What is enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is the practice of optimizing a large website with hundreds or thousands of webpages to rank for relevant search queries. It involves using a website’s content, technical setup, and overall online presence to appear in search results for keywords that potential customers search for. The main difference between enterprise and regular SEO is the scale of the website and the amount of work that’s required. An enterprise SEO campaign will often involve creating content for the website, building backlinks to the site, and making sure that the website is technically optimized for search engines.
It is SEO for very large complex sites. What sets it apart really is the complexity.
Keep in mind that complexity is a cost in itself. The goal is to make an impact while reducing that cost.
Enterprise websites are wonderful puzzles and here I offer a way to solve them.
A lot of the same rules apply, it just takes a higher degree of structure and organization to accommodate for the complexity. In practice you have to do a lot more research, create a road map, templates, and reasonable batch sizes to fulfill in sprints. I essence, it is SEO – content is still a top priority, backlinks still rule, and technical optimization drives user experience. But you may need to use more programatic SEO tactics.
What is the application of enterprise SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of optimizing a website or web page in order to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is important for enterprises because it can help them to reach more potential customers and increase their online visibility.
Enterprise SEO is the practice of optimizing a website or web page for an enterprise-level business. This includes businesses with a large number of employees, a high volume of website traffic, and a significant online presence.
Enterprise SEO differs from traditional SEO in that it involves a more complex set of strategies and techniques. This is because enterprise-level businesses typically have a lot more content and a lot more website traffic to optimize for.
Some of the key elements of enterprise SEO include:
- Keyword research and analysis: Keyword research is essential for enterprise SEO because it helps businesses to understand what their customers are searching for and how they can best reach them.
- Content strategy: Content is a key element of enterprise SEO. This includes creating high-quality, relevant content that is optimized for search engines and for user experience.
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO involves optimizing the technical aspects of a website in order to improve its search engine ranking. This includes things like site structure, page speed, and mobile optimization.
- Link building: Link building is another important aspect of enterprise SEO. This involves building backlinks from high-quality websites in order to improve the authority and ranking
What are enterprise SEO success metrics?
In enterprise SEO, it’s important to track and measure a variety of success metrics in order to determine the effectiveness of your efforts. This can include things like organic traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates. It’s also important to track metrics that are specific to your business goals, such as revenue and return on investment (ROI). By tracking these metrics over time, you can see how your efforts are impacting your business goals and make adjustments accordingly. It’s also important to track your competition and compare your success metrics to theirs in order to gauge your progress. Overall, tracking and measuring success metrics is crucial for enterprise SEO in order to ensure that your efforts are effective and that you are meeting your business goals.
Why is enterprise SEO important?
Enterprise SEO plays a critical role in the success of larger organizations as the strategies that work for small businesses are inadequate for enterprises. Unlike small businesses, larger enterprises target highly competitive, short-tail keywords, necessitating a specialized enterprise SEO team to monitor and maintain organic rankings. With thousands of pages on their sites, larger companies require a dedicated team of SEO experts to manage their search engine optimization instead of relying on a single individual with multiple responsibilities. Automated SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs are popular among companies looking to reduce bandwidth by generating regular reports, tracking a large number of keywords across several locations, and ensuring that their websites are free from technical or crawling issues.
Enterprise SEO is crucial for larger organizations because they encounter more complex SEO challenges such as the vast number of web pages on their site, the number of backlinks they have acquired, and the domain authority they have established. Since enterprise companies have great brand authority, they cannot undermine it by deleting or redirecting pages that have acquired backlinks and high page authority. Keeping content up to date and fresh is also crucial, and it becomes more challenging as the company grows larger.
To succeed in enterprise SEO, companies must adopt smarter, more scalable, and sophisticated strategies. These include developing a well-organized site architecture, implementing a content strategy that aligns with the company’s objectives, conducting regular technical SEO audits, optimizing for local search, and managing their online reputation.
What’s next?
Here is a high-level road map to Enterprise SEO. I have also included some of the top tools and my approach to SEO program development.
Enterprise SEO method
This approach has five parts: research, content & backlink strategy, technical optimization, and reporting.
| 1. Start with deep competition research using a platform like SEMrush or Ahrefs > A brief guide to competitor analysis for Enterprise SEO |
| 2. Conduct a deep content & keyword research & analysis |
| > Content analysis |
| > Keyword research & analysis > SEO guide to keyword research & types of search terms |
| > Competitor content analysis |
| > Content gap |
| > Keyword gap |
| > Content duplication analysis |
| > Video content evaluation |
3. Create a content roadmap |
| > Content production > How to scale your SEO content creation |
| Takeaway: Create a road map and break it into steps or batches that can be executed in monthly sprints |
4. Backlink analysis and roadmap |
| > Backlink gap |
| > Toxic link audit |
| > Broken backlink audit |
| > Foundational directory links |
| > Brand mention audit |
| > Guest blog research and roadmap |
| Takeaway: Do technical fixes first and create a roadmap for outreach |
| 5. Technical audits & optimization |
| > Metadata basic |
| > Metadata deep evaluation using Search Console metrics like CTR |
| > Header tags |
| > Hreflang tag |
| > Schema markup audit and game plan |
| > Robots.txt |
| > URL structure |
| > Site navigation |
| > Internal linking |
| > UX & conversion funnel deep dive with Bounce Rate audit and the like |
| > Flow, CTAs, buttons, links, forms, you name it – A/B test non-stop |
| > Header & footer |
| > XML sitemap |
| > Image compression and alt tags |
| > 404 errors |
| > 301 redirects |
| > Site search |
| > Canonical tags |
| > HTTP links |
| > Site speed |
| > Mobile-friendliness |
| Takeaway: Prioritise based on impact, batch, and fit into sprints |
| 6. Define success metrics and create monthly reporting |
Enterprise SEO tools & platforms
The platforms and tools listed here are roughly in robustness order. There is a lot of overlap but you can find everything you need for enterprise SEO on this list.
