Getting Things Done: How In-House SEOs Navigate Internal Bottlenecks.

This is Part 2 of our In-House Insights series, where we dive into the messy, real-world challenges in-house SEO teams deal with every day. This time, we’re focusing on the toughest part of all: making things actually happen.

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If you’ve ever stared at a 3-month-old Jira ticket titled “Fix Title Tags” and thought, How is this my life? — you’re in the right place.

Being an in-house SEO isn’t just about driving performance; it’s about navigating process, politics, and pace.

You know what needs to happen. Your strategy is sound, the opportunities are there, but getting things done? That’s the real challenge. 

The meetings, the tickets, the “we’ll revisit this next quarter” conversations… they can grind even the sharpest plans to a halt. 

And this guide is here to help you cut through that friction. It’s a practical playbook for pushing projects forward, getting buy-in, and staying effective when everything feels stuck.

But it’s not about theory. It’s about providing actionable tactics to help you get shit done.

And to get to the heart of how to do this, and push things forward when it feels like everything’s in the way, I spoke with four brilliant in-house SEOs who’ve been there, done that, and kept driving growth, despite blockers and bottlenecks:

They’ve dealt with the problems you’re facing, and they’ve learned how to persuade, pivot, and lead through it.

This is their playbook, and now it’s yours too.

tl;dr: How In-House SEOs Get Things Done

Getting buy-in is one thing. Getting work implemented is another.

I’ve worked hard to put this guide together to help in-house SEOs who are dealing with internal blockers… from endless sign-off loops to dev bottlenecks and brand pushback. It’s packed with practical systems, smart workarounds, and real insights from SEOs who’ve been there.

If your SEO strategy keeps stalling inside the business, this is how you move it forward.

Key takeaways:

• Bottlenecks are common. Sign-off delays, dev queues, brand conflicts, and lack of SEO understanding are some of the biggest challenges faced by in-house SEOs.
  
• Influence beats control. Understanding team dynamics, mapping dependencies, and building internal relationships are essential to getting things done.
  
• Visibility drives momentum. Show how SEO supports business goals, speak in stakeholder language, and celebrate wins openly.
  
• Plan for delays. Use a dual-track roadmap. Keep fast-moving, with no-dependency tasks running alongside bigger projects to still get things done.
  
• Make SEO everyone’s job. Teach, involve, and empower other teams so SEO becomes part of the company culture.
  
• Spot issues early. Use simple tools like risk trackers and milestone check-ins to identify blockers before they stall your work.
  
• Stay productive when things are slow. Keep moving with quick wins, smarter planning, and ongoing relationship-building.

In-house SEO is rarely straightforward. But with the right mindset and systems, you can keep delivering value… even when things get stuck.

Common Bottlenecks Faced by In-House SEO

Before you can overcome a bottleneck, you need to clearly define it. 

And if there’s one thing every in-house SEO has experienced, it’s this: you know what needs to happen… but you don’t control the levers to make it happen.

Across every conversation I had, five consistent challenges came up. Each one creates friction, stalls momentum, and ultimately holds back performance. 

Here’s how bottlenecks show up, and what they look like in practice.

1. Slow and Complex Sign-Off Processes

One of the biggest challenges for in-house SEO teams is getting the green light. 

Even relatively small changes — getting a piece of content live, a new category page created, a technical fix — can get stuck in an approvals backlog.

In-house SEO often lives or dies by how fast you can get a “yes.” 

But in many organisations, decision-making is muddled. 

There’s no clear ownership, too many reviewers, and even more opinions. And you’ve got to learn how to navigate this effectively and efficiently.

Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is map the sign-off process yourself; even if it’s unofficial. Who needs to be involved? Who slows things down? Who can unblock things with a Slack message or a coffee chat?

And most importantly, what’s the smallest version of your idea you can ship without needing five signatures?

Collaboration Across Multiple Teams

Cross-functional collaboration is a double-edged sword.

While it brings valuable input, it also creates room for disconnects, delays, and overlapping priorities.

And the real challenge often lies in influencing prioritisation.

This gets particularly tricky when SEO lives under marketing, but the fixes live under product or engineering. You can’t ship in silos, but you also can’t own every part of the process.

That’s why some of the smartest in-house SEOs build clear dependency maps. Who owns each part of the project? What team needs to deliver what, and by when? This isn’t about pointing fingers, it’s about creating shared accountability before things stall. And it’s worth noting: dependencies aren’t the same as approvals.

