Enterprise SEO: A Guide for Large Organizations

Enterprise marketing isn't just doing more of what your smaller competitors do. It's not even about automating the process so you can scale faster, though that helps.

Enterprise search engine optimization (SEO) is no exception. Compared to SEO for small and mid-size businesses, enterprise SEO is a bigger game with the same rules — but different strategies for winning.

What Is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is how you achieve higher search engine rankings and more organic traffic for large, multifaceted organizations. The to-do list looks the same as it does for any other company: Use the right keywords, create engaging content, and create your back-end tech well.

However, enterprise websites aren't just bigger than other sites on the search engine results page (SERP). They're more structurally complex and tend to have a more diversified target audience, so they must do more to rank well. 

The bar is higher, but so is the payoff. Well-optimized enterprise websites can dominate multiple SERPs for multiple keywords and drive volumes of high-potential traffic.

Benefits of SEO for Enterprise Companies

Enterprise organizations already have an SEO edge. Larger organizations have better brand awareness, translating to more opportunities for branded searches and backlinks. 

But the competition gets stiffer at the top of the pack, and you're likely one of many companies gaining those advantages. Enterprise SEO gives you the most from your size advantage and benefits your market standing in multiple ways, such as:

• Improved user experience: Google rewards the same qualities that users love. It wants to see sites that are easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and technically reliable. When you work on those aspects for your SEO, there's a good chance your audiences will notice.
• Better targeting: Personalization matters to customers and boosts your bottom line.  Choosing relevant keywords lets you personalize your marketing for people whose data you don't have yet. Not coincidentally, keyword selection is a crucial aspect of SEO.
• Higher-quality traffic: Effective keyword targeting connects you with people whose problems you can solve — not just those who know your name. Once you learn how to scale your keyword research, you can snag large volumes of potential traffic.
• Improved cost efficiency: Enterprise SEO helps you rank higher for more keywords without paying for ads. For enterprises targeting dozens of keywords, the savings can be significant.
• Broader brand awareness: Done well, SEO gets your enterprise brand in front of more audiences, including those searching at the top of the marketing funnel.
• Meaningful local targeting: If you have multiple locations, enterprise SEO lets you deliver locally targeted results, including location-specific reviews. More than 90% of consumers say these reviews affect their opinions of enterprise businesses.

Most importantly, SEO delivers returns long after the initial investment. Unlike ad campaigns, which stop running when you stop paying for them, SEO can drive results far into the future.

Challenges and Complexities of Enterprise SEO

Enterprises can benefit from SEO on a scale other businesses can't, but they also face unique challenges. Businesses with only a few dozen pages can see results with minor changes, even if those results are on a smaller level.

As an enterprise, you can expect more significant results, but you also have to work on a larger scale. That scale presents its own challenges, including the following:

• Duplicate content: Enterprise businesses often create similarly structured pages for different audiences. Location-specific pages might have much of the same material, with only the contact information and photos different across locales. Pages for similar products can have very similar descriptions. These pages can crowd out one another and make ranking harder for the "right" page.
• Forgotten pages: When enterprise content becomes outdated or irrelevant, it's more likely to stay live, clogging up the site simply because no one notices. That dead content may crowd out newer material and make your site seem outdated. Plus, if your site is extensive, those dead pages can use up your crawl budget, which is the maximum number of connections Google can index.
• Stiffer competition: As an enterprise business, you can target high-traffic keywords that smaller companies can't. Then again, so can your competitors. To stay ahead, you must produce technically optimized, high-quality content that addresses those search terms thoroughly.

This last point is one of the most critical content lessons for enterprises: Targeting your customer's needs is task number one in SEO. Optimizing for search engines means learning what your target audience searches for and what they need from the results. Those answers are the foundation of your enterprise SEO strategy.

Enterprise SEO Strategies for Large-Scale Success

SEO is a multifaceted process at every level. Succeeding means managing content development, technical optimization, and site design, all while tracking the results of your efforts. As an enterprise organization, you have the resources to manage and integrate each process. 

Enterprise Content Marketing

Google loves valuable and trustworthy content, and so do your audiences. As an enterprise company, you have the resources to produce this content at scale. If you manage the process well, you can impress readers across every audience segment and drive traffic down each of your customer funnels. 

The whole process starts with one essential task: keyword selection.

Build a Keyword Strategy

In a recent Search Engine Land survey, 22% of consumers identified "coming up with the right search term" as one of their biggest search engine frustrations. More than half feel like they need to check more results now than they used to.

Your job is to create content that matches their needs so perfectly that users don't need to look elsewhere. Keyword research is where that process begins.

