Enterprise SEO: Guide, Strategies, Tips, Benefits & More
December 15, 2023
Neha Bawa
What has changed from the original post:
- Additional content to the Intro section
- Additional content to the ‘benefits of enterprise SEO’ section
- Added the ‘Components of Enterprise SEO’ section
- Added ‘Enterprise SEO vs Traditional SEO’ section
Summary: Explore the intricate world of Enterprise SEO with our comprehensive guide, covering everything from foundational principles to advanced strategies. Unearth expert tips and insights that cater specifically to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by large corporations.
What is Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of improving the visibility and performance of a large-scale website with a large number of pages and a complicated structure in search engine results. This form of SEO usually entails strategies and approaches that are targeted to the specific issues and needs of large, established enterprises or organizations.
Enterprise SEO is a specialization of search engine optimization for businesses of scale. It applies SEO techniques to thousands or even millions of pages to improve the overall organic presence of a website.
Thus, the main difference between Traditional SEO and Enterprise SEO is ‘Scale’.
The online scale of an organization is not defined by the business’s size – it’s the number of pages.
The perfect example of such an Enterprise is Microsoft; it ranks number 1 on the search results for over 371k terms in the US.
So that’s the kind of scale we deal with when Enterprise SEO is considered, and if you can manage this scale well, the growth that lies ahead is something to look forward to!
But what is an even better testament to the benefits of Enterprise SEO is sustainable results. Sarvesh Bagla, CEO of Digital Agency – Techmagnate, has explained this growth best in an Interview on Enterprise SEO:
“When brands compare the performance of Enterprise SEO with Paid Media and realize that organic leads have a significantly higher conversion rate at a lower cost per acquisition, they finally start appreciating its true power.”
Let’s explore the benefits of Enterprise SEO so you can get a better understanding of the results.
Enterprise SEO vs Traditional SEO
‘Enterprise SEO’ and ‘Traditional SEO’ are terms that are occasionally used to differentiate between SEO (search engine optimization) tactics and techniques utilized by large, established firms (enterprises) and smaller businesses or startups.
It is important to note, however, that these terminologies may not have universally agreed-upon meanings, and their usage may vary.
Let’s do a deep dive into the differences between enterprise SEO and traditional SEO, to help you pick the right one.
Scope and scale
Enterprise SEO
Manages the SEO efforts of big, international enterprises or well-established businesses with substantial websites and an online presence. Deals with a huge number of online pages, complicated website architecture, and various stakeholders, among other factors.
Traditional SEO
SEO campaigns for smaller firms, startups, or organizations with a smaller online footprint. It can entail managing fewer web pages and less complicated website architecture.
Resource and budget
Enterprise SEO
Significant finances and resources are required. Large corporations can devote substantial funds to enterprise SEO efforts, hire specialized SEO teams, and invest in cutting-edge techniques and technology.
Traditional SEO
Generally, lower budgets and fewer resources are used. Small and medium-sized firms with limited resources for enterprise SEO operations can rely on a combination of in-house and outsourced efforts.
Team structure
Enterprise SEO
A dedicated, specialized team of SEO specialists, content writers, developers, and analysts is frequently required. The team can be in charge of coordinating enterprise SEO activities across departments and regions.
Traditional SEO
Smaller teams or people wearing many hats may be involved. Smaller firms need to hire SEO agencies or freelancers in some circumstances.
Technology and tools
Enterprise SEO
Can handle large-scale analytics, tracking, and optimization using complex enterprise SEO tools and technologies. This might include enterprise-level SEO systems as well as customized solutions.
Traditional SEO
May use a more basic set of tools suitable for the scale and requirements of a smaller online presence.
Strategy and approach
Enterprise SEO
Frequently requires a planned, holistic strategy that considers overall corporate goals, brand reputation, and a variety of online media. It might incorporate international SEO techniques as well as in-depth analytics.
Traditional SEO
Focuses on more specialized or niche markets. The plan might be simpler and more basic, focusing on increasing exposure in certain geographic areas or market niches.
Benefits of Enterprise SEO
The best success metric that summarizes the benefits of Enterprise SEO is ‘Share of Voice (SOV)’. Essentially, Share of Voice” (SOV) in SEO is a metric used to understand a brand’s visibility in search engine results compared to its competitors. It’s a measure of the market your brand owns relative to others within the same industry or for specific keywords.