Knowing who needs to do the work is different from knowing who needs to sign it off. You’ll need both mapped, but don’t confuse one for the other.

Limited Access to Development Resources

If your SEO roadmap includes technical work, it’s likely dependent on development teams. And for many in-house teams, that’s a serious bottleneck.

And let’s be honest: SEO fixes often get trumped by new feature releases, product launches, or urgent platform issues.

And that’s fair… those things are often mission-critical to the business. This isn’t about discrediting their importance. But it’s also the reality: none of those tasks help you implement your SEO backlog.

That’s why I recommend maintaining a parallel backlog of no-dev SEO wins; things like internal linking updates, content refreshes, metadata optimisation, schema deployments, and navigation tweaks. These are tasks your team can run with while you’re waiting on dev resources. They keep progress visible and momentum high, even when other teams are focused elsewhere.

For the bigger-ticket technical projects?

Create SEO MVPs.

Is there a way to manually test an improvement on a few key pages before asking for a large-scale rollout? Sometimes a small test can unlock a bigger conversation and a bigger commitment.

Misalignment Between Brand and SEO Goals

It’s not uncommon for SEO recommendations to clash with brand guidelines. 

Whether it’s copy tone, layout changes, or even (as I’ve seen plenty of times) title tag rewrite suggestions, these differences in priorities can create tension.

Want an example? 

Where a brand calls a product something internally but customers call it something else. 

The brand team insists on calling it how they refer to it internally, but no one’s searching for it. 

I once worked on a project where the retailer sold interactive whiteboards for schools. It’s a common product and one lots of people search for. Only the brand sells their products  as ‘interactive displays’ and didn’t  want to use the term whiteboard anywhere. Not even on an additional landing page to capture that search traffic. 

Their products are interactive whiteboards plus more, but sometimes there’s a clash between brand terminology and what customers actually search for. 

This isn’t uncommon.

This one’s tough because it’s rarely about right or wrong. It’s about competing goals. You can’t bulldoze your way through a brand team; you need to collaborate, empathise, and frame SEO asks in their language.

Ask what brand is trying to protect. Ask what they’re worried about. And then show how SEO can strengthen brand positioning, not erode it.

Sometimes this means giving them a win, like tone of voice, in order to get yours, like page structure. It’s a negotiation, not a war.

Low Awareness of SEO Across the Business

The final, and perhaps most frustrating, bottleneck is that SEO simply isn’t visible enough inside the business. 

And what isn’t understood rarely gets prioritised.

You can’t assume everyone knows what SEO is, let alone what’s blocking it. 

That’s why internal education, delivered in plain English, through the lens of their goals, is one of the most important parts of your job.

That might mean running monthly SEO 101 sessions, creating internal documentation, or adding performance updates to cross-functional team meetings. Small rituals, repeated consistently, build visibility. And with it, support.

These Bottlenecks Might Be Common, But They’re Not Permanent

Every in-house SEO hits these challenges:

• Unclear or slow sign-off processes
  
• Too many teams, not enough ownership
  
• Technical work stuck in dev queues
  
• Brand vs SEO trade-offs
  
• A lack of shared understanding or education
  

But they’re all solvable; especially when you learn to anticipate them, speak other teams’ language, and stay persistent even when momentum feels slow.

In the next sections, I’ll break each one down with practical advice, real examples, and unfiltered insights from SEOs who’ve found their way through these challenges.

Making SEO Projects Impossible to Ignore

In a world of competing priorities, visibility drives momentum, and SEO can’t rely on being noticed by default.

If you want teams like dev, product, content, and brand to prioritise SEO, you have to make your work unignorable. That means positioning SEO not as a siloed to-do list, but as a direct enabler of their goals.

This is all about visibility; not just being seen, but being seen as strategically valuable.

But how do you actually do this?

Speak in Their Metrics

If there’s one thing in-house SEOs need to stop doing, it’s pitching SEO using SEO metrics.

You might care about crawl depth, canonicalisation, and SERP volatility. 

But the Head of Content? She wants to hear about blog traffic. 

The eCommerce manager? He’s thinking about revenue per category page. 

Your job is to translate.

Reframing SEO in the language of the business isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. When you talk about revenue impact, acquisition cost reduction, or opportunity cost, people listen.

Here’s a helpful mindset shift… don’t just think like an SEO, think like a product manager. What customer problem are you solving? How does this tie to business impact? Where does this land on the priority list?

When you frame a request, always come back to one question: What does this mean for the person I’m talking to?