• Think in segments: Each of your niche audiences searches differently. Consider each customer segment's search needs and what keywords they might use to find solutions.
• Use your resources: Research tools like Moz and Google Keyword Planner can help you identify search terms similar to those you've already thought of.
• Incorporate marketing and sales goals: Consider your company's business goals over the next year. Identify the keywords that can help you achieve each goal and add them to your list.
• Cluster your keywords: Organize your list of keywords by search intent. Group them by topic and subtopic, with the final goal of assigning each to a content piece. You're not there yet, but the more organized your keywords are, the more accessible content planning will be.

Enterprise companies usually have multiple stakeholders involved in this process. Marketing, sales, product development, and strategic planning teams may want to weigh in. Be sure to structure the process so that's possible.

Plan Around Content Pillars

An enterprise content strategy needs a clear structure, and content pillars usually make the most sense. A pillar system sorts your content by topic and creates a nested system of subtopics, sub-subtopics, and beyond, so everything stays organized even after publication.

With the pillar system, you'll have a limited number of "content pillars" that detail your primary topics. Within those pillars are links to other content that explores one specific aspect of that topic. Those other content pieces often have links of their own.

Content pillars are ideal for enterprise SEO. They create a dynamic map of your content that helps Google navigate your site while keeping your audiences engaged. As long as you keep an up-to-date map of your content, you can always add more.

Create a Content Workflow

Enterprise SEO typically involves multiple stakeholders and teams, from strategists and project leaders to writers and designers. From day one, it's essential to have a system that avoids siloing and keeps everyone connected.

The first step is creating a content development workflow. Identify who leads each step and who takes over for the next stage. For example, which team handles keyword research, and who uses those keywords to plan the next content piece?

Solid communication channels are essential. Create a standard reporting and check-in pattern for accountability and make sure other SEO teams have easy access.

Plan and Craft Engaging Content

Organization is a priority as you begin content creation. Before anyone writes their first sentence, you'll want to establish editorial and content calendars.

Your editorial calendar is the domain of your strategists. It tells your content team how often to post, what media types to incorporate, and what platforms to use. 

Editorial calendars usually cover a quarter to a year of content. They become the jumping-off point for your day-to-day content calendar, which lists each piece of content and when it should go live. 

Your content creators are responsible for planning that content in detail and making it engaging, authoritative, and relevant. You decide whether you want that content creation to happen in-house or outsource. 

Outsourcing can be a valuable option for enterprises. It saves you the costs of hiring someone full-time and makes your SEO budget more flexible. It also allows you to hire subject matter specialists for additional topic authority.

Every creative professional on your team, whether outsourced or in-house, should use a consistent brand voice and style. Because of the sheer number of people involved, all enterprise organizations should have documented brand guidelines for content creation. 

Promote on Multiple Platforms

Your content efforts only pay off when they reach your target audiences. While promoting your content across multiple channels is important, everything should point back to your website.

If you still need an enterprise blog [internal link in process], now is the time to create one. Blogs are essential cornerstones of enterprise SEO strategy because they're owned media, and you can build them out to suit your goals.

There are plenty of well-organized enterprise blogs you can use as a reference. Take Adobe's blog, for example. It sorts and organizes posts by topic so readers can find what they need and explore their interests. Meanwhile, Google sees multiple related posts, which suggests topic knowledge.

Your blog is where most of your written content lives. From there, you can promote each piece across the various channels where you have a presence. Because of its potential reach, social media is immensely valuable for enterprise companies with large audiences. If you post engaging and shareable content, your audiences will likely share it with their friends and do some work for you.

If you plan to create video content, consider making a YouTube channel for your brand. YouTube is the second most popular social media channel, with over 2 billion monthly active users, so your videos will be highly discoverable. And since YouTube is such a popular source, it gives your videos a good chance of ranking.

Monitor Content Performance

Performance tracking connects content to your SEO goals. It serves two purposes: 

1. Showing stakeholders that content gets results
2. Teaching your content team what does and does not work

Both groups want content that drives traffic and improves search rankings. You should track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to those objectives. 

Consider any to all of the following content metrics:

• Organic search traffic: How many people find your content via a search engine
• Keyword ranking: Changes to your SERP position for selected keywords
• Total views: The number of visitors to your content from all sources
• Backlinks: Total count of links to your content from third-party sites

Set a cadence for how often you'll check these metrics. Consistent measurement makes changes more visible and helps you analyze results. For instance, if your backlinks increase significantly from March to April, you'll want to see what content you published that month.

Other teams might want to see different metrics. Your sales and marketing people could ask for information like the number of views or click-through rate (CTR), which shows how many people clicked on a link in your content to learn more. It helps to have all metrics in an easily accessible place like a content management system (CMS).

Enterprise Link-Building Strategies

Engaging, high-quality content is the first thing you need to earn backlinks. You might even get organic backlinks when other site creators discover your content.

However, those organic links are only icing on the cake for enterprise websites. One link to an isolated blog post won't boost your authority when you have dozens or hundreds of pages. Enterprise SEO requires a scalable approach to backlink building. 

