Most Businesses Are Looking in the Wrong Place for Growth
Whenever the conversation turns to Amazon growth, it usually ends up in the same place. Businesses discuss improving product titles, rewriting bullet points, generating more reviews, refining imagery, increasing keyword coverage and investing in A+ Content. Those conversations are worthwhile because every one of those improvements can increase conversion rates. If you are selling on Amazon, your listings should absolutely be optimised because a better listing will almost always outperform a weaker one.
The problem is that many businesses have become so focused on optimising the point of conversion that they overlook the journey that created the demand in the first place. They know where the sale happened, but they do not always know where the buying decision was made. That distinction matters because a customer rarely arrives at the point of purchase without being influenced by something beforehand.
Recently, I bought a standing desk for my office. It was not an impulse purchase and it certainly was not something I wanted to replace six months later. Before spending several hundred pounds, I wanted confidence that I was making the right decision. Like most people, I did not have a particular brand in mind. I simply knew the problem I wanted to solve and started researching the market.
Amazon was not where that journey started.
I searched Google to understand which brands were considered the best. I watched YouTube reviews from creators who had used the desks for months rather than simply unboxing them. I read Reddit discussions because I wanted opinions from people with nothing to gain by recommending one product over another. Out of curiosity, I also asked ChatGPT which standing desks offered the best balance between build quality, stability and value for money. Every source gave me a slightly different perspective, but together they reduced the uncertainty that naturally comes with spending a significant amount of money.
By the time I eventually opened Amazon, I had already made my decision. The marketplace did not convince me which standing desk to buy. It gave me the fastest, simplest and most trusted way of buying the one I had already chosen. Looking back, that felt significant because, despite Amazon ultimately processing the transaction, very little of the decision itself had actually taken place there. The decision had been influenced by multiple platforms, multiple people and multiple recommendations long before I reached the checkout.
That is the point many businesses are missing. Amazon often records the sale, but it does not always create the demand. Google, YouTube, Reddit, AI assistants, publishers, creators, reviews and word of mouth may all have shaped the customer’s thinking before Amazon ever appeared in the journey. If a business only analyses the final platform, it risks misunderstanding what actually caused the customer to buy.
Amazon has not become less important. Its role has changed.
Amazon often wins the transaction. The buying decision has already happened somewhere else.
Amazon Is Not the Problem. The Customer Journey Has Changed.
It would be easy to misunderstand this argument as a criticism of Amazon. It is not. Amazon remains one of the most powerful ecommerce platforms ever created because it removes friction from the buying process better than almost anyone else. Customers trust the delivery, the returns process, the pricing, the reviews and the familiarity of the checkout experience. For many purchases, Amazon is still the default destination because it has trained consumers to expect speed, convenience and certainty.
The shift is not that Amazon has become weaker. The shift is that the journey before Amazon has become more fragmented. Customers now have more ways than ever to build confidence before they buy. They can search Google, watch product demonstrations on YouTube, read Reddit threads from real customers, ask AI assistants for recommendations, compare independent buying guides and check social proof across multiple platforms. Each touchpoint plays a different role, but together they shape the same decision.
That matters because businesses often organise their marketing around platforms, while customers organise their behaviour around confidence. A business might have an Amazon strategy, an SEO strategy, a Paid Media strategy, a Digital PR strategy, an influencer strategy and a social media strategy. The customer does not experience any of that separation. They simply move from one source to another until they feel informed enough to make a decision.
This is where channel-first marketing starts to break down. It encourages businesses to look at performance in separate boxes, even though customers rarely behave that way. The same person might discover a product through Google, validate it through YouTube, compare it through Reddit, ask ChatGPT for alternatives and finally buy it on Amazon. If each channel is measured in isolation, the business risks missing how those touchpoints work together.
The customer experiences one journey. The business manages six.
That sentence is uncomfortable because it exposes one of the biggest gaps in modern marketing. We have become very good at reporting individual channel performance, but much less effective at understanding how customers actually make decisions. The channel that converts the customer often receives the credit, while the channels that created the confidence are treated as secondary because they are harder to attribute.
