Getting Buy-In: How In-House SEOs Secure Budget and Internal Resources.

This is Part 1 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 one of the hardest… securing budget and internal resources to actually get things done.

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It’s one thing to build a strong SEO strategy. It’s another to get the resources to execute it.

If you’re working in-house, you’ve likely felt this gap. You know what needs to happen. The roadmap is clear. But without the budget; for tools, content, implementation or support, even the best-laid plans grind to a halt.

Because here’s the truth: SEO success is often less about knowing what to do, and more about getting it funded.

Whether you’re trying to grow headcount, unlock tooling budget, bring in an agency, or defend existing investment, this guide is for you.

I spoke to six experienced in-house SEO professionals who’ve navigated these challenges and come out the other side:

Their stories, lessons, and practical frameworks form the backbone of this guide.

Because if you want SEO to drive real impact, you need more than buy-in, you need budget.

tl;dr: How In-House SEOs Secure Budget and Resources

You can have the sharpest SEO strategy in the world, but without budget and buy-in, it goes nowhere.

If you’re tired of hearing “not right now”, this is how you start getting a yes.

Key takeaways:

• Speak the language of business. Swap talk of keywords, rankings and tech SEO for revenue, efficiency, and growth. Show how SEO drives the metrics your stakeholders already care about.
  
• Tailor the pitch. Finance wants ROI. Product wants speed and clarity. Brand wants consistency. Meet each stakeholder where they are.
  
• Timing is everything. Align your asks with planning cycles, leadership priorities, and strategic moments, not just when it’s convenient for SEO.
  
• Build a credible business case. Outline the problem, opportunity, solution, and expected impact. Forecast with confidence, not guesswork.
  
• Anticipate objections. Be ready for resource pushback, brand concerns, and scepticism. Answer with empathy, options, and proof.
  
• Prove the value, often. Tie organic wins to commercial outcomes. Report frequently. Visualise progress. Make impact visible.
  
• Plan for agility. Keep 10–15% of budget flexible. Build in space to adapt, pivot, and test without derailing your strategy.

Getting budget isn’t about luck.

It’s about language, alignment, and trust. When you position SEO as a smart, strategic investment, not a line item, you stop pitching… and start leading the conversation.

The Realities of Securing SEO Budget

Getting budget for SEO isn’t just about presenting a compelling forecast and waiting for a yes.

It means navigating some of the most complex dynamics in a business.

SEO comes with slower feedback loops, often more complex attribution, and more cross-team dependencies than most marketing functions. As a result, it’s often misunderstood, deprioritised, or viewed as a “nice to have”… especially in businesses geared towards short-term gains.

Inside many organisations, SEO has to work harder to earn its seat at the table.

Paid media can demonstrate results in days. CRO tests can prove uplift in a week. But SEO? It needs time, consistency, and trust. And in environments driven by quarterly results, that makes it a tougher sell, even when it delivers more sustainable growth.

Timing plays a major role.

You might have the right plan and clear opportunity, but if the business is restructuring, reducing spend, or chasing quick wins, your proposal might not even be considered. Momentum in the business doesn’t always line up with SEO’s long-term arc.

Then there’s the human element.

Budget decisions aren’t made in spreadsheets, they’re made in meetings. In rooms filled with competing priorities and shifting narratives. Influence, trust, and internal visibility all shape whether your ask gets the attention it deserves.

That’s why securing SEO budget isn’t just about making a good case on paper.

It’s about timing, storytelling, relationships, and credibility. It’s about showing that SEO isn’t a cost, it’s an investment that’s a catalyst for long-term, compounding business growth.

Positioning SEO as a Strategic Investment

If you want budget for SEO, you have to stop talking like an SEO.

That means moving the conversation away from keywords, backlinks, and audits, and instead reframing SEO in the language of growth, efficiency, and commercial value. Because when you’re asking for investment, SEO can’t sound like a tactical checklist. It needs to sound like a strategic advantage.

This isn’t about doing SEO for SEO’s sake. It’s about showing that SEO is a business enabler; a lever that helps the company achieve its wider objectives faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost.

