Emotional intelligence can be your superpower

Petra says: “Your emotional intelligence should become your biggest superpower in SEO.

Trying to sell emotional intelligence to SEOs is like trying to sell SEO to your executive board. It receives the same response. We put it on our low-priority list and ignore it until there is a problem.

We’re very familiar with this cycle for our SEO strategies and tickets. Unfortunately, if we decide to ignore it, there will be a problem.

The superpower is to tune into those emotions and understand that everything you do is driven by how people feel about what you’re doing – because you’re working with people.

There are two sides to this. You’re creating your own SEO strategies and what you should prioritise, so you should be aware of how you’re feeling about those things and what’s driving that. On the other side, you’re managing relationships with clients, stakeholders, board members, etc., and how they feel will be key to their decisions.

You can be an incredibly knowledgeable, technical SEO, have all the data, and have everything that proves that your strategy should go forward. However, if you’re unable to communicate that in a way that makes the other person feel comfortable or confident with your strategy, they are not likely to prioritise it or go ahead with it. No matter how good you are, your emotional intelligence will have an impact on what you can actually achieve.”

Is the key win getting more buy-in from stakeholders?

“That is a very tangible element of success that you will achieve if you decide to prioritise emotional intelligence.

I say ‘prioritise’, but emotional intelligence is not a trade-off. If you spend time on soft skills, empathy, and improving your communication and listening skills, you can still play with SGE and improve your technical skills. When you look at how you divide your time, it can feel like a trade-off, but it’s not. Emotional intelligence underlines all our cognitive abilities: how we focus, how we learn, how we adapt to changes, etc. It’s a foundation. If you prioritise it, then everything else will become easier.

A lot has changed in the last year or so, with ChatGPT, generative AI, and how Google is experimenting. Your emotional intelligence will help you cope with that change and decide what’s important and what’s not by understanding your feelings and the input that goes into them.”

Can being more emotionally intelligent tangibly make us better SEOs?

“100%. In general, focusing on emotional intelligence makes us better human beings, and therefore better SEOs. However, there are tangible elements that you will see as well, like improved relationships with your stakeholders, getting things signed off, and having fewer headaches.

You put so much work and effort into things that you present and don’t get prioritised or implemented. That causes a lot of frustration, stress, and headaches as you try to figure out why. To you, there is clear evidence, according to your logic, that something should be done.

If you’re not focusing on the emotional side, you might be missing the point. There is probably a reason why other human beings and decision-makers in your team didn’t feel comfortable and didn’t buy into your ideas.”

You highlight four elements of emotional intelligence – self-awareness, interoception, empathy, and compassion. Do they all have a measurable impact on SEO?

“In SEO, it can be really difficult to directly attribute certain results to one specific change that you’ve implemented. If rankings go up, can you prove whether changing meta titles or sorting out faster navigation was what achieved that change? It’s the same with emotional intelligence.

For example, interoception is the sixth sense of tuning into your bodily sensations and having an awareness of everything going on inside you. There is so much going on, like feeling tired, cold, stressed, etc. Understanding that can really help your SEO. Many studies have shown that when people are tired or hungry, they often make poorer decisions. You might fight with someone because you are tired or stressed and realise the next day that you should have had the conversation when you’re feeling more balanced.

Of course, you can’t be balanced all the time. You can’t just never be tired or stressed. It’s impossible to not have those sensations. However, if you are aware of it, that really helps. Develop a practice where you’re more in tune with those basic feelings so that you can dissect them, pause, and take a step back. That will help you to understand what decisions to make or what to focus on.

It’s very simple and it doesn’t require a lot of investment. This kind of practice has been around in yoga for 5,000 years. The term interoception has only been around since the 20th century, but it’s very similar to the concept of mindfulness. It’s about understanding the different elements that go into your decision-making.”

How can an SEO use their emotional intelligence to get a project on track or get buy-in from internal stakeholders more effectively?

“Firstly, it’s about understanding that other people have different perspectives and different ways of doing things. Diversity is beautiful and it’s very important. Not everyone is like you. You’re unique in the way you’re thinking and the way you feel. There are patterns and similarities but you’re still unique. In terms of how this can help you, if you know why this project is important to you, you will be more aware of your own bias. That’s already helpful, especially if the first response you get is a ‘no’. Instead of getting upset or feeling like they’re unreasonable or they don’t see your logic, you can think about where they are coming from. Do you need to reflect on your own bias? Did you take something too far? Do you need to look at the other side of the evidence? We should be doing that with SEO anyway. We try to look at all sides of things, but it’s natural to have a bias and push things.

