In the final episode of Season 1 of Beyond SEO®, Kevin Kapezi and Glen Chamisa sit down with Edd Wilson from Frontify to unpack what organic growth actually looks like in modern B2B SaaS.
Edd’s perspective is especially useful because it comes from both agency and in-house experience. That matters. It means the discussion goes beyond theory and into the operational reality of how SaaS brands grow, how internal teams align, and why old reporting habits are no longer enough.
This is not a conversation about chasing rankings for the sake of it. It is a conversation about what happens when SEO stops being treated as a silo and starts operating as part of a wider growth system, one that connects product, content, brand, conversion, and revenue.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction to Beyond SEO & Edd Wilson
- 01:00 From SEO to Organic Growth Thinking
- 02:00 Why SEO Should Not Be Siloed
- 04:00 AI Search & The Shift in Discovery
- 06:00 Agency vs In-House: The Commercial Gap
- 09:00 Why Traffic Is the Wrong Metric
- 12:00 Reporting on Revenue, Not Clicks
- 14:00 Getting Access to CRM & Sales Data
- 17:00 Using Customer Conversations for Strategy
- 19:00 Brand Is No Longer Separate from SEO
- 21:00 Working Across Product, Brand & Growth
- 23:00 What Makes Great Modern SEOs
- 26:00 CRO, Website Strategy & “SEO as Systems”
- 29:00 Quick Wins: Using PPC Data for SEO
- 32:00 Building an Organic Growth Function
- 35:00 Aligning with Product Teams
- 37:00 SaaS Content Strategy That Actually Converts
- 41:00 Orchestrating Content Across Channels
- 45:00 Why SEO Budgets Lag Behind Paid
- 47:00 AI Search, LLMs & The Future of SEO
- 51:00 90-Day Growth Plan for SaaS
- 54:00 Final Thoughts & Closing
SEO Is No Longer the Strategy on Its Own
One of the strongest themes from the episode is that SEO can no longer be treated as a standalone function.
For a long time, SEO work was often pushed into a corner of the business. It was seen as something technical, something tactical, or something that sat beneath “real” marketing. Edd challenges that framing directly. His view is that the real value of organic growth is always connected to broader commercial goals, whether that is product marketing, brand positioning, or helping a business create demand around real audience pain points.
That shift matters even more now because the way people discover brands is changing. Search is no longer just about blue links and clicks. Discovery now happens across search engines, AI assistants, review platforms, social platforms, and category conversations. That means organic growth is increasingly an orchestration problem, not just a search problem.
“It’s more general good marketing rather than just for SEO.”
That is the real takeaway. Strong organic growth is not a niche channel exercise. It is a business-wide system.
Why the AI Era Is Forcing a Broader View of Organic Growth
The AI angle in this episode is important, but not in the lazy “AI is replacing SEO” way that gets thrown around online.
The more useful point is that AI is exposing a truth that was already there. Brands can no longer rely on a narrow SEO playbook built around traffic growth alone. If AI systems are synthesising information from multiple sources, then a company’s visibility depends on far more than what sits on its website.
Your pricing pages, your brand messaging, your product positioning, your third-party mentions, your reviews, your thought leadership, and your overall digital footprint all start to matter more. In other words, AI search does not kill organic growth. It makes weak, disconnected organic strategies easier to expose.
“We were listening to what prospects and customers actually want… and taking that back into our internal strategy.”
That is why the conversation repeatedly comes back to alignment. If your company says one thing on its website, another thing in product messaging, and something outdated on review platforms or external profiles, that inconsistency becomes a visibility problem.
Traffic Is Not the Metric That Matters Most
One of the most useful parts of the discussion is Edd’s contrast between agency-side and in-house thinking.
In agency environments, it is easy to over-report on traffic, clicks, and surface-level growth. Those metrics are visible. They are easy to package. They are also often too far removed from what the commercial team actually cares about.
In-house, that gap becomes impossible to ignore.
At Frontify, Edd explains that the focus is not on traffic as the hero metric. The emphasis is on conversions, opportunity value, and the quality of commercial outcomes coming through the channel. That changes the strategy itself. It also changes what gets prioritised.
A topic that drives lots of conversions but poor-fit leads is not necessarily a win. A lower-volume topic that influences a high-value opportunity may be far more commercially important. Without that downstream visibility, many teams would keep backing the wrong initiatives.
“The majority of organic growth is reported based on opportunity value.”
This is where many SEO strategies still fall apart. They are measured in ways that make them look busy rather than valuable.
Why Agencies Need to Get Closer to Revenue Data
Edd makes a blunt but useful point for agencies. If you want to deliver better work, get closer to the numbers your client actually uses internally.
That means understanding CRM stages, lead qualification, opportunity value, and how deals progress after form fills or conversions happen. In practical terms, that could mean view access to HubSpot or Salesforce, regular manual exports from internal teams, or recurring syncs with commercial stakeholders.
Without that, agencies are often left presenting metrics they think matter while the client has to translate those metrics internally into commercial language. That is inefficient. It also weakens trust.
The stronger model is obvious. Do the translation yourself. Report on the numbers that matter to the people controlling budget.