Speak in Outcomes, Not Outputs

Senior stakeholders are not concerned about how many title tags you updated this quarter.

They’re concerned about revenue, ROI, acquisition cost, and efficiency metrics. So if you want their attention, you need to position SEO in terms of the outcomes they care about.

That might mean positioning SEO as a channel that reduces dependency on paid media. Or showing how SEO insights can improve conversion journeys and lower acquisition costs. But it always means going beyond rankings or traffic lifts and speaking in terms of measurable business impact.

Tailor the Message to the Audience

The right story is only as powerful as how well it’s told to the right audience.

Different stakeholders have different concerns, and if you present SEO as a one-size-fits-all solution, it won’t land.

The CFO wants to understand ROI and risk. The CMO is focused on visibility and growth. Product teams care about usability and delivery. And brand teams are protective of consistency and positioning.

So the way you present SEO needs to flex accordingly.

This isn’t about rewriting your entire strategy. It’s about framing it so each audience sees where they fit in, and how SEO supports what they already care about.

Make SEO Everyone’s Enabler

One of the most powerful shifts you can create is moving SEO from a siloed function to an embedded support layer for the whole digital operation.

When SEO is positioned as something that strengthens other teams, not something that competes with them, the conversations start to change. SEO becomes a channel that helps content get found, helps paid search drive better results, helps UX teams improve user journeys, and helps brand teams show up when it matters most.

The more SEO is seen as a multiplier, an investment that lifts other functions, the easier it becomes to secure funding. Because when SEO succeeds, so does everyone else.

Building the Business Case for SEO Investment

If you want budget for SEO, you need more than a strong idea.

You need a strong business case.

That means moving beyond “here’s what we want to do” and into “here’s the business problem we’re solving, why it matters now, and what return the company can expect.” A good SEO business case doesn’t just explain the opportunity, it builds confidence, aligns with priorities, and earns trust.

When done well, it positions SEO as a smart investment that supports the business’s growth, not just a channel-specific request looking for approval.

The Anatomy of an Effective SEO Business Case

Every business case needs structure. It should be easy to follow, grounded in real problems, and clearly tied to commercial outcomes. The more you frame SEO work in terms of business impact, the easier it becomes to justify the ask.

A strong SEO business case typically includes the following:

• The problem — What’s currently underperforming or holding us back? Is it visibility in a key market, declining non-brand traffic, or dependency on paid channels?
  
• The opportunity — What could we gain if we address it? This might be winning share from competitors, reducing acquisition costs, or capturing demand around a strategic product.
  
• The solution — What are you proposing? Be clear about the tactic, approach, or deliverable — whether it’s a content hub, a technical upgrade, or a new international rollout.
  
• The investment — What resources are needed? Lay out the budget, tools, headcount or agency support required to execute.
  
• The impact — How will this drive commercial results? Talk in terms of revenue potential, lead generation, market share gains, or cost efficiencies.
  
• The timeline — How long will it take to deliver and start seeing results? Provide milestones to manage expectations.
  
• The success metrics — What will you track to prove ROI and course-correct as needed?
  

What you are aiming to create is a compelling story, supported by real evidence and grounded in the language of the business. It’s not about getting every detail perfect.

It’s about showing that you’ve thought strategically, planned practically, and can deliver impact.

Forecasting: Be Ambitious Without Losing Credibility

Forecasting is where many SEO business cases stumble. Attribution is messy. Results are delayed. And confidence in the numbers can be low.

But the point of a forecast is not to be perfectly accurate. It is to set expectations, outline the potential upside, and help stakeholders understand the scale of opportunity, or risk.

Forecasts that include multiple scenarios; base case, stretch case, and downside, show maturity and strategic thinking. When you acknowledge uncertainty but present it with evidence and transparency, you gain credibility. And credibility builds trust.

Visuals That Help Stakeholders Say Yes

Don’t expect a block of bullet points to carry your argument. Clear, concise visuals can make your case more accessible and more persuasive.

