Digital Growth Starts With the CEO, Not the SEO Specialist

If I speak as honestly as I can and skip the pleasantries, real growth for a business in the digital space does not start with the website, or with Instagram, or with advertising, or even with SEO. It starts with how the CEO, the board members and the senior managers think — not with the SEO specialist.

My name is Omid Bodagh. I have spent years working in SEO, website design, digital marketing and the online development of businesses, and on that path I have dealt with a great many small, mid-size and large companies. What I have seen again and again is this: a lot of organizations expect a miracle from the SEO team, the content team, the PR function or the marketing department, while the senior managers themselves do not really believe in digital transformation at all.

What does that mean in practice? The CEO wants the brand to be visible in Google, on LinkedIn and in the media; wants online sales to rise, wants the company’s standing to grow, wants to attract good people and win a bigger market. But they make no time for their own personal brand, keep no professional presence on LinkedIn, do not read the digital language, set no clear route for their teams, do not take the company’s content seriously, and make decisions that are not aligned with today’s market.

In that situation, the first sentence you hear is usually: “So what exactly is this SEO specialist or PR team supposed to do?”

My answer is plain: the SEO specialist is not there to do the CEO’s thinking. The content team is not there to write board strategy. Public relations is not there to manufacture real credibility on behalf of senior managers. These are tools of growth, not its source.

Where Does Digital Business Growth Actually Start?

Growth starts where the people who really decide — the ones who set the budget, the policy, the priorities and the culture of the company — come to believe that digital is not a side project.

In a lot of companies, digital is still described like this:

• We have an Instagram page, so we have digital
• We have a website, so we are present on the internet
• We hired an SEO specialist, so growth in Google should happen by itself
• We have one person doing PR, so the brand will build itself

But the truth is that digital is not a department; it is a management perspective at the top. If that perspective never forms in leadership, however hard everyone downstream works, the result is usually weak or it fades out after a while.

Why Do So Many Senior Managers Block Digital Growth Without Meaning To?

That may sound like a sharp sentence, but in many projects the biggest obstacle to growth is not the market, not the competitor, not the budget. It is senior managers being mentally out of step with what the digital world actually is — and it happens without anyone intending it.

1) Because they still see digital as a cost, not an asset

When the conversation turns to proper website design, professional content production, branding on LinkedIn, long-term SEO, server infrastructure, CRM, marketing automation or data analysis, the first reaction of many managers is: “this is extra cost.”

And yet the same manager will approve a budget for a stylish office, a physical trade-show stand, or expenses with no clear return on investment, without much hesitation. Because they can see those things, touch them, and know them better. Digital growth is slow, data-driven and gradual, so they understand it later.

That is exactly the point where growth stops. A business that does not yet treat a digital asset as a real asset cannot ask a serious result of it.

2) Because they expect one specialist to rescue the whole company alone

I have seen it many times: a company hires one SEO specialist or one digital marketing manager, then expects everything to be repaired by the arrival of that single person.

Meaning:

• Sales are low? The SEO specialist is to blame
• The brand is not well known? PR is to blame
• No quality leads arriving? The marketer is to blame
• The site does not convert? The web designer is to blame

While nobody asks:

• Is our product or service actually defined in a clear way?
• Is our competitive advantage obvious?
• Are decisions made on time?
• Do the managers take part in producing the brand’s credibility?
• Are the teams aligned with one another?
• Is the sales and support structure ready for growth?

An SEO specialist can bring traffic. But if the sales unit does not answer, if the CEO does not work on their personal brand and the company’s standing, if the product is still vague, if the board changes its mind every week, that traffic does not become real growth.

3) Because they are absent from the professional space themselves

One of the serious weaknesses of many Iranian managers, especially in mid-size and large businesses, is that they expect the company brand to grow while they themselves are almost entirely absent from the professional space.