You shouldn’t just demonstrate the results by tracking the rank for a particular set of keywords. Instead, the focus should be on improving the SOV.
Here’s the formula for SOV:
| SOV = Your brand’s measures (Search volume your brand appears for) / Total market measures (Total Search Volume) x 100 |
Now, what’s the benefit of improving the Share of Voice?
With Enterprise SEO, you truly shift an entire industry, which creates a massive value proposition for your business in terms of brand awareness and lead generation. And as around 81% of web traffic is still directed through search engines (Source: ThinkWithGoogle), the potential for your brand to dominate a particular market search is massive.
Let’s understand how Enterprise SEO helps businesses grow:
Increase in Website Traffic
When you do Enterprise SEO right, you optimize thousands of web pages, and when these pages start ranking high in the search results, the inbound organic traffic will be massive.
Through Enterprise SEO, Techmagnate increased organic traffic by 214% for an international school operating in multiple locations in India.
Growth in revenue
Enterprise SEO enables you to increase the volume of organic traffic to your website, attracting potential customers interested in your products and services.
Now, let’s say you’ve increased your Share of Voice in the Top 5 search results for keywords with transactional intent, Enterprise SEO can directly impact your business’s bottom line.
Using a similar approach, Techmagnate, reported an 81.95% increase in organic leads for a leading hospital in India.
More authority
Brands are expected to have Thought Leadership, which, on a scale, is only possible through Enterprise-SEO-level content marketing. If implemented correctly. it can yield transformative results.
We increased the blog traffic by 822% for one of the leading hospital chains in India. Which helped the company establish itself as a thought leader in the healthcare industry in India.
Similarly, Enterprise SEO possesses the ability to build and maintain your online reputation. Techmagnate systematically built the online reputation for one of the leaders in the BFSI Industry in India by increasing the Top 3 SOV by 8X.
Better user experience
As per a survey by Google, 53% of mobile users abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, highlighting the importance of fast page load speed – an aspect of technical enterprise SEO, in improving the user experience (UX).
As you work on optimizing the technical elements of thousands of web pages, you also focus on the Core Web Vitals. This means it reduces the chances of website visitors encountering issues related to page speed, redirection, 4XX, etc.; all of this helps you achieve the ultimate objective – a better user experience.
Competitive advantage
By outranking competitors in search results, a well-executed enterprise SEO plan can give a significant competitive advantage. Increased exposure and a solid online presence help to build brand authority in the sector.
Brand credibility and trust
Users typically consider websites near the top of search results as more reputable and trustworthy. Establishing a strong online presence through enterprise SEO increases your audience’s trust and authority in your brand.
Global reach and international expansion
By optimizing content for numerous languages and countries, international SEO tactics help businesses reach a worldwide audience. This is especially useful for companies with a worldwide presence or those aiming to expand globally.
Data-driven decision-making
Enterprise SEO analytics give useful information about user behavior, preferences, and trends.
Brands can improve their strategy, manage resources more efficiently, and optimize for better results by using data-driven decision-making.
Adaptability to market changes
Regularly monitoring SEO performance and being up to date on industry trends enables businesses to respond rapidly to changes in the online world. Staying ahead of the competition and having a good online presence requires this agility.
Improved local presence
Local SEO optimization as part of the overall enterprise SEO strategy assists businesses in connecting with local audiences, which is especially crucial for brands with physical presence.
It improves exposure in local search results, resulting in increased foot traffic and local consumer interaction.
Enhanced cross-channel marketing
When SEO is combined with other marketing channels, such as social media and email, a synergistic effect occurs, increasing the total impact of marketing efforts. Consistency across channels strengthens the brand message and boosts brand recall.
Effective Strategies for Enterprise SEO
Enterprise SEO is a specialization of traditional SEO, so there are bound to be similarities. However, there are specific elements that make this unique specialization of SEO work.
If you want to execute enterprise SEO for your large website, here are some of the time-tested enterprise SEO strategies you must focus on:
Site structure and architecture
Large websites frequently have a complex architecture with many pages and subdomains. Maintaining a clean and logical site layout is critical for search engine crawlers to successfully interpret and index information.