They might say that they want to focus on social or put more money into paid advertisement and less into improving the site. Look at where the company stands. Are they right to say they need to get in front of a wider audience before these issues are fixed? Do you need to reflect on that?

You can also try to understand the other person. If you’ve checked on your bias and you still think you should go ahead, you can think about why they are saying ‘no’. Do they feel uncomfortable about it? Do they not understand it?

You don’t need to categorise people, but you can consider where they are coming from. This CMO could be incredibly passionate about the brand and has been with the company for 10+ years. They live and breathe the brand, they focus on how the customers feel about the brand, and that connection is super important to them. Therefore, when you present technical SEO, they just don’t get it. You might want to explain how Google is also a customer that focuses on trust, authority, and expertise, and if Google doesn’t see the brand in that way, it won’t show the brand in that way to your audience. You might need to change your story to reflect what’s important to them.

Equally, that CMO could be super knowledgeable but, at the end of the day, this is a job to them. They want to get home to their loved ones, and they want to use their free time. They want to go with the decisions that are safe and won’t cause them additional questions from investors. Consider their motives.

Of course, motives can be very difficult to discover because we don’t often have the time to sit down with our C-level and investigate their personality types. Become more in tune with your own emotions and patterns, recognise the emotions and patterns of others, have more conversations, and ask around to other teams and find out how C-level reacted to their idea and what they said. Then, you will be better at recognising those patterns. If someone wants to play it safe, then that’s what you need to focus on. Find a way to explain what you are doing and make them feel comfortable. Present the risks in a way they will still feel safe about so that they feel like you understand the risks and will be able to manage them. Build that relationship.”

How can SEOs benchmark and improve their emotional intelligence?

“Just as no two websites are the same, no two people are the same. We all have our unique wiring, so different things will work for different people. Something we can all start with is personality tests. There are many out there and a lot of companies use them for their employees. It doesn’t really matter which one you do. Just do something that will give you a description of your personality.

The higher the quality of the quiz you do, the more insights you get and the more scientific it will be. You could do a Myers-Briggs, a DISC, or 16personalities which is free online and really easy to use. You could even ask your family and your closest friends or a bunch of different people to give you feedback about specific things.

The important part is to read it and analyse how you feel about it. Why are you feeling the way you’re feeling about it? Are you rejecting certain things or disagreeing with certain things? Why? If that was the personality trait of a friend, would you be as judgmental? That sort of thinking will already give you some insight into what you like, how you feel about certain things, and your patterns. Patterns is a key word here. What sort of behavioural patterns do you follow? What behaviours do you default to when you’re stressed?

To improve your interoception, it’s about tuning in with your bodily sensations. Are you tired? Are you stressed? Have you drunk enough water today? Do you need to unclench your jaw because you’re so focused and tense? Questions like that can be really helpful. When you look up interoception or listen to podcasts about it, they suggest that you do an exercise where you try to feel your heartbeat. How quickly can you do that? Is it fast or is it slow?

Repetition and consistency are key. For the next three weeks, if you wake up every morning and feel your heartbeat, you’re going to notice some changes. On a day when you present to C-level, how does that compare to a weekend or a day with friends and family? You can start to see patterns from small things like this, which is really powerful.

Everyone will find that different things work for them. You have to experiment. Also, remember that everyone needs a different level of investment. Some people grow up in an incredibly healthy environment where being in tune with these emotions is supported, or they might already be naturally very self-aware. Other people will have grown up in different environments or experienced a toxic work culture, which will have an impact.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Take a break. Everyone will say, ‘I can’t do that!’ but taking a break will help you reflect on things. Pick a day and do nothing – and see how your brain reacts. That can be really powerful for understanding those patterns. When your brain is bored, a lot of thoughts and creativity come to the surface that otherwise didn’t really have space. You give your brain space to think.

More practical advice, that comes from a neuroscientist, is to try breathing exercises. A very quick, specific exercise is called the physiological sigh. Take two inhales straight after one another, so you take in as much oxygen as you can. Then, you exhale very slowly. It resets the breath and it’s proven to help with stress. Doing an exercise like that can bring down those stress levels and give you a bit more headspace.”

Petra Kis-Herczegh is SEO Strategy Consultant at Kameleon Journal, and you can find her over at KameleonJournal.com.