Useful formats include:

• Effort vs. impact matrices to help prioritise projects
  
• Gantt charts to show timelines, phases, and dependencies
  
• Search opportunity simulations to estimate lost traffic or revenue
  
• Competitor comparisons to highlight missed visibility or gaps in performance

Sometimes, the most persuasive argument is proof.

If you can show a mini win, even on a small scale, it changes the tone of the conversation. Now you’re not asking for budget based on theory. You’re asking to scale what already works.

Tailoring the Ask by Audience

Even the strongest SEO business case can fall flat if it is not delivered in the right way to the right people. To secure budget, alignment matters just as much as logic.

Every stakeholder group evaluates SEO through a different lens. They bring their own goals, pressures, and mental models into the conversation. And if your pitch fails to connect with what matters to them, even the most well-reasoned plan can get pushed aside.

Your job is to bridge that gap; not by changing the ask, but by changing the story around it.

For the CMO: Growth, ROI and Reducing Paid Dependency

The CMO is thinking big picture. Their focus is on brand visibility, marketing effectiveness, and how each channel contributes to measurable business growth. They are not interested in SEO tactics for their own sake; they want to understand how SEO ladders up to strategic KPIs.

This is where SEO needs to shift from traffic to value. Frame organic as a scalable acquisition channel, a cost-efficient complement to paid, or a way to improve long-term customer lifetime value.

When speaking with marketing leadership, you need to show how SEO not only supports campaign goals but helps the business reduce its over-reliance on paid channels, especially during times of rising ad costs or performance volatility.

For Finance: Credible Forecasts and Clear ROI

The finance team will not buy into big, bold numbers unless they are backed by transparency and sound reasoning. Their role is to allocate resources efficiently, so they need to feel confident that SEO investment will deliver returns, and that risks are understood.

That means showing your working. Clarify the assumptions behind your projections. Share benchmarks, previous examples, and a range of potential outcomes. Don’t just present the upside, present the base case and acknowledge the variables.

If you can speak their language; efficiency, margin impact, cost per acquisition, opportunity cost, you’ll have a much better chance of getting your business case over the line.

For Product: Scope, Dependencies, and Speed to Value

Product and engineering teams have limited time and a long list of competing priorities. If you want their support, you need to come to the table with a clear, scoped request that fits into their world.

This starts with collaboration. Don’t wait until your business case is finished, work with product early on to understand what’s feasible. Then, frame your ask with their constraints in mind.

Product teams want to understand what success looks like, how difficult the work will be, who needs to be involved, and how quickly the business will see value. The more precise and actionable your request is, the more likely it is to be taken seriously.

Even better, come with a Plan B. If a full implementation is not possible, is there a manual workaround, MVP, or phased approach that can be tested first?

For Brand: Alignment, Not Trade-Offs

Brand teams are not your enemy, but they do worry about SEO diluting their work. Whether it’s copy tone, page structure, or naming conventions, brand owners want consistency and control.

Your job is to reframe SEO as a partner to brand, not a trade-off.

Show them that visibility in search reinforces their efforts. That using customer language doesn’t mean losing brand identity. That search intent can help shape stronger, more resonant storytelling.

Speak to what they care about; brand strength, consistency, customer perception. Show examples of competitors winning visibility with weaker brand experiences. Highlight how aligned content and search strategy can create more moments of connection, not fewer.

SEO and brand don’t have to be in conflict. The most persuasive business cases prove that they are more effective when working together.

Knowing When to Ask (and When to Wait)

Sometimes, getting SEO budget has less to do with the strength of your case and more to do with the timing. The best argument in the world can fall flat if the business simply is not in the right place to hear it.

Securing budget is not just about what you are asking for. It is about understanding the rhythms of your business, the priorities of leadership, and the mood across teams. Knowing how to read the room, and when to speak up, is what separates smart operators from frustrated bystanders.

Timing Around Budget Cycles and Planning Windows

If you want your SEO initiative to be taken seriously, it needs to land at the right time in the company’s planning calendar.

Most businesses operate in cycles. Budgets get locked at specific times. Roadmaps are shaped during quarterly or annual planning sessions. If you pitch your idea too late, you are not just making a request, you are asking people to undo a plan they already committed to.