This is not just a measurement issue. It is a commercial issue. If a business gives too much credit to the final platform, it will naturally invest more money into the channels that appear easiest to prove. That may improve short-term performance, but it can also weaken the activity that creates future demand. The business becomes better at converting people who are already ready to buy, while becoming less visible to the people still deciding who to trust.
The customer experiences one journey. The business manages six.
Attribution Often Rewards What Is Easiest to Measure
One of the biggest problems in marketing is that the most measurable activity is not always the most influential. A customer may spend three weeks building confidence across articles, reviews, videos, recommendations and conversations, yet the final platform often receives most of the credit because that is where the sale or enquiry is recorded. Attribution can tell you where something converted, but it does not always tell you what made the customer ready to convert in the first place.
This is why businesses need to be careful when making strategic decisions based purely on final-click data. If Amazon records the sale, Amazon looks like the hero. If Google Ads records the enquiry, Google Ads looks like the hero. If a direct website visit converts, the website appears to have created the opportunity. In reality, the customer may have been influenced by organic search, social proof, YouTube, Digital PR, AI recommendations, customer reviews, podcasts, word of mouth or a combination of all of them before that final action took place.
The danger is that businesses start overinvesting in the channels that are easiest to attribute and underinvesting in the channels that create future demand. This creates a short-term view of marketing where everything is judged by what can be directly measured, even when the customer journey is far more complex. It is not that performance marketing, Amazon optimisation or conversion rate optimisation are less important. They are still vital. The issue is that they often sit at the end of a much longer journey, and if the top and middle of that journey are ignored, the bottom eventually becomes weaker.
This is particularly important for businesses with longer consideration cycles or higher-value products and services. The more considered the purchase, the more research usually takes place before the customer acts. A £12 phone charger might be bought in seconds. A £600 standing desk, a new accountant, a solicitor, a piece of software, a private healthcare treatment or a B2B supplier will usually involve far more reassurance. Customers want evidence. They want comparison. They want to know that other people have made the same decision and not regretted it.
That is where the modern customer journey becomes harder to measure but more important to understand. A business may look at its analytics and conclude that one channel is driving the majority of revenue, when in reality that channel is simply capturing demand built elsewhere. The question is not whether the final channel matters. It clearly does. The better question is whether the business understands the invisible work that happened before the final click.
Businesses risk losing future demand when they only optimise what is easiest to attribute.
That should make every founder, managing director and marketing leader slightly uncomfortable because it forces a more honest conversation. It is much easier to ask which channel converted than to ask where confidence was created. The first question gives you a report. The second gives you a strategy. If businesses want sustainable growth, they need to understand both.
Businesses risk losing future demand when they only optimise what is easiest to attribute.
Search Has Changed. Human Behaviour Hasn’t.
Whenever a new technology enters the conversation, marketing tends to swing between panic and overexcitement. Social media was going to kill websites. Voice search was going to change everything. AI is now apparently going to replace Google, SEO, content and large parts of marketing altogether. These predictions usually make for good headlines, but they rarely reflect how people actually behave. New platforms do not immediately remove old behaviours. They usually add another layer to them.
AI is not replacing Google. It is changing how people search, compare and make sense of information. Google did not replace word of mouth, YouTube did not replace written content and Amazon did not replace the need for product research. Each platform serves a different role depending on what the customer needs at that moment. Someone might use Google to understand a market, YouTube to see a product in action, Reddit to validate whether real customers are happy, ChatGPT to summarise the options and Amazon to complete the purchase.
That is not a broken journey. It is a modern one.
The underlying behaviour has not changed. Customers still want confidence before they buy. They still want reassurance that they are making the right decision. They still look for evidence, comparison, expertise, reviews and recommendations. The only difference is that the places they use to gather that confidence have multiplied. This is why the conversation around SEO needs to become much bigger than rankings alone.
Search has changed, but human behaviour has not. A customer searching on Google, asking ChatGPT, watching YouTube or browsing Reddit is still trying to do the same thing. They are trying to reduce uncertainty. They are trying to understand whether a business, product or service is worth trusting. They are trying to avoid making the wrong decision. The platform is simply the route they take to get there.
