Can SEO’s transition into broader marketing roles?

I’d argue we’re already there.

I Saw this post by (Anthony Rame) and thought about how SEO really is just another "arm" of marketing. As SEOs we live these marketing lessons every day, we just call them something else.

Market to fewer people, not more
→ Long-tail keywords. Stop chasing 50k/month search volume and start owning the queries where people already know what they want. Specificity converts.

Your story must match theirs
→ Search intent. If your page doesn't match why someone searched, they bounce. Google notices. You lose rankings. It's that simple (at least sometimes)

Fake urgency kills trust
→ Clickbait title tags. You know the ones, "You WON'T believe..." might get the click, but when the page doesn't deliver, dwell time tanks and so does your ranking.

Nobody cares about your product
→ Nobody cares about your website either. They care about the answer to their question. Build content around their problem, not your solution. This way your website actually starts to matter as well.

Your job is to create change, not awareness
→ Impressions and rankings are vanity. Did the user convert? Did they come back? Organic traffic that doesn't move people is just noise in Search Console.

Permission beats interruption
→ SEO IS permission marketing. The user typed the query. They invited you in. That's fundamentally different from an ad that interrupted their scroll.

Don't change what people believe, match it
→ E-E-A-T. Google rewards sources that align with what people already trust - established expertise, real authors, consistent signals. You can't fake authority, you have to earn it.

So yeah... can SEOs transition into broader marketing roles?
I would say yes, because the thinking is already there.

We've been doing marketing. We just had a different job title.