SEO Consultant Adrian Czarnoleski on How to Increase Business Value Before Exit

In this article, SEO consultant Adrian Czarnoleski shares practical guidance on how companies can increase their valuation before an exit by treating SEO as equity, not a cost.

Across deals I’ve touched, I’ve seen solid companies exit for underwhelming prices because their SEO was treated as a campaign, not as equity. Revenue, churn, and cohorts dominate the deck, while organic visibility and authority barely make a slide. That’s a mistake. Search compounds. A domain that ranks on commercial queries, earns clean links, and attracts steady branded demand doesn’t just lower acquisition costs – it widens the buyer’s upside on day one.

Buyers have caught up. They price online visibility, topical authority, and ranking headroom as durable digital assets, right alongside product and pipeline. When I walk a founder through pre-exit work, I frame SEO as a set of balance – sheet signals: what’s defensible, what scales with a bigger content engine, and what risks the buyer will discount if we don’t fix them. The goal is simple: turn SEO equity into something a buyer can model, so the multiple moves before diligence even starts.

Why SEO moves the multiple: the valuation mechanics

In diligence today, a company’s digital footprint is an asset buyers can underwrite. Rankings on buyer-intent terms, a clean network of high-quality referring domains, stable organic traffic, and growing brand search reduce acquisition risk and expand upside. I translate that profile into three levers a finance reader already speaks fluently: defensibility (replicability cost and time), yield (intent-weighted organic contribution to pipeline and revenue), and runway (credible, near-term upside post-close). As SEO consultant Adrian Czarnoleski, I frame the discussion like a valuation memo: what would it cost and how long would it take a rival to rebuild these signals; what cash flows are already supported by organic; and what upside can the acquirer execute in 90–365 days with more content and PR reach.

Quantifying SEO equity buyers can price

I treat SEO as something a buyer can plug into a model. Backlink equity is one example: in transactions I’ve supported, well-qualified referring domains have been priced in internal models at up to $500 per domain (sector and quality dependent). A site with 500-800 relevant, durable links often carries $250K–$400K of implied authority value before traffic is counted.

Traffic comes next, but the focus is intent, not volume. When positions sit on commercial phrases (e.g., “email marketing services,” “enterprise payroll software,” “KYC provider”), the organic channel contributes pipeline that persists without ad spend. I’ve seen properties with an estimated ~$250K tool-derived “traffic value” add $600K+ to exit price because those ranks converted predictably.

A data point from the field (anonymized):

In 2024 I advised a mid-market B2B SaaS seller in the U.S. with about $6.8M ARR. Over 12 months the team grew high quality referring domains from roughly 350 to more than 600, with most of the new links coming from relevant industry media and partner sites. We expanded top 3 rankings on high intent terms from about a dozen to well over 100, and overall top 10 visibility increased significantly across the board. Traffic also grew fast, especially from informational queries and blog content, rising from under 20,000 monthly organic users to well above 100,000. In the buyer’s model, organic contribution moved from 18 percent to 31 percent of new pipeline, and the deal multiple increased from 3.3x to 3.9x revenue. The buyer attributed roughly $750K of added consideration to improved SEO equity and stronger organic durability.

Global lens: in my experience, acquirers in US/EU often assign $200–$500 per quality referring domain in replicability-cost thinking; in APAC/Latin America the range skews lower and depends more on brand search growth and local publisher mix. The through-line is the same: defensible organic demand and authority compress payback and support a richer multiple.

Building the asset before exit: a business-first schedule

SEO isn’t a campaign; it’s an asset that compounds over time. Plan for 12+ months to create value a buyer can underwrite. Keep the story strictly measurable and documented, because in diligence buyers pay for predictability, not “traffic spikes.”

• Months 1–3. Baseline and cadence. Set a weekly publishing rhythm tied to buyer intent (informational + service pages) and a light, repeatable PR/partner calendar (one real milestone per month). Fix your reporting guardrails on day one and capture a clean baseline. Define CFO-level KPIs and a simple evidence file (costs, outputs, outcomes) you’ll update monthly.
• Months 4–6. Show movement a buyer can price. Demonstrate steady lift on commercial terms, a small but reliable increase in qualified organic pipeline, and a consistent pace of new high-quality referring domains. Package progress in a one-page monthly memo that links spend → deliverables → results, using rolling 3-month averages to smooth noise. The message: low variance, rising floor.
• Months 7–12. Make it durable and forecastable. Reduce concentration risk (no single page or source), broaden coverage around core revenue lines, and publish a conservative 12-month upside plan a buyer could run on day one (themes, media angles, partner mentions). Keep cadence “boringly consistent” and documentation tight so the channel looks like a repeatable system, not a streak.

Track what finance cares about (one sheet, updated monthly): share of pipeline from organic; count of high-intent rankings in Top 3/10; net new quality referring domains; branded search trend; cost per incremental qualified visit; opportunity forecast tied to current rank headroom.

Bottom line: expect more than a year for SEO to carry material valuation weight. Treat the spend as building digital equity with a paper trail. When progress is steady, measured, and well-documented, buyers pay for the predictable yield and the underwritable upside—not for raw traffic.

The new layer: AI/LLM visibility (finance angle)

Diligence decks increasingly include AI visibility – brand presence or citation rate in LLM answers (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, etc.). Why financiers care: these surfaces act as top-of-funnel discovery that lowers paid-demand dependence. I build LLM-friendly assets (concise, canonical explainers; consistent entity definitions) so the brand appears across prompt variations. In models, we treat this as distribution risk reduction: more zero-cost discovery channels → lower blended CAC → sturdier contribution margins.

Treat SEO as digital equity, not a cost

When built early and documented well, SEO becomes digital equity – an appreciating asset that outlives campaigns. In the room, I show (1) defensibility as time/capital it would take to replicate authority, (2) yield as intent-weighted organic revenue contribution, and (3) runway as a 12-month, buyer-executable plan. Across deals I’ve touched, companies with mature, well-documented organic profiles have achieved up to ~30% higher valuations than peers who treated SEO as a short-term channel. Start early, keep the cadence steady, and present a story the buy-side can mode l – not buzzwords, but durable cash-flow support and credible upside.