This is where traditional SEO thinking can become too narrow. If SEO is only understood as ranking on Google, it misses the wider reality of how customers now search. Your potential customers may never type a perfect keyword into Google before making a decision. They may ask an AI assistant for options, watch a comparison video, read a Reddit thread, click a buying guide and search your brand name later. None of that sits neatly inside the old definition of SEO, but every part of it influences whether your business gets chosen.
SEO is no longer just about helping customers find you in a search engine. It is about becoming visible and trusted wherever they look for answers.
Introducing Search Everywhere Optimisation
For almost three decades, SEO has stood for Search Engine Optimisation. That definition made sense when search engines were the primary gateway to information. If someone wanted to find a product, service, answer or business, they searched Google. Brands that understood how to create useful content, build authority and improve their technical foundations had a clear advantage because search engines shaped a significant proportion of the customer journey.
That world still exists, but it is no longer the whole picture. Google remains incredibly important, and it will continue to be a critical part of digital marketing for years to come. The point is not that search engines matter less. The point is that customers now search in more places. They use Google, AI assistants, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Amazon, comparison websites, review platforms, podcasts, newsletters, online communities and industry publications depending on what they are trying to understand.
This is why SEO is already evolving from Search Engine Optimisation into Search Everywhere Optimisation. It is not a future theory. It is already happening. Customers already move between multiple sources of information before making decisions. Most businesses are simply still measuring as though they do not.
Search Everywhere Optimisation is the practice of increasing your visibility, authority and likelihood of being recommended wherever customers discover, research and compare before making a decision. It takes the core principles of SEO and applies them to the way people actually behave now. The objective is no longer just to rank in one search engine. The objective is to become visible and trusted across the full decision-making journey.
This does not mean chasing every platform. That would be lazy strategy. A law firm does not need the same Search Everywhere strategy as an Amazon seller. A B2B SaaS company does not need the same visibility plan as a local dental practice. An ecommerce brand selling a £15 product does not need the same journey as a business selling a £5,000 service. The point is not to be everywhere. The point is to understand where your customers actually build confidence before they buy.
For some businesses, that will still be heavily weighted towards Google. For others, YouTube, Reddit, AI assistants, comparison websites, industry publications or creators may play a much larger role. The only way to know is to stop looking at channels in isolation and start mapping the customer journey properly. Once you understand where customers discover you, where they validate you, where they compare you and where they finally convert, marketing decisions become much clearer.
This is the shift most businesses need to make. They need to stop asking only, “How do we rank higher?” and start asking, “Where do customers need to see, trust and hear about us before they are ready to buy?” That question leads to a very different strategy because it moves the conversation away from isolated channel performance and towards influence across the full buying journey.
The Search Everywhere Journey
A useful way to think about Search Everywhere Optimisation is through five stages: Discovery, Trust, Comparison, Recommendation and Conversion. These stages will not always happen in a perfect order, and customers will often move backwards and forwards between them, but they provide a practical way to understand how buying decisions are shaped before a sale is ever recorded.
Discovery is where a customer first encounters the problem, product, service or brand. This could happen through Google, social media, a podcast, a LinkedIn post, an AI answer, a YouTube video, a recommendation from a friend or a marketplace search. The important point is that discovery is no longer controlled by one platform. Customers can enter the journey from almost anywhere, which means businesses need to understand where initial awareness is most likely to happen in their specific market.
Trust is where the customer starts looking for reassurance. This is where reviews, case studies, founder content, Digital PR, third-party mentions, expert commentary and customer experiences become important. A business can be discovered quickly, but trust takes longer to build. This is why strong brands tend to appear in multiple places. The more often a customer encounters credible evidence that a business understands their problem, delivers what it promises and is trusted by others, the easier it becomes for that customer to keep moving forward.
Comparison is where the customer begins evaluating options. They may compare prices, features, service levels, reviews, delivery times, expertise, guarantees or the perceived credibility of each provider. This stage is often underestimated because businesses prefer to talk about themselves rather than helping customers make a decision. But customers are comparing you whether you help them or not. If your business does not provide useful comparison content, they will rely on competitors, reviewers, publishers, creators, AI assistants or online communities to do that work for them.
