About the Author
Corey Morris is the President and CEO of VOLTAGE, a search marketing and website agency for expertise-driven organizations. He has spent more than two decades in digital marketing and SEO, and he wrote the book on the Digital Marketing Success Plan® (DMSP), the planning process VOLTAGE uses with clients. Corey has published more than 150 articles and expert contributions across Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and Forbes over nearly a decade, and he still writes regularly for the first two. His Search Engine Journal articles alone have been read nearly 1.7 million times. He has spoken at SMX, Digital Summit, and SMPS. He's also a sought-after podcast and media guest, with more than 75 speaking, podcast, and media appearances. He served as an officer on the board of the global search marketing trade association, founded a Kansas City search marketing conference, and was named the 2019 KCDMA Marketer of the Year.
In retrospect, search marketing used to live in fairly clear lanes. Yes, I did give talks about breaking down silos, but those were much simpler times.
Search engine optimization (SEO) teams focused on organic rankings, paid search teams managed ads, content teams produced articles and landing pages, website teams handled development and technical changes, and copywriters wrote the content. Each group had its own tools, metrics, and areas of responsibility, and in many organizations, that structure still exists today.
The challenge is that search itself has changed. Search visibility now spans far more than traditional SEO, and it includes paid search, AI-generated answers, website experience, content strategy, analytics, and conversion optimization. Yet in many organizations, responsibility for these areas is still distributed across different teams and/or vendors, and when that happens, a unified search strategy can get lost.
Search can end up with too many owners.
On paper, having multiple teams involved in search may look like specialization (which, I’m all for deep expertise!), with each group focusing on what it does best. In practice, it can create fragmentation.
SEO teams may optimize content for rankings without insight into paid search data. Paid search teams may pursue conversion goals without visibility into long-term organic strategy. Content teams may produce assets without clear alignment to search demand. These aren’t necessarily new challenges, but they are magnified now.
Each group can make progress within its own lane while the broader strategy drifts. This is usually a structural issue rather than a result of poor execution. Search touches many disciplines, but without coordination, the connection points between them can break down.
The scope of search keeps expanding.
The fragmentation challenge has grown as search itself has expanded. A few years ago, I shifted my own vocabulary and view of “search” to a singular topic rather than siloed disciplines (SEO, search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC), etc.). To me, that shift is evidence of finding the right way to approach search with the inclusion of AI and where we’re going, rather than a simplification.
A single search result page can now include:
- organic listings
- paid search ads
- local map results
- video results
- featured snippets
- product listings
- AI-generated answers
Each of these types of results or answers may be influenced by different teams inside an organization. SEO may focus on organic rankings, paid media teams manage ads, content teams produce thought leadership, public relations (PR) teams build brand authority, and web teams control site structure and performance.
All of these factors contribute to search visibility, but they don’t always operate within the same strategic framework.
Fragmentation starts to show in subtle ways.
The effects of fragmented search ownership often appear in subtle ways. Sometimes it shows up in duplicated effort, where different teams may be targeting similar keywords or producing overlapping content without realizing it or having a strategy behind it.
In other cases, it shows up as conflicting priorities. One team may optimize for traffic while another focuses on conversions, leading to mixed signals in performance reporting and inefficient investment when rolled up to broader marketing and business return on investment (ROI) reporting.
It can also create missed insights. Data from paid search campaigns, for example, can provide valuable signals for organic strategy, but if those teams operate independently, those insights may never be shared (which is a tale as old as time).
Over time, these gaps can compound. Individual tactics may perform well, but the overall strategy struggles to reach its potential.
AI is adding another layer.
The rise of AI-driven search results added another dimension to the challenge. AI-generated summaries often draw on authoritative sources, structured content, and consistent signals across multiple channels, which means visibility in AI results can be influenced by different things than what SEO is focused on within an optimization plan.
Brand authority, content quality, site structure, and external signals can all play a role. In some cases, it seems like really old-school SEO tactics are helpful. More importantly, other signals of authority like PR can help and matter, and those aren’t necessarily as well integrated into search as digital channels are.
When search ownership is fragmented, organizations may struggle to align these elements effectively. In other words, AI visibility emerges from the combined signals an organization produces across its entire digital presence, so it belongs to every team that contributes to those signals. Yet another way of thinking about it is the familiar idea from so many other areas of business that when everyone is accountable, no one is truly accountable.
Search strategy needs a clear home.
As search continues to evolve, organizations are discovering that someone needs to own the strategic layer that sits above execution.
That doesn’t mean every activity must sit under the same team. SEO specialists, paid search experts, content strategists, and web developers all bring important expertise (as I mentioned earlier, I see a bigger role for deep subject matter expertise where things are going, not a smaller one). There still must be a place where those efforts come together into a coherent plan.
That strategic layer helps answer questions like:
- Which audiences are we trying to reach in search?
- Which queries matter most to the business?
- How should organic, paid, and AI visibility work together?
- What metrics actually reflect meaningful progress?
Without that alignment, organizations risk optimizing individual channels while missing the bigger opportunity.
Search strategy is becoming a leadership function.
Search used to be viewed primarily as a technical discipline. Today it is increasingly a strategic function that sits at the intersection of marketing, content, technology, and brand authority.
That shift requires a different approach to ownership, and it may not feel comfortable, since search has always been complex and has become even more so. Rather than dividing search into isolated channels, organizations benefit from treating it as a unified visibility strategy that spans organic search, paid media, content development, and emerging AI answers and places to be found by target audiences.
When those elements work together, you get a clearer path from search visibility to real business outcomes, along with better rankings and more impressions. If you’re sorting out who owns search strategy in your organization, our strategy and measurement services can help bring those pieces together.