Audit Your Sitemap

Enterprise websites face more challenges than smaller websites when building a balanced backlink profile. Backlinks are part of how Google assesses your reputation in a particular topic, and enterprises usually publish content on multiple topics and sub-topics. Having backlinks pointing to as many pages as possible is essential to maintaining high topic authority.

The best approach is to map backlinks to your site based on your sitemap. Use your sitemap to record every page, then find the backlinks to that page. If you already have a CMS in your tech stack, check to see if it has a backlink checker.

Consider adding a CMS to your tech stack if you don't already have one, as it can make the SEO process much easier to navigate. Meanwhile, there are many free online backlink checkers you can use. Either way, record your results somewhere your team can easily find them. You'll need to update your records as you build out your backlink profile, and you don't want to lose time searching for misplaced data.

Propose Collaborations and Partnerships

Enterprise companies have the resources and reputation to encourage linking. But you won't reach out to a company and ask them to link to your site. Instead, you'll follow marketing best practices and offer value to creators who can help.

Case studies work well for business-to-business (B2B) enterprises. A client shares a success story with a link to your website, and you share their case study with a link to theirs. 

Business-to-consumer (B2C)  companies can see similar success with influencer campaigns and co-branded partnerships. Co-branding works well when you find another company that isn't a direct competitor but has a similar audience. Think Starbucks and Spotify or Oreo and McDonald's.

Partnerships require more long-term maintenance than other link-building strategies, but they can potentially produce long-term results. Get decision-maker buy-in and assemble a team, and you're good to go.

Search for Unlinked Mentions

You know word-of-mouth is one of an enterprise company's most significant assets. Chances are good that someone out there has mentioned your brand on their website or in a blog but didn't include a link. 

You don't need to spend hours searching online for those mentions. Countless brand monitoring tools can automate the process. Your team only needs to note these mentions and reach out to those who still need to link. Many of them will be happy to add links if they're not competitors, and you might start a productive relationship in the process.

Manage Dofollow and Nofollow Backlinks

When Google "sees" another site link to yours, it assumes that the site endorses you as a trusted source of information. But if that site includes a little snippet of code with the text "nofollow," you won't get the credit. The site has created a "nofollow" backlink.

A nofollow link isn't a point against your company. Your organization may even intentionally use nofollow links as part of influencer campaigns or sponsored content so it doesn't raise spam flags. If you find a nofollow link as part of a backlink audit, check one of these possibilities first. Your marketing team might have included it on purpose.

If you do find legitimate third-party links marked as nofollow, consider contacting the site's webmaster. They may be willing to remove the tag so your site gets credit.

Build Out Internal Links

Backlinks tend to dominate the link-building discussion, but internal links also play a role. They provide what SEO experts call "link equity" or "link juice" — the value of the reputation boost you get from a backlink. Think of link equity as digital popularity points.

Say a highly reputable website links to your enterprise blog. That blog post gets equity from the linking site. Your blog gets equity by association, as does any internal page the link post connects to. The better your internal linking system, the more effectively you can spread that equity. 

Internal linking also helps your SEO by making your site easier to crawl. Google's bots "crawl" your site to discover what it's about, how you've structured it, and your available content. Your internal links are like signposts, helping Google find what it needs to know. The more crawlable your site, the more discoverable it will be.

Enterprise Technical SEO

As you've just discovered, you can only have a comprehensive discussion about SEO if you get a little bit technical. Enterprise organizations have an easier time with the technical aspects of SEO because they have in-house or contracted technical talent. 

Still, enterprise SEO project leads must understand the technical components of optimization. Think of this part as building a solid foundation so your strategy works smoothly.

Crawlability

As you've learned, Google can only access the crawlable parts of your site. Issues like broken links, incomplete redirect pathways, and missing pages can stop the indexing process.

The first step is to run an audit and make sure all of your links and redirects work. Next, you'll need your tech team to check your robots.txt files, which contain instructions telling Google what pages to check.

Robots.txt files are essential for large sites. Without the information in those files, Google can overload your site with crawl requests or use up its "crawl budget" finding unimportant pages.

Structured Data

Google's crawlers often need hints to understand what's on each page of your website. Google calls these hints "structured data."

Structured data is code that tells Google what different elements should look like. It indicates headlines and body paragraphs, explains the content of videos, and describes images. Make sure you have a team checking each page's structured data and prioritize structured data for new content.

Site Architecture

A well-structured site also makes your site easier to crawl and for humans to navigate. 

An SEO-friendly web structure uses categories and hierarchies to organize information. You have a home page, a few main pages, and sequences of sub-pages that get more detailed. The scale for an enterprise website is more extensive, but the concept is the same.