Recommendation is becoming one of the most important stages in the modern journey. This is where the shortlist begins to form. Recommendations might come from AI assistants, YouTube creators, journalists, Reddit users, industry experts, existing customers or friends. The reason this matters is simple: recommendations reduce the amount of thinking a customer has to do. They turn a crowded market into a smaller set of trusted options. Ranking can make a business visible, but recommendation can make it preferred.
Conversion is where the decision becomes action. This may happen on Amazon, your website, a sales call, a marketplace, a booking page or in person. Conversion still matters enormously. Product pages need to be persuasive, service pages need to be clear, listings need to be optimised, reviews need to be visible and calls to action need to remove friction. But conversion is rarely working alone. It is usually converting the confidence that has been built across every earlier stage of the journey.
Most businesses optimise conversion. Search Everywhere Optimisation strengthens the entire journey that makes conversion possible.
Once you view the customer journey this way, the weakness of channel-first marketing becomes obvious. An Amazon seller may need stronger YouTube visibility because that is where customers are validating products. A law firm may need stronger review signals and educational content because trust is the biggest barrier before enquiry. A B2B service provider may need thought leadership, case studies and LinkedIn visibility because the buying decision happens long before somebody fills out a contact form. The right strategy depends on the journey, not the channel.
That is why Search Everywhere Optimisation is not a checklist of platforms. It is a way of mapping influence. It asks where the customer first becomes aware, where they build trust, where they compare options, where they receive recommendations and where they finally convert. Once those stages are understood, marketing stops being a collection of disconnected activities and starts becoming a connected system designed around how customers actually make decisions.
What This Means Commercially
The commercial implication of Search Everywhere Optimisation is simple. Businesses need to stop treating visibility as a channel-specific problem and start treating it as a customer confidence problem. A customer does not care whether they discovered you through Google, heard about you on a podcast, saw you mentioned in a Reddit thread, asked ChatGPT for alternatives or finally converted through Amazon. They care whether they feel confident enough to choose you.
That distinction matters because it changes how marketing should be planned and measured. Instead of asking which channel converted, businesses need to ask where confidence was created. Instead of only reviewing rankings, traffic and conversion rates, they need to understand whether customers are repeatedly encountering credible reasons to trust them before they reach the point of purchase. The final platform will always be easier to measure, but it rarely tells the full commercial story.
This is especially important for businesses making budget decisions. If all investment follows the easiest attribution, money will naturally flow towards the final interaction. That may look sensible in a short-term report, but it can weaken future demand if the business stops investing in the channels that make customers aware, educated and confident in the first place. This is how brands accidentally become overly dependent on paid media, marketplaces or bottom-of-funnel activity. They keep funding the conversion point while underfunding the journey that makes conversion possible.
A better approach is to understand which stages of the customer journey are weakest. Some businesses have strong discovery but weak trust. They attract attention, but customers do not find enough proof to feel confident. Others have strong trust but poor comparison visibility, meaning they are respected by people who know them but absent when new customers evaluate alternatives. Some are strong at conversion but almost invisible earlier in the journey. These businesses often have good websites, strong listings and decent conversion rates, but they are relying too heavily on customers who are already ready to buy.
This is why the conversation needs to move beyond channel performance. A business can have strong SEO reports, active social media, a well-managed Amazon account and good paid media results while still having major gaps in the customer journey. The issue is not whether each channel is working in isolation. The issue is whether those channels are working together to make the business easier to discover, easier to trust and easier to choose.
For founders and marketing leaders, this creates a more useful way to think about growth. The question is no longer simply, “Should we invest more in SEO, PPC, Digital PR, content or Amazon?” The better question is, “Which part of the customer decision-making process are we currently weakest in?” Once that is clear, the right marketing investment becomes much easier to identify.