The key is not just to respond to planning cycles, but to anticipate them. If your company does annual planning in Q4, you should be shaping your pitch by Q3. If quarterly planning is more agile, make sure SEO is consistently represented in those meetings. Being late means being left out.

Look for Strategic Alignment Moments

Some of the best opportunities to secure SEO investment do not come from your roadmap. They come from the business’s.

When a company is entering a new market, launching a product, going through a rebrand, or chasing aggressive growth targets, leadership is actively looking for ways to support those goals. If you can frame SEO as a lever that helps make those ambitions a reality, your request will feel timely, relevant, and aligned, not random.

The most effective in-house SEOs track what is happening across the company, not just within their own team. They monitor new hires, strategy shifts, investor updates, and product launches, then time their requests to ride that momentum.

Understand the Mood, Not Just the Metrics

You might have a great track record, solid metrics, and a well-thought-out proposal. But if your company is under pressure, morale is low, or leadership is focused on cost-cutting, your timing may still be off.

Budget decisions are emotional as well as logical. People are more cautious when the business is under stress. They are more open when things are going well. Paying attention to the mood in the business, not just the numbers on the dashboard, can help you avoid pushing at the wrong time.

The right move is not always to push harder. Sometimes, it is to pause, regroup, and strengthen your case while waiting for the moment when the business is ready to say yes.

Don’t Burn Your Ask Too Early

Every in-house SEO has a finite amount of political capital. If you spend it too early, or on something that does not deliver, it becomes much harder to secure backing next time.

That is why you have to be selective. Not every project needs a big budget push. Save your major asks for initiatives with significant upside. And make sure your timing, stakeholders, and support are all in place when you do make that request.

Being strategic about when to ask is not just about avoiding friction. It is about building a reputation as someone who knows how to pick their moment. Someone who brings forward ideas that land, because they are relevant, timely, and grounded in what the business needs right now.

Anticipating Pushback (and How to Overcome It)

Even with the perfect pitch, right timing, and clear value, pushback is part of the game. In-house SEOs are rarely given a clear runway. Most budget conversations involve a few steps forward, one step back, and a series of obstacles you need to be ready for.

Some rejections are blunt.

Others are wrapped in politeness.

But most objections fall somewhere in the middle; subtle doubts, competing priorities, or confusion disguised as resistance. The difference between a stalled idea and a funded initiative often lies in your ability to anticipate those objections and respond with empathy, clarity, and practical solutions.

Objection: “This isn’t a priority right now.”

This is one of the most common, and vague, objections you will hear. Often, it means your pitch has not been tied tightly enough to the business’s current focus.

Rather than trying to convince someone that SEO should be their new top priority, the smarter move is to frame your initiative as something that accelerates what they are already doing. When you show how SEO supports the business’s existing goals, it no longer feels like a distraction. It becomes a multiplier.

Start by identifying what leadership cares about right now. Then position your SEO ask as a direct enabler of that. It is not about changing priorities. It is about showing how SEO strengthens the ones already in place.

Objection: “Where’s the proof this will work?”

This is where many SEO proposals run into trouble. Because SEO outcomes are not instant and attribution is often imperfect, it can feel like a leap of faith to someone outside the channel.

Your job is to replace uncertainty with confidence. You do not need a perfect forecast, but you do need evidence. That might be a comparable past success, a benchmark from another market, or a small-scale test you can run internally.

Proof wins trust. Even a directional test with limited scope can create the momentum you need to unlock the next level of investment.

Objection: “We don’t have the resources.”

Sometimes this is a bandwidth issue. Other times it is a resourcing conflict, another project already has dev capacity tied up, or a team is operating under constraints. Rather than let that shut down the conversation, come back with options.

Flexible delivery models show that you are focused on progress, not perfection. Offer phased approaches. Introduce MVP versions. Show how agency support could take the load off internal teams. When you bring alternatives, you give decision-makers room to say yes.

Always be ready with more than one way forward. It is easier to win support when your proposal feels doable under current constraints.

Objection: “This feels too technical or unclear.”

