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Field NotesSEO

Field Notes #108: When SEO Success Doesn’t Translate to Business Success

By February 3, 2025No Comments8 min read
Field Notes #108_ When SEO success doesn't translate to business success

Last Updated on February 3, 2025

We don’t usually work with very early-stage companies. Our ideal clients are established B2B brands with product-market fit, solid positioning, and consistent revenue growth. But every now and then, we take a bet.

This was one of those bets.

The client was an early-stage AI tool for designers with promising signals.

The team was sharp and aggressive with a solid understand of go-to-market strategy, the product was innovative and well-designed, and the market was already large and expanding rapidly. They’d already established one acquisition channel with influencer-driven campaigns and user-generated content. 

We saw potential in SEO to amplify their early momentum, mapping out a motivating TAM that included obvious editorial SEO plays as well as semi-programmatic template pages (with augmented link building and digital PR campaigns). 

From month one to month seven, the results exceeded expectations.

  • Domain Rating: Climbed from 20 to 50.
  • Blog Traffic: From zero to 2,000+ sessions per month (all relevant and high intent terms)
  • Website Traffic: From 3,000 to 30,000 organic sessions per month.
  • Conversions: 12,000 product signups monthly across the site, and 180 from the blog (last click attribution in GA4)

For an early-stage company, these numbers were extraordinary, especially in the volatile year of 2024. My expectations for an early stage brand starting from scratch in organic are usually quite low for the first 6-12 months, but here we were already driving substantial user growth.

Based on these numbers, I should be writing a case study, not a post-mortem. But one of our principles is “intellectual honesty,” so here we are. 

The client ended up pivoting to a new product, ICP, and market, and thus, churning. Not because SEO didn’t work—it worked spectacularly. The problem was more fundamental. 

The Lessons Beneath the Metrics

Despite the traffic, signups, and conversions, their product wasn’t sticking. Users were churning out as quickly as they came in, unable—or unwilling—to switch from entrenched incumbents like [redacted well-known brand].

The core issue wasn’t acquisition; it was retention and monetization, particularly for team usage and plans. Without these pillars, no amount of SEO success could sustain the business. It’s just pouring water into a leaky bucket. As the client explained:

“Our retention has always been quite low… our product is still too similar to [big brand’s], and design teams are deeply tied to [big brand]. It’s just really hard to get them to switch.”

This story highlights an uncomfortable truth: while SEO is an incredible growth engine, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. It’s also why we advocate aggressively for deeper funnel measurement and attribution for SEO (and other customer acquisition) programs. 

Startups are, especially in the early days, a hypothesis in search of a business model. They iterate, pivot, and sometimes, even with everything “working,” they fail. That’s not a reflection of poor execution—it’s the nature of the game. 

In fact, like a well-structured A/B test that “loses,” it represents an amazing learning that will end up fueling their next swing with a higher probability of success (and they can very likely replicate the learnings from our growth and acquisition efforts in their new pivot). 

And for us, 10-20% of these early stage bets end up turning into a Jasper or a HotJar. So in addition to being a fun challenge, it’s well worth it to stay sharp by working with a few of them. 

SEO as an Amplifier, Not a Savior

My audience here is mixed – some marketing leaders, some CEOs or founders, and some SEO or content experts. I’d wager that those closest to SEO often struggle to see the broader view of a business, often enmeshed in link velocity, technical SEO and site structure, content, and keywords. 

But SEO is better suited as a megaphone or looked at as retail inventory: it amplifies what’s already working in your product, your message, and your market fit.

Without those foundations, you can bring in thousands—even millions—of users, only to watch them churn.

This isn’t a failure of SEO. It’s a reminder that growth is multi-dimensional.

Keywords, backlinks, and content pages don’t replace core principles—they support them.

This is why we typically turn away clients who have not yet established product-market fit, positioning, or messaging, and advise them to work on these foundations before applying SEO as a growth accelerator and channel acquisition strategy. 

To this client’s credit, they did everything perfectly, pivoting at the right time and focusing on the small sliver of their product that had solid retention and unit economics. This echoes Paul Graham’s advice on engaging and learning from users:

“To benefit from engaging with users you have to be willing to change your idea. We’ve always encouraged founders to see a startup idea as a hypothesis rather than a blueprint. And yet they’re still surprised how well it works to change the idea.”

Growth Isn’t One Isolated Metric

In the end, the client pivoted to a new product targeting a different market: AI tools for developers. The rationale? Their new product had early signals of better retention and monetization.

Was their SEO investment wasted? Not at all. They learned invaluable lessons:

  1. Their product was not sticky or competitive enough for their chosen market.
  2. Retention matters as much or more than acquisition. Or at the very least, one cannot exist without the other in a truly successful company. 
  3. SEO can scale a message and product distribution, but it can’t create stickiness.

These insights informed their pivot, and when the time comes, they’ll likely be able to replicate the a similar organic growth playbook with their new product—only this time, on a firmer foundation.

A Broader Lesson for Marketers

As marketers, we often fixate on channel success. We debate backlinks, argue over AI-driven content, post selfies on LinkedIn with captions about demand generation, and chase traffic goals.

But these are just tactics—inputs to a larger system.

The real question is: What are these tactics amplifying?

Here, in the midst of so much excitement around channel evolution, AI, and all the other fun stuff on the new frontier of growth, I want to re-emphasize the fundamentals of growth. 

talked to Sean Ellis in a (soon to be published) podcast interview, and I asked him how his views on product-market fit have changed in the last decade and particularly in the face of all these technology changes.

His answer was surprisingly sober (bolding is mine):

“I would say that my appreciation for product market fit has actually grown a lot since I first came across the term. Even before I came across the term, the concept of product market fit was in my head. 

I think the first time I kind of realized the concept of product market fit was I was coming off of my second startup. We had just filed for an IPO. The first one had also gone public and I was thinking, okay, the next startup I do statistically is going to fail because no one knocks it out of the park three times in a row. 

What is the reason it’s going to fail? It’s kind of like reverse engineering the failure. 

Then I was like, man, I could be the greatest marketer in the world, but if nobody wants the product, then I’m dead in the water. That’s how I started to hone in on this concept of product market fit is that, ultimately, the product has to meet an important need.

That’s going to be more impactful for growth than even high velocity experimentation and all this growth hacking stuff that I was talking about really doesn’t move the needle that much compared to being in the right market with the right product. So if you can really tap into that product market fit, you’re just more likely to drive incredible sustainable growth over time. Then you can incrementally improve on that through high velocity testing, but the testing is relatively minor compared to the product market fit in terms of driving your long-term success.”

If you have the fundamentals in place, SEO becomes a multiplier for sustainable growth. If you don’t, no amount of SEO can save you in the long run.

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Alex Birkett

Alex is a co-founder of Omniscient Digital. He loves experimentation, building things, and adventurous sports (scuba diving, skiing, and jiu jitsu primarily). He lives in Austin, Texas with his dog Biscuit.