A business with weak discovery may need stronger SEO, content and Digital PR. A business with weak trust may need reviews, case studies, expert commentary and third-party validation. A business with weak comparison visibility may need buying guides, competitor-aware content and clearer positioning. A business with weak recommendation signals may need creators, customer advocacy, PR, community presence and AI visibility work. A business with weak conversion may need stronger landing pages, product pages, Amazon listings or sales processes.
This is where Search Everywhere Optimisation becomes more than a content idea. It becomes a decision-making framework. It helps businesses identify where marketing is actually breaking down, rather than assuming the answer is always more traffic, more content, more ads or more marketplace optimisation. More activity is not always the answer. Better alignment with the customer journey usually is.
You Do Not Need to Be Everywhere
Search Everywhere Optimisation can easily be misunderstood if it is treated as a platform checklist. That is not the point. This is not about telling every business to suddenly become active on TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Amazon, LinkedIn, Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, podcasts, newsletters and every other platform that appears next year. That would not be strategy. That would be panic dressed up as marketing.
The objective is not to be everywhere. The objective is to understand where your customers actually build confidence before they buy. For some businesses, that journey may still be heavily led by Google. For others, it may be shaped by review platforms, comparison websites, influencers, Reddit threads, AI assistants, trade publications or word of mouth. A local solicitor, an ecommerce brand, a healthcare provider and a B2B software company will all have very different Search Everywhere journeys because their customers behave differently.
This is why copying another business’s channel mix rarely works. A brand may look successful on TikTok, but that does not mean TikTok is where your customers make decisions. A competitor may be investing heavily in YouTube, but that does not mean YouTube is the missing piece in your strategy. The right question is not, “Which platform should we be on?” The right question is, “Where do our customers go when they are unsure, comparing options or looking for reassurance?”
That question forces a better conversation. It moves businesses away from chasing visibility for its own sake and towards understanding influence. Being seen is useful, but being seen in the right context is far more valuable. A business does not need to appear everywhere on the internet. It needs to appear in the places that shape perception, build trust and influence the decision to buy.
That also means Search Everywhere Optimisation will look different for every business. For an Amazon seller, it may involve improving visibility in buying guides, YouTube reviews, Reddit discussions, AI recommendations and Amazon listings. For a law firm, it may involve educational content, Google visibility, reviews, local authority, case studies and reputation signals. For a B2B service provider, it may involve founder-led content, LinkedIn visibility, podcasts, whitepapers, client proof and high-quality thought leadership.
The common thread is not the platform. The common thread is the customer journey.
This is what separates Search Everywhere Optimisation from simply “doing more marketing”. It does not encourage businesses to create content everywhere for the sake of it. It encourages them to map the journey properly, identify where confidence is being created or lost, then invest in the activities most likely to influence that decision. In many cases, that may mean doing fewer things, but doing the right things with far greater intent.
The Search Everywhere Audit
The practical starting point is a Search Everywhere Audit. Before investing more money into another channel, businesses should understand where customers are currently discovering them, where trust is being built, where comparisons are happening, where recommendations are being formed and where conversion finally takes place. Without that understanding, marketing decisions are often based on the most visible data rather than the most important behaviour.
The audit does not replace an SEO audit, an Amazon audit, a PPC review or a website conversion review. Those are all still useful. The difference is that a Search Everywhere Audit sits above them. It looks at the customer journey as a whole rather than treating each channel as a separate world. The purpose is to understand whether your business is visible and credible throughout the moments that influence a buying decision, not just present at the point where the sale is recorded.
A good place to start is by asking questions across the five stages of the Search Everywhere Journey.
Discovery
Discovery is about understanding where customers first become aware of your business, product, service or category.
- Where do customers first encounter the problem we solve?
- Are we visible when they search Google?
- Are we visible when they ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity?
- Are we appearing in buying guides, review articles or comparison content?
- Are customers likely to discover us before reaching Amazon, our website or a sales call?
Trust
Trust is about understanding what customers find when they investigate whether your business is credible.
- What would a customer find if they researched our brand for 30 minutes?
- Are we mentioned by credible third-party websites?
- Do we have reviews outside the platform where we sell?
- Are real customers talking about us positively?
- Does our content demonstrate genuine expertise?