The clearest example is LinkedIn. Many senior managers either have no LinkedIn account at all, or one they have not updated for years, or one that is nothing but a bare résumé, or worse, they have no grasp of what this network is worth for a personal brand, for B2B communication, for hiring, for company credibility and for new opportunities.

Then the same organization wants to be taken seriously in a professional market.

The question is simple: if the CEO or the board members are not willing to spend a few hours a month on a professional presence in the digital space, why should the whole market spend its time on them?

Who Does Business Growth Start With?

If I want to say it in one sentence: Digital business growth starts with the CEO and is settled by the board or the senior managers.

Why? Because these are the people who decide:

• What the organization’s priority is
• Where the budget gets spent
• What counts as important and what does not
• Which team has authority and which team only executes
• Whether the culture moves toward growth or toward daily routine
• Whether the managers’ personal brands and the company brand are strengthened or ignored

I have known companies with a good technical team, a content team and even a decent budget, where everything moved slowly because the CEO still carried a traditional mindset. I have seen the opposite as well: businesses without very large resources that moved faster because the person running them had understood that, today, growth without digital is not possible.

My Own Experience: The Problem Is Usually Not a Slacking Team, It Is Misalignment at the Top

In project after project I have met this scene: the execution team is not bad, sometimes genuinely motivated, and the leadership ruins the route.

For example:

• They ask for a six-month SEO plan, then change the strategy every ten days
• They want results from content but never give the team the specialist information it needs
• They talk about branding, yet not one manager is willing to publish even a single professional piece under their own name
• They want to be visible in Google and in AI, while their site structure and their services are still unclear
• They want to attract good people, but they have no employer identity

Sometimes a company asks the digital team only for output while giving no proper input. That is like asking an engineer to build a resistant structure and withholding the drawings, the budget, the time and good materials.

A CEO Who Does Not Take Digital Seriously Will Not Have a Team That Does

This is one of the truest things I have learned. In any organization, the behavior of the senior manager matters more than any training session. If the CEO:

• does not take LinkedIn seriously
• does not put digital growth meetings on the priority list
• never reads the company’s content
• never reviews the numbers and the data
• treats the website as only a shop window
• imagines SEO is a twenty-day project
• counts the branding budget as extra cost

The indirect message they send to the whole organization is: “These things are not all that important.”

In that atmosphere, PR never works deeply, the content team never keeps its motivation, the SEO specialist never gets to build a long-term plan, and sales never falls into step.

The Problem Is Not Only Missing Knowledge; Sometimes It Is Missing Professional Discipline

Sometimes the issue is not that managers know nothing about digital. Not everyone is meant to be an SEO or marketing specialist. The real problem is that some managers will not accept even the professional discipline that growth requires — and that refusal, not the missing knowledge, is what stalls the project.

For example:

• They miss the strategy meetings and then complain about the result
• They keep postponing important decisions
• They never make the organization’s priorities explicit
• They have no regular answering or follow-up
• Their own presence in public and professional spaces is unplanned

We even see managers who, on social networks, talk more about non-work subjects, daily trivia or low-value content, and then go completely silent when it comes to introducing the business professionally, passing on experience, analysing the market or building connections on LinkedIn. That means some of the most important chances to build personal and organizational credibility go unused.

Why LinkedIn Is Not Just Another Social Network for Senior Managers

I have said this many times before: for mid-size and large businesses, especially in B2B, in industry, in specialist services, in technology and in enterprise work, LinkedIn is a very important tool. But for a CEO and a board, its role goes beyond a marketing tool.

For a senior manager, LinkedIn means:

• Building a credible personal brand
• Raising the trust people place in the company brand
• Professional networking
• Attracting specialist talent
• Opening new partnership opportunities
• Showing your viewpoint, your experience and your managerial maturity
• Strengthening how the market rates the company

Many managers still think LinkedIn is for job hunting. That reading is old. Today a large share of professional decisions, important introductions and first impressions of whether a person or a company can be trusted are formed in this space.

When the CEO of a company has no professional presence on LinkedIn, or the profile sits idle, part of the brand power of both the person and the company has been switched off.