SEO can be intimidating to stakeholders who do not understand it. If your pitch is full of jargon, acronyms, and abstract concepts, it will get deprioritised; not because it lacks value, but because it lacks clarity.

You need to simplify without oversimplifying. Focus on outcomes, not mechanisms. Use plain language. Tie every recommendation to a business result that makes sense outside the SEO team.

If someone outside your team cannot explain what you are proposing and why it matters after one conversation, the ask is not ready yet.

Objection: “It’s not aligned with brand.”

Brand alignment is often where great SEO ideas go to die. If a recommendation feels like it compromises voice, tone, or perception, the brand team will resist, sometimes fiercely.

But let’s not forget that SEO and brand alignment is more important than ever before.

The key is to involve them early. Invite collaboration, not confrontation. Use search insights to inform creative decisions, and show how visibility can actually amplify brand, not dilute it.

When you make brand teams feel like partners rather than gatekeepers, resistance fades. You are no longer asking them to compromise; you are helping them extend their reach.

Be Ready Before the Pushback Comes

Pushback is not a sign your idea is wrong. It is a sign your idea needs more support. The best in-house SEOs do not wait for objections. They anticipate them. They show up with options, credibility, and empathy. They know the questions they will be asked, and they come with answers.

That preparation is what turns a “maybe” into a “yes.”

Proving Impact to Unlock Future Investment

Securing SEO budget once is hard. Securing it again, year on year, depends on what happens next.

Initial investment is often driven by vision and persuasion. Continued investment is earned through impact.

If your work delivers, and if stakeholders can clearly see the results, reinvestment becomes the obvious next step. But if progress feels invisible or disconnected from business outcomes, the case gets harder to make every time.

Proving SEO’s impact is not just about reporting on traffic or rankings. It is about translating SEO efforts into the metrics that matter to decision-makers. That means connecting visibility to growth, technical wins to commercial outcomes, and organic traction to broader strategic goals.

The goal is simple: make the value of SEO so clear that not investing would feel like a mistake.

Tie SEO Wins to Business Results

One of the fastest ways to lose stakeholder interest is to talk about SEO in isolation. When you frame results in traffic alone, you are missing the chance to show how that traffic drives real impact.

Instead, draw a direct line between organic performance and the commercial goals your business already tracks. Whether it is reducing reliance on paid media, improving cost per acquisition, driving more qualified traffic to product pages, or increasing conversions, SEO works best when it is positioned as a driver of business efficiency and growth.

This does not require perfect attribution. What it does require is confidence and clarity. The more you can show how SEO contributes to the numbers the business already cares about, revenue, efficiency, retention, the more compelling your next budget request becomes.

Show Progress Visually and Frequently

One of the biggest mistakes in-house SEOs make is waiting until quarterly reporting cycles to showcase results. In most companies, priorities shift quickly. Momentum gets lost when progress is hidden in dashboards or siloed reports.

The solution is to make impact visible, and often.

Whether you are rolling out new landing pages, implementing technical fixes, or running content refreshes, share progress regularly and use visuals that help tell the story. Gantt charts, interactive dashboards, and snapshot summaries can make complex SEO work more tangible for busy stakeholders.

Your reporting does not need to be exhaustive. It needs to be clear, regular, and aligned with stakeholder expectations.

The more frequently people see SEO progress, the more likely they are to see SEO as a worthy investment.

Build Credibility with Small Wins First

If you are early in your SEO journey, or if you are trying to win back confidence after a stalled period, the smartest move is to aim for quick, measurable wins that require minimal resourcing.

Choose high-confidence, low-complexity projects, like refreshing outdated content, or launching internal linking sprints, that can show impact fast.

Start small, deliver value, and scale from there. When stakeholders see results from even modest investments, your next request becomes less of a risk and more of a continuation.

Make Attribution as Clear as Possible

Attribution will never be perfect in SEO. There are too many variables, long customer journeys, and data blind spots to give airtight answers. But that does not mean your impact is invisible.

You can strengthen your case with directional indicators. Use a blend of organic traffic shifts, changes in search visibility, engagement metrics, assisted conversions, and competitive benchmarking to build a narrative around your performance.