Comparison
Comparison is about understanding how customers evaluate you against competitors or alternative solutions.
- Are customers comparing us against competitors before buying?
- Do we control any of that comparison journey?
- Do we have content that helps people choose between options?
- Are third-party comparison articles including us?
- Are we absent from the pages, videos or discussions where buying decisions are being shaped?
Recommendation
Recommendation is about understanding whether your business is likely to be shortlisted by people, platforms or systems that influence buying decisions.
- Would AI assistants recommend us?
- Would creators recommend us?
- Would existing customers recommend us?
- Would journalists, bloggers or industry experts recommend us?
- Are we being recommended by name, or only discovered through generic searches?
Conversion
Conversion is about understanding whether the final stage of the journey gives customers enough confidence to act.
- When customers reach Amazon, our website or a sales call, are we making it easy to buy?
- Are our listings, landing pages or product pages strong enough to convert existing demand?
- Are reviews recent and persuasive?
- Are we protecting branded searches?
- Are we removing the final reasons not to buy?
The answers to these questions usually reveal where marketing is actually breaking down. Some businesses are highly visible but not trusted. Others are trusted by people who already know them but invisible to new customers researching the market. Some convert well but only once demand already exists. Others create demand but lose it at the final stage because their website, listings or sales process fail to provide enough reassurance.
That is why the audit needs to look at the full journey rather than one channel. If discovery is weak, more conversion optimisation will not solve the real problem. If trust is weak, more traffic may simply expose more people to uncertainty. If comparison is weak, customers may choose competitors because those competitors helped them make a decision more clearly. If recommendation is weak, your business may struggle to make the shortlist even if your product or service is strong. If conversion is weak, all the demand you create elsewhere becomes harder to turn into revenue.
This is where Search Everywhere Optimisation becomes commercially useful. It gives business owners and marketing leaders a clearer way to decide what to prioritise. Instead of defaulting to more content, more ads, more posts or more Amazon optimisation, the business can identify the part of the customer journey that needs the most attention and invest accordingly.
If you want to understand where customers are discovering, researching and trusting your brand before they convert, this is exactly where a Search Everywhere Audit can help. It looks beyond rankings, traffic and final-click attribution to identify where demand is being created, where confidence is being built and where your business may be missing from the customer journey.
Final Thoughts
SEO is not dying. It is changing quickly.
For years, the definition of SEO was relatively simple. Businesses wanted to appear when customers searched on Google, and the role of SEO was to make that more likely. The best SEO strategies combined technical foundations, useful content, authority, relevance and trust to ensure the right people could find the right business at the right time. That principle still matters, and it will continue to matter for years to come.
What has changed is where customers now search before making decisions. They still use Google, but they also use AI assistants, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, podcasts, newsletters, review platforms, comparison websites, marketplaces and private communities. They may discover a business in one place, validate it in another, compare it somewhere else and finally convert through a completely different channel. The customer journey has become more connected, but many marketing strategies are still managed as though each channel exists in isolation.
That is why Search Everywhere Optimisation matters. It is not a rejection of traditional SEO. It is the next evolution of it. The goal is still to help the right customers find, trust and choose your business. The difference is that those moments no longer happen in one search engine. They happen across a wider ecosystem of platforms, people and recommendations that collectively shape what customers believe before they buy.
The businesses that adapt fastest will not be the ones chasing every new platform. They will be the ones that understand where their customers actually build confidence. They will know where discovery happens, where trust is built, where comparisons are made, where recommendations are formed and where conversion takes place. Once that journey is understood, marketing becomes far easier to prioritise because investment can be directed towards the stages that genuinely influence commercial growth.
Search Engine Optimisation was built for a world where search engines were the main gateway to information. Search Everywhere Optimisation is built for the world we are already living in, where customers move between platforms until they have enough confidence to make a decision. This is not something that might happen in the future. It is already happening. The businesses that continue measuring marketing as though customers only search in one place will keep missing the moments that matter before conversion.
The future of SEO is not just about being found. It is about being trusted, compared and recommended wherever your customers search before they buy.