What the SEO Specialist and PR Actually Do — and What They Do Not Do

This section matters, because most of the misunderstanding begins here.

What does an SEO specialist do?

• Reviews and optimizes the structure of the site
• Does keyword research
• Builds strategy for content and for the important pages
• Identifies technical problems and follows them through
• Tracks the growth of organic traffic and of the right kind of visits

What does an SEO specialist not do?

• They do not write the broad brand strategy in the CEO’s place
• They do not sell in the sales team’s place
• They do not define the competitive advantage in the product manager’s place
• They do not build company culture in the board’s place
• They do not create the personal and professional credibility of senior managers in their place

What does public relations do?

• It helps the brand image come across better and more professionally
• It carries the organization’s story to the market
• It manages mentions, media, communications and the brand message
• During a crisis it helps the company respond professionally

What does public relations not do?

• It cannot take the place of the company’s real quality
• It cannot hide weak management behind news items and advertorials
• It cannot build a powerful brand out of managers who are themselves silent and absent

If the top of the organization does not come along, the execution teams can at most improve the surface, never the root.

Digital Growth Needs Managerial Maturity Before It Needs Tools

Many managers go straight to the tools:

• Which plugin should we install?
• Which CRM should we buy?
• Which software is better for automation?
• Who should run the advertising?

All of these matter, but where managerial maturity is missing, tools only generate cost.

Managerial maturity in digital growth means:

• Accepting that growth takes time
• Deciding from data, not from a passing preference
• Trusting the specialist team, with sensible oversight
• Staying steady on the strategy
• Investing in the brand for the long term
• Managers being present, actively and responsibly, in the outward image of the company

A Real Example of Two Kinds of Organization

Organization type one: it expects everything from the execution team

In this model the CEO says:

• Start SEO, we want rankings quickly
• Write content, but we have no time to supply the information ourselves
• LinkedIn matters, but I personally do not have the patience for it
• Grow the brand, but for now we have no time to work on introducing the team and the company properly
• Collect the feedback, but for now a change to the structure or the sales process is not possible

The usual result is that after a few months the output turns shallow, and the manager says digital did not work.

Organization type two: it starts growth from the top

In this model the CEO says:

• In the next 12 months we want to make our digital position more serious
• The main service pages have to be rewritten clearly and professionally
• The senior managers and I have a definite plan for LinkedIn
• Sales has to stay aligned with the SEO and content teams
• We measure the monthly reports against KPIs
• We grow the personal brand and the company brand in parallel

In this model, even where the resources are smaller, the chance of success is far higher, because internal resistance is lower and the direction is clearer.

What Happens to Growth When Senior Managers Do Not Come Along?

• Strategies become patchy and unstable
• Budgets are allocated only halfway
• The teams lose their motivation
• The company brand never gains a coherent identity
• SEO turns into report-making instead of real growth
• Content is produced only to fill the site
• PR publishes news instead of building credibility
• Sales and marketing drift apart

In the end the organization assumes the problem is the market or the people, while the real problem has been the absence of management commitment to digital growth all along.

Growth Starts Inside the Organization, Then Becomes Visible in the Market

Most people look for growth only on the outside: Google ranking, visits to the site, LinkedIn followers, more sales, more leads. But those are outputs. The root of growth is inside the company.

If, inside the company,

• there is no clarity
• there is no discipline
• there is no accountability
• there is no backing from the managers
• there is no respect for expertise

then digital will show itself outside in the same incomplete and weak form.

How Can a CEO Become the Engine of Digital Growth?

I have always believed that the CEO does not need to be a technical specialist, but they do need to be a genuine sponsor of digital growth for the organization. That support has a few concrete signs:

1) A real professional presence in the digital space

Not a presence for show. That means:

• A complete, professional LinkedIn profile
• Publishing real viewpoints and real experience
• Engaging with the wider working ecosystem
• Showing intellectual and managerial maturity

2) Making the goals explicit

The organization has to know exactly what it is after:

• Leads?
• Online sales?
• Branding?
• Attracting investment?
• Hiring?
• Growing its credibility in the market?