You are not trying to prove every last click.

You are trying to demonstrate a clear trend, a connection between the work you are doing and the outcomes the business cares about. That is more than enough to unlock continued support.

Budgeting for Agility: Planning for the Unexpected

Even the most carefully crafted SEO strategy can be thrown off course.

A surprise algorithm update changes your content priorities. A leadership change brings new KPIs. A product pivot shifts the business direction entirely. And sometimes, it is not even a major event, just a change in resourcing or shifting stakeholder attention that disrupts your carefully built roadmap.

That is why the most effective in-house SEOs do not just fight for budget. They plan for flexibility.

Agile SEO budgeting is not about winging it or changing direction constantly. It is about building room to respond quickly and intelligently when priorities shift, without derailing your core plans.

Leave Room for Strategic Adaptation

If every penny of your SEO budget is locked in from day one, you are leaving no room to manoeuvre. And in a fast-changing environment, that is risky.

Whether it is capitalising on unexpected media coverage, fixing a technical issue that suddenly becomes critical, or reacting to a competitor’s move in the SERPs, you need space to respond.

A good rule of thumb is to hold back 10 to 15 percent of your budget for flexible use. This does not mean saving it for emergencies. It means investing with intention, in the right moments, with the right justification, when those moments arise.

Plan for Learning, Not Just Execution

Many SEO budgets are focused entirely on implementation. But if all your investment is locked into delivery, you lose the chance to test, learn, and evolve.

Set aside a portion of your budget for experimentation. That might mean trialling a new content format, testing CRO ideas on organic landing pages, or piloting a new approach to link acquisition. These tests are not just tactical, they are strategic assets that help build future business cases.

When testing is built into your plan, you create a culture of learning. You reduce the pressure on every initiative to succeed and gain insights that sharpen your next big bet.

Have a Re-Prioritisation Framework

You cannot predict every disruption. But you can plan how to respond when it happens.

Having a re-prioritisation framework gives you the tools to decide what to pause, scale back, or accelerate, without resorting to gut instinct or internal politics. Effort vs. impact. Time-to-impact vs. confidence-in-outcome. These are simple models that make fast decisions easier to justify and explain.

When you know how to evaluate and rebalance priorities, you can move quickly without compromising strategy.

Use Agile Budgeting to Build Trust

Flexibility does not mean a lack of planning. In fact, it signals strategic maturity.

When stakeholders see that you are willing to reallocate based on performance, business context, or changing priorities, rather than sticking rigidly to the original plan, they are more likely to trust your judgment.

This kind of flexibility builds long-term credibility. It shows that you are not just trying to defend a fixed plan. You are committed to driving the best possible outcomes for the business, whatever the circumstances.

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Securing and managing an SEO budget is not just a task to tick off. It is a strategic effort that demands commercial clarity, cross-functional alignment, and the ability to sell a vision rooted in real impact.

You are not just asking for money. You are making the case for why SEO deserves a seat at the table; not just as a performance channel, but as a driver of long-term growth, visibility, and efficiency.

To do that, the most effective in-house SEOs consistently follow a set of core principles:

• Position SEO as a growth lever — not a technical function or isolated channel.
  
• Frame your proposals in business terms — revenue, ROI, efficiency — not search metrics.
  
• Tailor your message to your audience — from Finance to Product, from Brand to the C-suite.
  
• Prove value with data — not just once, but consistently, across every initiative.
  
• Plan for agility — because priorities change, and your roadmap needs room to move.
  

Every business will be different. Every stakeholder will bring their own priorities, expectations, and questions to the table. Your job is to meet them there.

You will not always get a “yes” the first time. But if you come prepared, with data, context, credibility, and a clear answer to the question, “Why now, and why this?”, you will be ready when the window opens.

This guide has given you the frameworks, tools, and real-world insights to help you make your case; and win the support you need to turn SEO from a sidelined initiative into a strategic priority.

Now it is over to you.

Build the case. Make the ask. Lead the conversation.

And show your organisation why investing in SEO is not just smart, it is essential.