Present SEO as a Business Case, Not a Wishlist

Telling someone there’s a redirect chain or a title tag issue isn’t going to move your ticket up the backlog. 

But showing that an issue could be costing the business tens of thousands in lost traffic or conversions? That changes the game.

If you want people to say yes, you need to make it difficult to say no. 

That means building a case that includes:

• Forecasted gains (traffic, revenue, or cost savings)
  
• The risks of inaction
  
• Timing and seasonal urgency
  
• A visible line from issue to outcome
  
• Clear ownership and the delivery path
  

A strong business case doesn’t just secure buy-in, it builds trust. 

It shows you’ve thought the work through and you understand what’s at stake.

Simple visuals matter more than you think. 

Gantt charts, Loom walkthroughs, or effort/impact matrices turn SEO from theory into execution. They help people see the work, the cost of delay, and the opportunity waiting on the other side.

And when you’re dealing with sceptical stakeholders, there’s another trick: lead with proof. 

If you can show a “mini win,” even from a test or pilot campaign, your pitch suddenly becomes a lot more credible.

Connect SEO to the Company’s Bigger Picture

The best in-house SEOs don’t push their own roadmap in isolation. They plug SEO directly into what the business already wants to achieve.

If the business is launching a new product, your keyword strategy, page builds, and content briefs should ladder directly into that rollout.

If the CRO team is running experiments, your search intent analysis should show them which pages to start with.

If the CMO is pushing for brand visibility, your SEO performance report should include branded search uplift and press coverage impact.

Treat SEO like connective tissue, not an add-on. 

Align with quarterly OKRs. Use their KPIs. Speak their language. 

The more SEO feels like a bridge to what they already care about, the easier it is to get support.

Share the Wins and Share the Credit

One of the easiest ways to make SEO more visible internally is to publicly celebrate wins. 

But here’s the key; don’t just show the result. Show the people who made it happen.

If dev implemented the fix? Name them. 

If content created the update? Shout them out. 

When other teams see their work connected to results, they’re more likely to champion SEO the next time around.

Remember: results build trust, and transformative results, the kind that turn around a channel or category, build internal reputation. 

And your reputation inside the business? It’s leverage. 

The more you’re seen as a team that delivers, the more leeway and resourcing you’ll get next time.

Don’t let SEO wins sit inside dashboards. 

Share the spike. Highlight the revenue lift. Screenshot the rankings. Tell stories with the data, and make it memorable.

SEO Shouldn’t Be Easy to Ignore

If your SEO projects are constantly getting sidelined, it’s not always because they aren’t important, it’s because you haven’t yet made them feel urgent, aligned, or strategic enough.

Start speaking their language. Build business cases, not task lists. Align with what the business already wants. And make wins visible; not just in the data, but in the culture.

But what do you do when things still don’t move, and how can SEOs keep momentum going when this happens?

Maintaining Momentum When Projects Stall

Let’s be honest: sometimes your ticket won’t get picked up. That piece of content won’t get signed off. And the task that’s been “with the dev team” since March is still… with the dev team.

This is the reality of in-house SEO. 

Projects get stuck, and often, it’s outside your control.

But the most effective SEOs don’t sit around waiting. They plan for the stall. They keep progress moving by designing roadmaps that don’t rely on a single point of failure. When one route closes, they take another.

Have more than one track to run on.

Build a Dual-Track SEO Roadmap

One of the smartest operational shifts an in-house SEO can make is to split their roadmap in two: one track for collaborative, high-dependency work, and another for independent, fast-moving tasks.

The first track includes anything that requires input or delivery from other departments; think complex tech projects or new page templates. These are often high-impact, but they move slowly.

The second track is your self-sufficient workstream. These are the tasks your team can own entirely; things like internal linking audits, metadata updates, content optimisation, and other similar quick-win deployments. They don’t require another team’s involvement, and they build momentum fast.

This “parallel pathing” mindset mirrors what product managers do; they de-risk projects by separating the big bets from the things that can ship now. 

Your SEO plan should work the same way.

Keep a Live List of Quick Wins

You don’t want to be scrambling for things to do when a dependency stalls.

That’s why you should maintain a living backlog of low-effort, high-impact tasks… work you can execute independently to keep progress visible and performance ticking over.

Think beyond basic hygiene tasks. Your list should include actions that prove value, unlock performance, or build internal credibility.

For example:

• Refresh underperforming evergreen articles with new data, examples, and more recent facts..
  