When the goal is not clear, each team heads off in a different direction.

3) Taking part in producing credibility

The CEO should not assume that credibility is built only with advertising. Credibility is built with presence, with what you say, with transparency, with experience and with continuity. When a senior manager communicates their real experience properly, they help the whole brand grow.

4) Respecting time and process

SEO takes time. Branding takes time. Building a position on LinkedIn takes time. If managers chase a result inside one week, they usually push the team toward shallow and ineffective work.

5) Quick and responsible decision-making

A lot of projects are damaged not by weak execution but by delay in management decisions. When a service page, the site structure, a content policy, a media budget or the branding route waits weeks for approval, growth slows down too.

What Is the Board’s Role in Digital Growth?

The board’s role is not only approving the budget. If the growth of the organization genuinely matters to it, it should ask the CEO and the senior managers about the real indicators of digital growth:

• What is our strategy for the organization’s digital presence?
• What share of our leads comes from the online channel?
• Where does the company brand stand in search and in the media?
• Do our senior managers have an effective presence on LinkedIn and in professional spaces?
• Are SEO and content connected to the business, or working separately?
• Is data used when we decide?

If the board only wants short-term financial reports and does not understand digital growth, the CEO usually comes under pressure to make short-term decisions as well.

Why Do Some Businesses Spend Heavily and Still Not Grow?

Because there is a difference between spending and investing properly — an organization may:

• spend on the website
• spend on advertising
• spend on content
• spend on SEO

But because the top of the organization still has no clear map, all this spending turns scattered and weak. Growth happens when these pieces are brought together under one managerial view.

The Short Version of My Experience With Real Growth in Digital Businesses

If I want to compress everything I have learned into one list, I say this:

1. Growth starts in the mind of the CEO
2. It is settled in the board and the senior managers
3. It becomes process inside the teams
4. It becomes visible in content, SEO, branding and sales
5. It turns into financial and reputational results in the market

If the first stage is incomplete, the stages after it either come out incomplete or, sometimes, only carry the appearance.

An Honest Checklist for Senior Managers

If you are a CEO, a board member or a senior manager, ask yourself these questions:

• Do I actually believe in digital growth, or do I only demand results from a team?
• Have I spent any time on my own professional personal brand?
• Is my LinkedIn active, professional and up to date?
• Is the organization’s digital strategy clear to me?
• Do I decide from data or from a momentary feeling?
• Do I give the specialist team real authority and a defined path?
• Am I myself part of building the brand’s credibility, or only a spectator?

If most of those answers are no, your growth problem probably did not start with the SEO specialist or with PR; it started at the management layer.

Summary

Growth in a digital business does not start with a tool, does not start with an advertisement, and does not start with hiring one SEO specialist. It starts with one thing: the beliefs, the behavior and the priorities of the CEO and the senior managers, and with nothing else.

An organization whose leadership takes digital seriously — that spends time on the personal brand and the company brand, keeps a professional presence on LinkedIn and online, respects data, gives its specialist team real authority and holds a steady strategy — gets results far sooner than the rest.

But an organization that only expects the SEO team, PR or marketing to carry the whole weight of growth usually either wears itself out or finally reaches the wrong conclusion that “digital does not work”.

Digital does work; if it starts from the right place.

If I want the shortest version: Growth in a business starts with the manager, not with the SEO report.

If you would like a more professional look at where your business stands digitally, or a clearer route for real growth in your website, your brand, your LinkedIn presence and the online strategy of the whole company, you can get in touch with me through my website to start the conversation.

Omid Bodagh
SEO, website design and digital marketing specialist

Omid Bodagh

I am an SEO specialist who likes helping businesses get seen on Google. From WordPress to SEO, whatever an online business needs to grow, I can help with it.