One of the most common conversations I have with clients is about budget, and it usually goes the same way. The PPC spend is easy to defend because the numbers are right there: spend goes in, revenue comes out, and everyone in the room can see the relationship between the two. SEO is a harder sell, not because it performs worse, but because most SEO reporting simply is not built to answer the question a finance director actually asks, which is what the channel is worth in pounds.
I have lost count of the number of times I have watched an SEO budget shrink in favour of paid search, even when the organic channel was quietly outperforming it. The traffic was there. The rankings were there. What was missing was a clear line from that traffic to revenue, and without it, SEO struggles to hold its ground in the room.
Why I stopped leading with rankings
For a long time, my reporting looked much like everyone else’s: keyword positions, sessions, a handful of technical fixes completed that month. All of that matters to me and to anyone doing the work, but it means very little to the person signing off the invoice. I have learned that if a report does not answer “what did this earn us,” it has not really done its job.
The shift I now make with clients is straightforward, though it does require a change in mind-set. Rather than starting a strategy with search volume, I start with margin. Which of a client’s product lines, service areas, or categories actually make them the most money, and how much demand exists around them? Rather than asking where new content should sit, I ask which existing pages would generate the most revenue if they ranked a few places higher. Rather than reporting on sessions, I report on organic profit, which means I need to understand what the channel costs to run as well as what it returns.
None of this needs new tools. It needs analytics data connected to figures the client already has, such as average order value, margin by category, and conversion rate by page. Once that link exists, I can work out organic profit per sale and hold SEO to the same standard as every other channel in the business, with a measurable cost against a measurable outcome.
Demand shows where. Value shows why.
Search volume, keyword difficulty, and current rankings are all useful, and I still look at them closely. But on their own, they only describe demand. They do not tell me whether ranking for a term is actually worth the effort involved.
I have worked on categories with modest search volume that were a far better use of a client’s budget than a high-traffic category with thin margins, simply because the average order value and profit per sale were stronger. Once I layer value-side data, such as category profitability and customer lifetime value, on top of demand data, the priority list changes, and it often points to a different set of pages than a standard keyword-led plan would suggest.
How I put this into practice
A commercially aware strategy does not mean abandoning rankings or content. I still care about both. What changes is the filter I apply before deciding where the effort goes, so that time is spent where it has the greatest financial impact.
I score opportunities on demand and value together. Rather than prioritising purely by search volume, I weigh that demand against margin potential and how a page is already performing. The pages sitting at the intersection of strong demand and strong commercial value are usually where the biggest wins are, and they are not always the pages a standard keyword report would flag first.
I refresh commercial pages before I write anything new. A page that converts well today will not stay that way indefinitely. Competitors improve their content, search results change shape, and freshness signals fade, all of which chip away at revenue from pages that were previously performing well. I have often found more value in reviewing competitor content, restructuring a page so it is easier to scan, and strengthening the internal links pointing to it, than in producing something new from scratch.
I direct internal links towards revenue, not just authority. Linking from strong informational content through to commercial pages, particularly where a page has authority but the service or product page it should be supporting does not yet rank well, is one of the more underused levers I come across. It costs nothing beyond the time it takes to plan properly.
I use PPC data to steer organic priorities. Organic search rarely tells me which specific keywords led to a sale. Paid search data usually does. I regularly review a client’s recent campaign data to identify which terms generate genuine customers rather than just clicks, and use that to point organic work towards the landing pages and content updates most likely to convert.
I look for commercial keywords sitting just outside page one. Positions ten to twenty often contain a cluster of transactional terms a client is already ranking for, just not high enough to capture meaningful traffic. This is frequently where I find the fastest wins, because the groundwork is already in place.
I protect branded search. When affiliates or comparison sites rank ahead of a client for their own brand name, that client is often paying a commission on customers who were already looking for them directly. Strengthening branded landing pages and keeping an eye on branded click share can recover margin as well as traffic.
Choosing an attribution model and sticking with it
Attribution in organic search is rarely tidy, and I do not pretend otherwise with clients. Sessions can appear as direct traffic, different platforms report different numbers, and customer journeys frequently touch more than one channel before a sale happens. I do not treat that as a reason to avoid measurement. I treat it as a reason to agree a model the client and I can both work with, be upfront about its limitations, and track revenue against it consistently. Once a client sees organic search contributing a growing, reliable share of revenue, the finer points of attribution tend to matter far less.
Getting the rest of the business on side
None of this works if it stays inside the SEO report. A commercially aware strategy needs support from finance, product, and other marketing channels, and I have found that support is much easier to secure with the right approach.
I speak in terms that matter to decision-makers, which means revenue and margin rather than rankings and sessions. Where I can, I run a smaller, contained piece of work first, such as refreshing a set of commercial pages or protecting branded search, and use the results to build the case for further investment. Showing where a competitor currently outranks a client for high-value terms, with a rough figure attached to what that is costing in lost revenue, tends to get attention quickly.
The takeaway
SEO has spent years perfecting its technical craft, and that work still matters. What I focus on now is connecting that craft to the numbers a client already cares about: sales, margin, and return on investment. It does not mean less content or less technical work. It means applying a commercial lens before deciding where that work goes, so that SEO is judged, and funded, on the same terms as every other channel in the business.
Graig Upton
Graig Upton is a UK SEO and Google Ads consultant with 23 years of hands-on digital marketing experience. Google certified in Ads, Analytics and Conversions, he has helped businesses ranging from local providers to national brands — including Nando's and Investors Chronicle — dominate search and scale their leads. Based in Preston, working with clients across the UK.