• Run a striking distance content sprint — identify 5–10 keywords ranking in positions 5–15 and improve intent alignment, headers, and supporting content.
  
• Add or improve structured data on key revenue-driving pages to boost eligibility for rich results.
  
• Audit and enhance internal linking to underperforming commercial or lead-gen pages… especially where orphaned or buried deep.
  
• Create search-led briefs for seasonal campaigns and get ahead of design/content cycles before you’re pulled in too late.
  
• Build mini performance stories — 1–2 slide decks showing how a minor change drove a measurable uplift, ready to share with stakeholders and build momentum.

Having a go-to backlog also helps reduce the temptation to “wait it out” when progress is slow. You stay productive. You stay visible. You keep building a track record of impact.

Come With a Plan B

One often-overlooked tactic is preparing two versions of your SEO recommendation from the start: one ideal, and one fallback.

Let’s say your primary suggestion is a new page template rollout that requires dev, design, and brand involvement. That’s Plan A. But you should also have Plan B ready to go. 

This often won’t be the ‘best’ choice, but it’s an alternative. A meet in the middle. A compromise to get something done.

Bringing options to the table makes you easier to work with. It gives decision-makers flexibility. And it shows that you’re not obsessed with your preferred approach; but that you’re obsessed with driving progress.

This mindset also builds trust with stakeholders. You’re not the blocker or bottleneck, you’re the person bringing solutions.

Run Lightweight SEO Experiments

Sometimes the best way to move forward is to shrink the scope. 

Instead of asking for full implementation, propose a time-boxed test. A mini pilot. A two-week experiment.

These tests feel safer for teams who might otherwise say “no”, and they give you valuable proof points to escalate the case later.

In fact, one of the best ways to build long-term credibility is by earning small wins that add up. 

Demonstrate impact, then scale up. 

It’s much easier to get a full rollout approved when you’ve already shown results on a slice.

When Things Stall, Don’t Stop

Every in-house SEO will face blockers; that’s a given. 

But how you respond when momentum slows is what separates strategic operators from the rest.

The solution isn’t to push harder on the blocked path. It’s to work around it. 

Run your dual-track roadmap. Keep your quick-win backlog updated. Offer options. Shrink the test. Pivot fast, and keep delivering.

Because progress, even partial, keeps you visible, credible, and ahead of the next bottleneck.

But the real driver of momentum? People. Because even the best strategy can grind to a halt if your relationships aren’t strong.

Let’s explore this.

Building Relationships That Make SEO Work

You can have the sharpest strategy in the room, a fully aligned roadmap, and a rock-solid traffic forecast, yet still make no progress if the people around you aren’t bought in.

That’s the quiet truth of in-house SEO: your success often depends less on the quality of your recommendations and more on the strength of your internal relationships.

You’re not just managing SEO. You’re managing humans; their priorities, their fears, their bandwidth, and sometimes their politics. 

And the SEOs who consistently get things done? 

They’re the ones who’ve built real connections across the business.

Start with People, Not Projects

It’s easy to default to task mode… dropping Jira tickets into someone’s backlog or sending a Slack message with “Can you just…?”

But relationships aren’t built on asks. They’re built on moments. Small conversations. Checking in about someone’s day. Being genuinely curious about their role, and what matters to them.

This isn’t a soft skill. It’s a strategic one. People are more likely to prioritise work from someone they trust, and who sees them as more than just a blocker to be chased.

If SEO is constantly seen as ‘someone else’s work,’ that dynamic never changes. 

But when teams feel like you genuinely value what they do, and how they do it, they’re far more open to collaboration.

Provide Context, Not Just Tasks

One of the fastest ways to win internal support is to explain not just what you need, but why it matters. 

That doesn’t mean turning every ticket into a 10-slide deck, but it does mean taking the time to connect your ask to the bigger picture.

The best in-house SEOs operate almost like product managers. 

They get under the skin of each department’s priorities and frame SEO not as another job to do, but as a lever that helps those teams hit their goals faster, easier, or more effectively.

If you’re pitching an SEO change to brand, don’t just say “we need to optimise this copy.” Say “here’s how this will improve engagement, reduce bounce, and make the brand message clearer to a larger audience.”

Get Closer to Other Teams, Without Getting in the Way

SEO shouldn’t sit in a silo. 

It embeds itself; into campaign planning, brand discussions, content briefs, and sprint cycles.