- SEMrush: https://www.semrush.com/
- Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/
- Screaming Frog: https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
- SE Ranking: https://seranking.com/
- Moz: https://moz.com/
- Conductor: https://www.conductor.com/
- Botify: https://www.botify.com/
- BrightEdge: https://www.brightedge.com/
- DeepCrawl: https://www.deepcrawl.com/
- SEO Clarity: https://www.seoclarity.net/
- Content King: https://www.contentkingapp.com/
- Majestic: https://majestic.com/
What do SEO platforms do?
SEO platforms are software tools that help website owners, marketers, and SEO professionals optimize their websites for search engines. These platforms typically provide a suite of features and tools to help users improve their website’s visibility and ranking in search results.
Here are some of the common features of SEO platforms:
- Keyword research: SEO platforms offer keyword research tools to help users identify the most relevant and high-traffic keywords for their website’s content.
- On-page optimization: These platforms provide suggestions for optimizing website pages for search engines, including recommendations for title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and other on-page elements.
- Site audits: SEO platforms can analyze a website’s structure, content, and technical SEO issues to provide recommendations for improvement.
- Backlink analysis: These platforms can help users identify and analyze their website’s backlinks to determine their quality and relevance.
- Rank tracking: SEO platforms can track website rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) for targeted keywords and provide insights into the website’s performance over time.
- Competitive analysis: SEO platforms can analyze competitors’ websites to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for optimization.
Overall, SEO platforms help users to optimize their websites for search engines, improve their visibility in search results, and increase organic traffic to their site. They provide valuable insights and data to help users make informed decisions about their SEO strategies and tactics.
Approach to Enterprise SEO program development
This is my take and it works for me. I think it is applicable beyond SEO whether you are standing up a program or streamlining one.
- Conduct deep competitive and content analysis and research
- Identify organic growth opportunities and technical enhancements by evaluating data and analyzing trends
- Create a strategic roadmap based on the latest SEO best practices to stay on the cutting-edge of the industry
- Break down the roadmap into goals and key initiatives and develop an execution plan
- Guide new product development through the entire lifecycle – from understanding customer pain points and defining the solution through development, launch, and scale
- Define requirements, goals, and success metrics
- Work with design and engineering to execute technical enhancements
- Provide regular SEO performance updates to key stakeholders
- Partner with stakeholders to ensure new features and site changes fit the SEO strategy
- Identify ways to achieve higher conversions while maintaining overall scalability
- Maintain high visual design, brand, and user experience standards
- Construct an operating model that aligns with goals and team capacity, and offers transparency for all stakeholders
Get more detail on this here: How to scale your Enterprise SEO program
Enterprise SEO framework
An Enterprise SEO framework is a comprehensive and scalable approach to search engine optimization (SEO) that is designed to meet the needs of large organizations or businesses with complex websites. An Enterprise SEO framework typically involves a set of processes, tools, and strategies that can be applied across multiple websites, regions, or languages.
Here are some of the key components of an Enterprise SEO framework:
- Site architecture and technical SEO: This involves optimizing the website’s structure, navigation, and technical elements, such as page speed, mobile responsiveness, and schema markup.
- Keyword research and content optimization: This involves identifying high-traffic and relevant keywords and creating optimized content that addresses the user’s search intent.
- On-page optimization: This involves optimizing various on-page elements, such as title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, and images.
- Local and international SEO: This involves optimizing the website for local or international audiences, including local listings, language targeting, and hreflang tags.
- Link building and digital PR: This involves acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites, as well as building brand awareness through digital PR.
- Analytics and reporting: This involves tracking website performance using tools such as Google Analytics and reporting on key metrics such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates.
An Enterprise SEO framework is essential for large organizations because it enables them to scale their SEO efforts across multiple websites, regions, or languages while maintaining consistency and quality. It also helps to align SEO with business objectives and track the impact of SEO on the overall business performance.
Why do you need Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is necessary for large organizations because it helps them to optimize their website for search engines. It also helps them to improve their website’s ranking on search engine result pages. Additionally, enterprise SEO can help organizations to increase their website’s traffic and conversions. Finally, enterprise SEO is necessary for large organizations because it helps them to stay competitive in the digital marketplace.