Keyword strategy
Developing a well-researched keyword strategy entails discovering relevant keywords for various areas of the website as well as developing content that corresponds to user search intent. This can also include focusing on long-tail keywords related to specific goods, services, or geographic regions.
Keywords should be assigned to individual pages on your website to guarantee that each page targets a distinct set of keywords.
On-page optimization
Optimize each page’s meta titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and URL structures.
Make sure your content is of good quality, useful, and relevant to both consumers and search engines. For photos, use descriptive and keyword-rich alt tags.
Content optimization
Content optimization for search engines entails generating high-quality, relevant, and useful content. Product pages, blog posts, essays, and other content types are common in large organizations. Each content type should be optimized for search engines, taking into account aspects such as keyword use, readability, and multimedia features.
Concentrate on producing content that addresses user intent and offers useful information. Implement a content calendar and frequently update current content.
Technical SEO
Audit and improve the technical features of the website regularly, such as site performance, mobile friendliness, and crawlability. To avoid duplicate content concerns, use suitable URL structures and canonical tags.
Make an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines. Technical SEO addresses these difficulties to guarantee that search engines can efficiently access and index content.
Backlink strategy
Creating a solid backlink profile is critical for SEO success. To create high-quality backlinks, businesses frequently participate in outreach initiatives, collaborations, and other techniques. Backlink management and monitoring is an ongoing effort to guarantee a healthy link profile.
User experience (UX) optimization
Make user experience a key priority on both desktop and mobile platforms. Improve website navigation and make sure each page has a clear call to action. Reduce bounce rates by creating an engaging and smooth user experience.
Social media integration
Integrate social media into your enterprise SEO strategy to increase the reach of your content and establish brand authority. Encourage social sharing and participation.
Local SEO
Local search optimization is vital for businesses with physical locations. This includes monitoring company listings, taking consumer feedback, and assuring NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) uniformity across online platforms.
Analytics and reporting
It is critical to use analytics tools to track and measure the success of enterprise SEO activities. To get insights into user behavior, conversion rates, and other crucial indicators, businesses frequently rely on sophisticated analytics solutions.
Security and compliance
Large organizations must emphasize website security and search engine compliance. This includes adopting secure protocols (HTTPS), dealing with concerns such as duplicate content, and staying updated on algorithm updates.
International SEO
A key component of enterprise SEO, international SEO entails optimizing content for different languages and regions, especially for brands operating in multiple countries. This includes using hreflang tags, country-specific domain structures, and geotargeting strategies.
Team collaboration
Enterprise SEO frequently requires coordination across several teams, including marketing, IT, content generation, and site development. It is critical for successful enterprise SEO deployment to ensure excellent communication and coordination across various teams.
Enterprise SEO Challenges
If you have stayed with us so far, one thing we’ve repeatedly mentioned is that enterprise SEO should be done right by stating things like “if tackled correctly.” This is because enterprise SEO involves many challenges.
All the prevalent challenges in enterprise SEO pivot to one thing only: scale.
With thousands of pages and complex site architecture, implementing SEO strategies at scale is a significant challenge for enterprise websites. You need a bigger team of SEO experts, content marketers, and domain experts to manage the scale well.
Let’s take a deeper look into these challenges:
Legacy systems
Many enterprise websites have legacy systems that don’t conform to the rules of SEO. This makes it quite challenging to implement the best practices of SEO.
Therefore, modernizing legacy systems, especially the ones that in no way impact operational efficiency, is pertinent to making your large website SEO-friendly.
Legal issues
Content production on a scale is a critical component of enterprise SEO, so keeping track of content quality is another equally important factor, especially for leading brands. Any poor advice and unvetted promos may lead to complicated legal issues.
Content decay
A critical challenge Enterprise SEO teams face is keeping the content fresh and updated. Content decay is a big issue with enterprise websites as interest may die over time for some of the content or just get outdated.
As the number of pages increases, regular content gap analysis becomes even more crucial to finding the gaps in your content to check if the information needs to be updated.
Managing the workflow
Enterprise SEO strategy requires frictionless handling of the workflow, and it should have logical and clear workflows for teams.
This includes task assignments, events, and milestone tracking, as well as the tools to analyze the performance of the campaign and the involved stakeholders.