You don’t need to attend every meeting or comment on every doc. But showing up occasionally to team standups, contributing keyword insights to new campaigns, or being available to gut-check a content plan can quietly build visibility and trust.

The best relationships are built when you’re seen as an enabler, not a gatekeeper. Be the person who helps other teams move faster, not the one slowing them down with unexpected asks late in the process.

Sometimes this means embedding lightly: offering a keyword review during a brand sprint, providing an SEO QA checklist for devs, or joining product reviews with one idea to test. 

Over time, you stop being a guest in the room and become part of the rhythm.

Build Trust Before You Need It

If the first time you talk to someone is when you need something urgently, you’re already behind.

The best in-house SEOs invest in relationships before they’re stuck, so when a project does slow down or hit resistance, there’s already enough trust and goodwill to get things moving again.

This means showing up in the quiet moments, not just during crunch time. Whether it’s offering support on a project that isn’t strictly SEO, giving credit unprompted, or just being present and available, those small deposits build serious capital.

And when a future project hits a snag? You won’t be chasing people. You’ll be collaborating with them.

But one of the most effective ways you can achieve this is to make SEO feel like everyone’s responsibility, not just yours, so you’re not carrying the channel alone.

Making SEO a Shared Responsibility

If you’re the only one in your company who’s thinking about SEO, talking about SEO, or fighting to prioritise SEO, you’re fighting uphill.

You can’t scale your impact if SEO is viewed as just your job. And you definitely can’t expect momentum if you’re the only person pushing for it.

The turning point? When SEO becomes part of everyone’s thinking, not just yours.

To get there, you need more than good reporting or great results. 

You need internal awareness, shared language, and support from people outside your team.

Teach SEO Without Turning It Into a Lecture

Most people don’t want a 30-minute lesson on crawl budgets or canonical tags. But they do want to understand how their work affects performance, especially if it helps them win.

That’s why education needs to be framed in relevance. 

For the content team, show which articles or categories are ranking because of their contributions. For developers, highlight how their fix lifted traffic. For brand or PR, share how their campaign moved the needle on branded search volume.

Don’t just present data, tell stories. Show before-and-after screenshots. Use dashboards with their team names on them. Make it clear they had an impact.

And if you’re not sure how to get started? 

Keep it light. Host a lunch and learn. Share a mini SEO newsletter internally. Start with the teams you rely on the most, and make it obvious how their work contributes to bigger outcomes.

Speak Their Language, Not Yours

SEO jargon is the fastest way to lose attention. “Let’s fix the H1 structure to improve crawl hierarchy” won’t land, but “We can increase organic revenue from this page by 28% in three months” just might.

The fix is simple… don’t explain how SEO works. Explain what the work means; for them, for their KPIs, and for the business.

This doesn’t mean watering down your work, it means packaging it in a way that makes action easier. Think: performance uplift, channel efficiency, commercial value. Speak the language of outcomes, not audits.

If you want to stand out in the boardroom, leave the SEO acronyms at the door and speak in terms of what execs are already measured on: growth, revenue, market share, ROI.

Turn Stakeholders Into Supporters

One of the most powerful levers you can pull is getting people outside the SEO team to advocate for your work.

When someone in content, product, or brand starts defending your tickets in a meeting, that’s when you know you’ve won more than buy-in. You’ve built real SEO ownership across the org.

Start small… tag contributors when you share SEO wins. Share dashboards that highlight their impact. Invite people into strategy sessions, not just review meetings. Offer to run SEO 101 sessions tailored to their world. The goal isn’t to train everyone to be an SEO, it’s to make them feel like they’re part of the success.

Over time, your biggest champions may not come from your own team at all; they’ll be the content lead backing your schema update, the dev PM pushing for better site structure, or the brand director who sees SEO as a reflection of their success too.

Make SEO Part of Default Processes

It’s not enough to raise SEO in meetings after a problem has already been baked into a product or campaign. You need to be involved earlier, by design.

Get SEO added as a regular agenda item in cross-functional meetings. Add SEO checklists to the CMS publishing workflow. Build in QA steps before new product pages or features go live. Make SEO part of launch processes, not postmortems.

The more SEO is embedded into the systems and defaults of the business, the less often you’re fighting for your place, and the more often teams will come to you before you have to chase them.

And don’t underestimate the power of repeatable resources: internal wikis, SEO SOPs, and templated briefs make it easier for teams to follow best practice without needing to ask every time.

Don’t Carry SEO Alone

The best in-house SEOs aren’t lone operators. They’re connectors who help other teams understand, contribute to, and take ownership of organic growth.

