’s a key part of how everything connects. The good news? You’re far from the only one trying to figure it out. Plenty of professionals are navigating the same kind of choppy SEO waters we’ve seen ourselves.

And here’s another encouraging truth: The friction in these situations usually comes down to process, not a lack of motivation or interest from the people involved.

SEO isn’t out of reach. You just need to know what to tackle first and make time for that work on a regular basis.

So let’s take a look at a few ways you can take action — and a few adjustments you might consider making — starting right now to steer your efforts more intentionally toward SEO success:

• Pick one spot where things feel stuck — maybe it’s unclear who owns SEO, it’s not getting prioritized, or teams aren’t aligned. (If your SEO project has stalled, my on-demand webinar on why SEO projects fail and how to fix them can help you turn things around.)
• Choose one task that’s doable and schedule it.
• Pull together the right people to create a focused path to implementation.
• Celebrate your progress!

Remember: SEO works when it’s done, not when it’s talked about.

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Quick Solutions

• How do I consistently implement SEO audit recommendations for long-term business growth?
• How do I prioritize SEO audit tasks for quick wins?
• How do I secure top-level support for SEO as a strategic initiative?
• How do I ensure clients follow through on our SEO recommendations?

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FAQ: How do I consistently implement SEO audit recommendations for long-term business growth?

Once the audit’s done, the hard part is actually doing something with it. You need to take those broad suggestions and turn them into clear tasks tied to real goals—more traffic, more leads, more sales. Without that connection, teams may treat the work as theoretical rather than essential. But when each task is framed by its expected impact, it brings clarity and accountability from the very first implementation meeting.

Clear ownership and strong communication are essential to delivering consistent SEO results. Getting there comes down to two simple steps.
Start by giving each recommendation a clear owner—someone who’s responsible for seeing it through. This person is the point lead, and their job is to make sure things move forward and don’t quietly stall out.

Next, get clear from the beginning on who’s making the decisions. Who gives the green light? Who can say no? And when do those calls need to happen? Knowing that early saves everyone time later.

To keep momentum, make sure progress stays visible. A quick way to do that is short weekly check-ins. A brief 15 minutes is usually enough to stay on the same page and catch anything that might slow things down.

If you want results that stick, you’ve got to get clear on what actually matters. A huge part of that is figuring out where your team is spending time—and whether that time is going toward work that really counts.

The simplest way to start? Just ask: How much effort will this take, and what’s the payoff? What can we knock out quickly that’ll actually make a dent? Start there. Quick wins don’t just move the needle—they build trust. People see things working, and that energy fuels more progress.

Once those are knocked out, shift to bigger priorities. This might mean fixing deeper technical issues or overhauling outdated content. It’s easy to lose focus. You get buried in small tasks that don’t really matter—or pulled into big projects that take forever and don’t go anywhere. The key is knowing what’s actually worth the time.

When your backlog is clear and in order, people stop spinning their wheels. The team knows what to work on, and why. That kind of direction makes the work feel lighter, and more meaningful. You can see progress. And over time, it starts to add up.

Good ideas aren’t enough if no one’s paying attention to how they’re landing. Strategy only works if it stays connected to execution, day by day. That’s why a real-time dashboard matters. It lets you see—right now—what’s moving, what’s dragging, and what’s getting lost. You’re not waiting on reports. You’re spotting issues early, while there’s still time to do something about them.

A dashboard’s real value isn’t just in showing progress—it’s in helping you respond to it. When you stay close to what’s happening, you don’t just track the work; you stay ahead of the problems, too.

And when something does work — even a small win — say it out loud. Send a quick message, or mention it in the next check-in. Those moments keep the team engaged and the momentum real. You don’t have to wait for a finish line to acknowledge progress.

24-Step Action Plan

1. Start by pulling every actionable item from your latest SEO audit into one spreadsheet.
2. For each one, note the main metric it affects—like traffic, leads, or sales.
3. Then sort the list based on how much impact each task could have and how much effort it’ll take to complete.
4. Identify two “quick wins” and assign them to individual owners.
5. Set clear deadlines for those quick wins in your project tool.
6. Take any big SEO task and break it down into what can get done this week.
7. Make sure everyone knows who’s reviewing the work and who gives the green light.
8. Schedule a 15-minute weekly check-in to help keep things moving and avoid confusion.
9. Create a live dashboard showing task status and KPI movement.
10. Reframe technical SEO issues as site-health bugs for IT.
11. Communicate the business impact of each task to stakeholders.
12. Track implementation dates alongside baseline performance metrics.
13. After completion, analyze KPI changes within two weeks.
14. Share a brief “lessons learned” report for every implemented task.
15. Adjust your impact-effort matrix based on real results.
16. Rotate task ownership quarterly to broaden team expertise.
17. Make sure SEO has a seat at the table during regular planning.
18. Do a quick audit each quarter to help surface new opportunities and shifting priorities.
19. Use those insights to keep your roadmap current and your efforts focused.
20. Automate KPI reporting to reduce manual effort.
21. Publish internal case studies on successful SEO implementations.
22. Host brief training sessions when new recommendations are added.
23. Reinforce positive outcomes by celebrating every milestone.
24. Review and refine your entire process annually for continuous optimization.

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About Us

Bruce Clay Inc. has been in the SEO game since 1996, helping businesses grow with strategies that are clear, proven, and built to deliver. We focus on what actually works — and we’ve been doing it for decades.

What makes the difference is partnership. We don’t hand over a list of recommendations and walk away. We stay involved because that’s how goals get met — and how good work turns into real results.

Learn more about our story.