Siloed teams
With multiple teams and departments responsible for managing different aspects of the website, maintaining coordination and consistency can be tricky.
So, connecting the siloed teams is important to work toward achieving a unified objective.
Competition
Smaller, niche websites often target long-tail keywords with a lower search volume and keyword difficulty. However, enterprises’ objective is to dominate their industry, and that’s why they aim to target keywords with higher search volume and difficulty.
Thus, to operate in highly competitive markets, you need a deep understanding of the competitive landscape.
For each keyword category you aim to dominate by having a significant Share of Voice in the top 3 or 5 search results, devising an Enterprise SEO strategy for the right set of keywords is pertinent, and so is content creation.
Technical errors on the website
Technical challenges like slow page load speed, broken links, etc., exist with smaller websites as well. However, the difference lies in the scale, as enterprise websites have thousands of web pages, and tracking 4XX errors or issues related to 301 redirects is quite tricky.
You may be losing a massive chunk of inbound traffic due to these errors. Another thing to keep in mind is that the likelihood of enterprise websites having duplicate content, orphan pages, and thin content is higher.
Undefined success metrics
Measuring the impact of SEO efforts is a challenge for enterprise businesses, as results can take time to become apparent. A comprehensive and data-driven approach to SEO is needed by tracking key success metrics such as Share of Voice, Leads, and Conversions.
Enterprises can improve their search engine visibility, drive traffic, and grow their business by overcoming these challenges. However, it demands a well-coordinated and strategic approach to addressing the challenges successfully.
Enterprise SEO Best Practices
Here are the best practices we’ve identified by working with trusted partners across multiple verticals for Enterprise SEO:
Work on overcoming the challenges
We outlined a lot of enterprise SEO challenges, so overcoming these hindrances is perhaps the most important thing. If you are unable to overcome these challenges, the strategy may not yield the kind of results you are looking for.
Set Proper Benchmarks
For enterprise SEO to work, you must set proper benchmarks by creating robust processes. You need a team of SEO experts who know all the nitty-gritty of managing SEO strategies at scale.
In addition, you should have enterprise-grade tools and even proprietary tools to manage the scale well. Finally, there needs to be proper success metrics to track the effectiveness of the campaign.
Automate
As best stated by Sarvesh Bagla:
“There’s great scope for automation in Enterprise SEO, as it allows us to execute with accuracy and efficiency.”
Automation helps manage the scale at which Enterprise SEO operates. For instance, when we talk about rank tracking, large organizations cannot track the rankings of individual keywords. This practice needs to be automated by using tools like Semrush.
Similarly, when technical issues are considered, visiting each page for errors related to Schema Markup and 4XX is just not possible, but these can be automated by using AI-enabled tools.
Use dynamic dashboards
One thing that brands should not overlook is tracking the success of Enterprise SEO strategy, which is much more impactful with dynamic dashboards.
These dashboards need to have some sort of visual capabilities to demonstrate the success metrics clearly because you’ll not be able to track rankings and traffic for thousands of web pages manually.
You need dashboards that illustrate the results. To get that, you can integrate data points from Google Search Console, Semrush, Ahrefs, and other bespoke sources into Google Looker Studio – its excellent visual capabilities ensure you get a proper view of the results.
Focus on creating topic clusters
We talked a little about Thought Leadership. Today, establishing Thought Leadership is only possible through Topical Authority, which can be built using Topic Clusters.
Creating content in silos is a big no for large organizations. The keyword mapping should be done in a way so that you leverage these terms for creating content as per a hub and spoke model.
The Future of Enterprise SEO
Image Source: The Enterprise World
AI, machine learning, and deep learning are increasingly becoming essential for the future of marketing. These digital technologies are helping enterprise-level brands to scale and bolster their marketing processes through AI-enabled tools.
Brands have to innovate because the digital channels they are targeting are also evolving. Google’s regular updates to boost the user experience and the advent of platforms like CHAT GPT have made the future of SEO, especially enterprise SEO, much more interesting, significant, and a little challenging.
Techmagnate’s enterprise SEO team understands that the SEO industry is constantly evolving and invests time and effort to stay ahead of these changes. Book a consultation with our experts embrace the power of enterprise SEO and watch your online presence soar to new heights.