Educate, don’t preach. Translate, don’t lecture. Celebrate others, not just your own team. And embed SEO everywhere it naturally fits, not just where it’s expected.

You see, when SEO becomes part of how the business thinks, not just what you do, everything starts to move faster.

Spotting Bottlenecks Early and Unblocking Them Fast

Bottlenecks don’t just happen.

They build. Slowly. Quietly. A missing sign-off here, a late copy draft there, and suddenly your whole project is weeks behind, and no one quite knows when or why it stalled.

The truth? Most bottlenecks come with warning signs. We just miss them because we’re not looking at the right signals.

The best  SEOs don’t just react to delays, they predict them. And they put systems in place to catch issues before they become blockers.

If you want to keep your roadmap moving, you need to stop treating blockers as surprises and start designing around them.

Start Managing Dependencies, Not Just Tasks

Your roadmap might say “launch new collection pages in May”, but that outcome depends on far more than just a line item in a project tracker.

• Does it require new content from the editorial team?
  
• Does it involve design sign-off or dev tickets?
  
• Is legal approval part of the process?

If you don’t know who owns each part and how long those pieces typically take then you’re not managing a project. You’re hoping for the best.

Thinking in dependencies forces you to map the real work, not just the idealised end goal. 

It also helps you identify your leverage; what’s in your control, and what isn’t. 

One practical trick is to include “effort estimates” alongside your tasks, even if they’re rough. This makes it easier to have conversations with stakeholders about prioritisation and unlocks more realistic planning.

Break Work Into Milestones You Can Track

Large SEO projects often stall because they’re treated as black boxes: big inputs, long silences, then… eventually… results.

That’s why you need to break them down. 

Milestones make progress measurable. They help you chase the right person at the right time and give you a better chance of catching slowdowns early.

For example, don’t just track “New landing page live.” Track the moments that lead up to it… content signed off, design reviewed, dev ticket submitted, QA complete. Each stage is a chance to spot risk and intervene.

And if you’re in an environment where you don’t control timelines, breaking down work also helps surface which team is under-resourced and gives you data to back up future requests for support.

Use Visual Tools to Keep an Eye on Progress

Sometimes the clearest sign of a blocker is the one you can literally see, so long as you have the right tools.

A Gantt chart. A Kanban board. A shared timeline. These visuals can surface bottlenecks instantly. You’ll see the task that’s been in the same column for two weeks. The sprint ticket that’s been untouched. The campaign that’s a week behind and nobody’s said it out loud yet.

It’s not about the tool, it’s about the shared visibility it gives your team. When everyone can see the same timeline, it’s harder for delays to hide.

If you’re short on tooling or internal buy-in, create a lightweight tracker that focuses just on SEO-related workstreams and their dependencies. Even a simple shared spreadsheet can drive the right conversations.

Build Regular Check-Ins Into Your Process

The longer you wait between updates, the harder it is to catch a problem in time. That’s why recurring check-ins are a lifeline, not a luxury.

Short, structured meetings with the teams involved in your projects create space for people to raise blockers before it’s too late. You can spot slippage, re-prioritise, and align before you’re up against a deadline.

These don’t need to be heavyweight. A 15-minute standup every other week. A recurring Slack check-in. The goal is consistency and visibility, not admin for admin’s sake.

Track Risk Like You Track Progress

One quick way to increase your awareness of potential bottlenecks? Build a simple “Risk Radar”, a shared document or board with three columns:

• 🟢 Green: No blockers
  
• 🟠 Amber: Might slip
  
• 🔴 Red: Actively blocked

Review it weekly with your team. Ask stakeholders to self-assess their tasks honestly. This lightweight system gives you early warning signals and a structured way to flag where your attention is needed.

And if your roadmap gets reviewed by leadership or other teams? Include this risk snapshot. It reinforces your strategic thinking, and positions SEO not just as execution, but proactive project management.

Because visibility isn’t just about what’s been done. It’s about knowing what might not get done, and acting in time.

Here’s the most frustrating truth of in-house SEO though… no matter how good your strategy is, it can still get bumped to the bottom of the list. 

So let’s explore how to keep SEO visible, valuable, and firmly on the roadmap.

Keeping SEO High on the Priority List

You’re not imagining it.

Sometimes SEO really does get bumped… behind the flashy paid campaign, the urgent CRO test, or the last-minute product launch that somehow takes over the entire roadmap.