If you have a site map, it will give you a starting point. From there, make sure each page has the right sub-pages and every topic or product category is easy to find. When in doubt, send the site to someone outside your tech team and ask them to find something.

Essential information should be at most three clicks away. Every page should have a link to your home page, and essential parent pages should be two or fewer clicks away from that page. This level of navigability makes your site more crawlable and improves user experience.

Enterprise SEO Metrics: Best Practices for Analyzing and Reporting

Content, links, and technical optimization create the foundation for your enterprise SEO strategy. The next step is to evaluate that strategy's success and set up a process for routine SEO reporting.

Run an Enterprise SEO Audit

An enterprise SEO audit reviews all aspects of your strategy and flags what has worked well, what hasn't driven the results you expected, and what action steps the company should consider going forward.

Plan to run an audit annually if your site is relatively stable and every six months if you make significant changes. If your organization already has an SEO strategy and you're working on an update or refresh, consider starting the process with a comprehensive audit.

Choose KPIs

SEO reports need to track measurable results to deliver actionable insights. Monitoring your content performance will be part of this process, at least for content KPIs related to traffic and ranking.

Next, ask decision-makers and key stakeholders what metrics they want to see. Organizations have different business goals for SEO, and you'll want to measure what matters. For example, if enterprise execs want to see if SEO efforts drive conversions, you'll want to measure return on investment (ROI).

Provide Competitor Context

Stakeholders need a frame of reference for the data you present. When reporting on SEO results, compare how your competitors rank and perform. For example, your SEO team might be excited about a 25% increase in your organic click-through rate (CTR). But for your stakeholders, it will matter more that the average growth for your industry is 15.3%.

Highlight Key Insights and Offer Recommendations

SEO reporting serves two purposes: keeping your team on the same page and maintaining buy-in with executives. Both lead to one fundamental question: So, what now?

Always end your reports with a takeaway and actionable next steps. Highlight the most significant changes in your ranking and what caused them. Make sure everyone knows what, if anything, will change within the strategy as a result.

Enterprise SEO Tools You Should Know

Enterprise SEO has many moving parts. It's essential to have the right tools to expedite your research, keep everyone connected, and automate what you can. 

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research is a big job for enterprise organizations, and streamlining the process is essential. Valuable tools include:

• Google Keyword Planner: Recommendations for keywords related to your business, industry, or existing keyword set
• Answer the Public: Long tail keyword generation based on actual search behaviors

Content Optimization Tools

Multiple factors affect how a piece ranks. Today's content optimization tools will analyze your material in seconds. Popular options include:

• Clearscope: Analyzes your content for keyword use, word count, and other SEO touchpoints
• Frase.io: Recommends ways you can improve your content to beat competitors
• Letterdrop: Analzyes content and reports on how it performs on-page

Reporting and Audit Tools

If you're still looking for a comprehensive SEO platform or working on integration, you'll need something to handle reporting. A few leading options include:

• Google Analytics: Collects data and reports on how customers use your website
• Advanced Web Ranking: Analyzes and predicts your content's performance
• SEOptimer: Evaluates your overall performance and lets you test specific elements

Enterprise SEO Platforms

Enterprises often do best with one multifunctional platform. Many platforms on the market have enterprise-level plans and the technical capabilities to support enterprise service. 

If your organization has the budget, consider an enterprise-level SEO platform such as Botify or seoClarity. Some platforms are more multifunctional than others, and you may need some stand-alone tools alongside them.

How To Choose the Right Enterprise SEO Agency for You

Given the scale of enterprise SEO, many organizations benefit from outsourcing the entire process. An SEO agency will strategize, create content, and analyze results across your site so you can focus internal resources on other projects. You want to choose an agency that delivers results and works well with your team. 

Use the following steps to guide your process: 

• Establish your SEO goals: Articulate what you want to achieve beyond ranking. For example, are you looking to boost brand awareness, enter a new market, or drive more traffic from a particular customer segment?
• Research agencies: Learn who has experience in your industry and niche. Read client reviews to gauge what it's like to work with different agencies. If you know anyone who's used an agency, ask who they recommend.
• Book consultations: Make time to talk with the agencies on your shortlist. Find out how they communicate and keep their clients in the loop.
• Talk strategy: Learn about each agency's approaches to improving client rankings. Make sure their backlink and keyword strategies align with best practices and are ethical. Never work with an agency that buys backlinks!
• Set expectations: Talk about what results you expect and what the agency can deliver. An ethical agency will never promise an increase in ranking, but they can tell you what results they usually see for companies like yours.

Boost Your Enterprise-Level SEO With Compose.ly

Every enterprise organization has different SEO needs. Whether you're looking for an agency to run your whole strategy or just need content writers, Compose.ly has you covered. We offer hands-on expertise in enterprise SEO, from technical optimization to content development and analysis.

Tell us what you need, and we'll show you how we can help. Reach out today to learn more.

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