Customer Conversations Are a Better Starting Point Than Keyword Tools Alone
Another sharp point in the episode is where research should start.
Traditional SEO research usually begins in keyword tools. That still has value, but Edd explains that Frontify increasingly starts from customer and prospect conversations, especially through recorded calls and revenue intelligence tools.
That changes the quality of insight. Instead of guessing what an audience cares about from search volume alone, you hear their actual language, their objections, their use cases, and the way they describe their problems in real buying situations.
That is a much stronger foundation for strategy, particularly in B2B SaaS, where buying journeys are complex and low-volume, high-value intent matters more than broad informational traffic.
It also creates a better feedback loop between sales, product marketing, and organic growth. That kind of loop is hard to build, but once it exists, it gives teams a far better shot at producing content and pages that actually influence pipeline.
Brand Is Not Separate From Organic Growth Anymore
One of the more important strategic themes in the episode is the idea that brand can no longer sit in a separate lane.
Edd reflects on how he used to see brand as something distinctive but disconnected from product or growth. His current view is the opposite. In modern SaaS, the strongest companies connect brand directly to product marketing, content, and go-to-market strategy.
“A lot of my time is spent working across brand, product marketing, and commercial enablement.”
That means organic growth is not just about being found. It is about how your company is understood.
If content has no distinctive point of view, no supporting evidence, and no connection to a real market position, it becomes interchangeable. And in an environment where almost anyone can produce surface-level content at scale, interchangeable is a weak place to be.
The real edge comes from a company’s unique perspective, how clearly it understands its audience, and how consistently that shows up across content, product pages, thought leadership, and the wider web.
What Modern SEO Talent Should Actually Look Like
There is also a useful hiring insight in the conversation.
As SEO increasingly overlaps with product, brand, content, and CRO, the most valuable people are not necessarily those who fit a narrow “SEO skillset” definition. Edd’s answer is more interesting than that. He points to customer obsession.
“Trying to understand what customers are looking for, what prospects are looking for.”
That means people who are genuinely interested in the audience, their pain points, their context, and what they are actually trying to achieve. It also means people who can build fast feedback loops, learn from what is working, and adapt strategy based on real outcomes rather than static playbooks.
That is a far better description of what strong modern organic growth requires than a checklist of legacy SEO tasks.
SEO, CRO, and Website Strategy Are Increasingly the Same Conversation
Another recurring theme is that SEO is increasingly tied to broader website strategy.
At Frontify, Edd’s remit goes beyond content. It includes CRO strategy, product page development, website testing, and user pathing. That is significant because it reflects how the function is evolving in practice, not just how people talk about it online.
“It’s more about general website strategy… a lot of it is conversion rate optimisation.”
If an organic team drives the right visitors but the website experience is weak, conversion suffers. If product pages are misaligned with how prospects actually think about the solution, visibility alone is not enough. If teams optimise discovery but ignore what happens after the click, the growth system breaks down.
That is why the old view of SEO as a narrow acquisition channel is increasingly unhelpful. The real job is broader.
How to Approach the First 90 Days in a SaaS Brand
When asked what he would do in the first 90 days inside a new SaaS brand, Edd’s answer is pragmatic.
He would start by understanding whether there is already proof of product-market fit and commercial traction. If there is not, organic growth is probably not the first lever to prioritise. Paid search can often provide a faster feedback loop at that stage.
“You need to understand what’s already driving value before trying to scale anything.”
If the brand is already showing signs of fit and demand, the first step is to look at what is already converting through paid media and use that as a shortcut to understand what resonates. That creates a path to early impact and helps build internal trust faster.
From there, the work becomes more systemic. Understand the levers inside the business. Turn product insight into content and website strategy. Align the organic plan to company objectives. Then build a repeatable system around it.
That approach is much more credible than the usual promises about instant rankings or quick AI visibility wins. It is slower, but it is grounded in how businesses actually grow.
Organic Growth Is Really About Orchestration
If one word sums up the whole episode, it is probably orchestration.
“You’re part of the orchestra.”
That idea comes up repeatedly because it captures the real nature of the challenge. Growth does not come from one team acting in isolation. It comes from connecting insight across departments, aligning messaging across touchpoints, and making sure strategy reflects how buyers actually discover, evaluate, and choose solutions.
That includes:
- product marketing insight
- commercial and CRM data
- content strategy
- website UX and CRO
- brand positioning
- external visibility across platforms and sources
That is harder than traditional SEO. It is also more valuable.
Final Thoughts
The strongest insight from this episode is not that SEO is dead. It is that the most useful version of SEO has outgrown its old label.
In B2B SaaS, organic growth now sits closer to product, brand, revenue, and website strategy than many teams are prepared to admit. AI search is only accelerating that reality.
For in-house teams, that means breaking down silos and building better feedback loops with sales, product marketing, and leadership. For agencies, it means getting closer to commercial data and reporting in the language that earns trust.
“It’s a collective effort… we worked together and achieved this.”
The teams that adapt to that shift will not just be better at SEO. They will be better at growth.
Watch the full episode of Beyond SEO® with Edd Wilson to hear the full conversation.