It’s not because SEO isn’t valuable. It’s because it’s too easy for people to forget that it’s there, unless you make sure they don’t.

Keeping SEO visible isn’t about ego. It’s about survival. If you’re not actively making your work relevant, aligned, and easy to act on, it will slip to the bottom of the pile.

Here’s how to keep it top-of-mind and top-of-list.

Get Into the Right Rooms and Speak Up

The harsh truth? If SEO isn’t being talked about in the rooms where decisions happen, it’s not going to be prioritised.

That means joining monthly marketing reviews and showing results. It means getting a regular seat at product and content planning meetings. It means hosting your own quarterly SEO review and bringing key stakeholders in.

One effective tactic here is to use language leadership already trusts, not rankings or crawl rates, but traffic lifts, conversion rate improvements, cost reductions, and revenue gains. Even if the numbers are directional or conservative, they speak in terms people care about.

And if you can show those results happening in campaigns that weren’t initially prioritised? Even better — it positions SEO as the channel that quietly delivers results without drama.

Tie SEO Directly to Business Goals

The projects that get prioritised are the ones tied to growth. That’s why the fastest way to earn a spot on the roadmap is to link SEO to what the business already wants.

Want to reduce reliance on paid traffic? SEO provides a sustainable alternative.

Expanding into international markets? SEO helps with localisation and intent mapping.

Improving user experience and retention? SEO insights can shape that journey.

This is where clear ROI storytelling comes in. Don’t just explain the what — explain the why now. Make the cost of inaction visible, not just the upside of acting.

And if you can, use data from paid search or previous SEO wins as your proof. Real-world performance almost always beats projections on a slide.

Share Wins… Especially the Small Ones

Don’t wait for the quarterly report to tell your story. 

Celebrate progress in real time.

If traffic lifts after a content refresh, screenshot the spike and share it. If a dev fix boosts site speed, shout out the win. If SEO drives a record-breaking month, turn it into a mini case study and show how multiple teams contributed.

Create a culture of visibility. A quick Slack post. A dashboard snapshot. A Friday update that shows what moved and who helped move it. This builds momentum and relationships.

And when stakeholders see their name next to an SEO success, they’re more likely to back your next request.

Remove the Friction

Another reason SEO gets deprioritised? It feels like hard work. Technical. Ambiguous. Low reward, high effort.

So remove the friction.

Instead of vague asks, deliver clear, scoped, ready-to-go tasks. Provide copy, screenshots, links… everything needed to take action without debate or delay. Make implementation feel like a “yes” moment, not a technical chore.

If something complex needs doing, shrink the ask. Suggest a test. Offer an MVP version that can show value before the full commitment.

You don’t need to over-sell. You just need to make it easy to say: “Let’s try it.”

Make SEO the Default, Not an Afterthought

If SEO is treated like a bolt-on, that’s exactly where it’ll end up: tacked on, too late, and too compromised to succeed.

Instead, embed it into the day-to-day operations of the teams around you:

• Add SEO steps to product QA
  
• Build checklists into CMS workflows
  
• Include SEO reviews in sprint planning
  
• Bake SEO input into briefing templates and launch decks

You don’t have to shout to be seen. You just need to be built in — as early as possible.

Keep It High. Keep It Visible.

SEO rarely fails because the work is wrong. It fails because the work is unseen.

So speak up. Show up. Make it easy to act. Share the wins. Frame your asks in their priorities, not yours. And above all, make SEO part of how the business works, not just what you happen to care about.

Now, we’ll tackle what to do when everything still feels slow. When momentum is hard to find. When progress feels invisible. Because even then — there are ways to stay focused and keep moving forward.

Staying Focused When Progress Is Slow

Sometimes the hardest part of in-house SEO isn’t the strategy, or the execution, it’s the waiting.

Waiting for content sign-off. Waiting for the next sprint cycle. Waiting for someone else to finally see what you’ve been trying to prioritise for months.

That inertia can be draining; not just on your roadmap, but on your motivation. Because when things stall, it’s easy to feel like you’re not moving at all.

But the best SEOs don’t let slow progress become no progress. They stay focused, adapt their pace, and find wins in the margins.

Here’s how to keep going, even when it feels like everything’s on pause.

Run Your Own Stream of Progress

You don’t need a sprint ticket or stakeholder approval to make progress. There’s a long list of SEO tasks you can own entirely, and those are your safety net when everything else is stuck.

Update old blog content. Audit your internal links. Refresh meta data on underperforming pages. Add schema to key templates. Improve navigation flows. Explore SERPs and document new opportunities. Build the business case while others are still deciding whether they care.

As mentioned earlier, having a dual-track roadmap; one for high-dependency projects, one you can run solo, gives you options when things stall. 

But in slower periods, it’s not just about logistics. It’s about mindset. Being able to pivot to your own stream of progress helps you stay energised, visible, and focused, even when bigger initiatives are stuck.

These smaller tasks build momentum, demonstrate value, and keep SEO visible — even when you’re waiting on others.

Keep a Personal Log of Wins

When the big projects are slow, it can feel like nothing’s happening, even if you’re quietly making great progress.

That’s why keeping a personal win log matters.

Create a doc (or even a private Slack channel) where you track every win… big or small. Performance lifts, issues resolved, minor fixes that made a measurable difference. This isn’t for stakeholders. It’s for you.

Not only does this keep you motivated, but it also gives you a bank of proof points you can pull from for performance reviews, prioritisation discussions, or executive updates.

Momentum is often emotional. Seeing your work stack up, even if it’s not always loud or visible, helps you stay grounded and focused.

Use Slow Periods to Plan Smarter

Low-momentum periods can be frustrating, but they’re also a gift if you use them well.

This is your time to zoom out. Reassess your roadmap. Reprioritise based on new data. Run an audit on content gaps or internal linking structures. Create better documentation. Polish your business cases. Evaluate the competitive landscape again.

This is also a great time to lay the groundwork for buy-in: prepare early-stage plans, surface ideas for small tests, or run proof-of-concept campaigns with low lift and high storytelling potential.

Strong planning during quiet periods often leads to stronger execution later, especially when the bottlenecks clear and the window of opportunity opens again.

Lean on People Who Get It

In-house SEO can feel isolating. Especially when you’re the only one who sees what needs to happen, and you’re not sure anyone else is paying attention.

That’s why building your own support network matters.

Reach out to other in-house SEOs. Build a mini mastermind. Set up casual check-ins with peers in similar roles. Join communities or Slack groups. Swap stories, trade templates, borrow a workaround.

Because you’re not the only one dealing with dev backlogs, unclear sign-offs, or shifting internal priorities. There’s huge power in shared experience, and even bigger power in shared solutions.

And if you’re transitioning from agency to in-house? Expect the culture shock. You’re no longer just delivering recommendations, you’re responsible for outcomes. The pace is different. The pressure is different. But so are the wins.

Progress in in-house SEO doesn’t always look like big launches or immediate spikes. Sometimes, it looks like preparation. Persistence. Quiet wins that add up.

Because the SEOs who keep delivering value, even when things are slow, are the ones who eventually get the chance to lead the bigger, game-changing projects.

Don’t Let the Bottlenecks Win

Let’s be real.

You’re not going to fix every internal process. You won’t win every prioritisation battle. You won’t always get your ticket picked up in this sprint, or even the next one.

But you can still win.

Because success as an in-house SEO isn’t about operating in a frictionless utopia. It’s about moving forward anyway. Finding workarounds. Building influence. Staying calm when everything around you slows down.

The most impactful SEOs don’t just do good work, they get it done, despite the chaos. They get comfortable being part marketer, part project manager, part translator, and part diplomat. And they keep finding ways to create impact, even in less-than-ideal conditions.

You won’t always have the perfect timing, the perfect setup, or the perfect plan. But you can still lead if you’re willing to navigate the mess, not wait for it to clear.

Ready to Get Things Done?

You don’t need permission to lead.

You don’t need perfect conditions, or a clear runway, or a project with zero dependencies. You need a plan and the willingness to move through the mess anyway.

So now that you’ve got the playbook, here’s the challenge:

✅ Pick one system from this guide and test it.

✅ Steal an idea you’ve not tried yet.

✅ Make one small move today that could unblock something tomorrow.

You’ve got this.

And if you hit a blocker?

Well — you know what to do.

(Feel free to send this guide to the person in your way.)

Need an agency that actually gets your challenges?

If you’re an in-house SEO team trying to drive real impact but stuck navigating internal blockers, we can help.

At Digitaloft, we work as an extension of in-house teams; helping you turn strategy into action, unlock progress, and keep SEO high on the priority list.

You don’t need another agency handing over generic recommendations. You need a partner who understands the pace, politics, and pressure of in-house SEO… and helps you get things done anyway.

Let’s chat. We get it. And we’ve got your back.