As one of the main pillars of digital marketing, SEO optimization is considered a top priority for any website.
But, when optimizing a large-scale enterprise website over your average small business, these typically simple concepts can quickly become a challenge.
At its core, the focus is still the same–attract organic traffic and rank highly for optimized content–but implementing these recommendations across a website with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of pages requires a different approach.
To improve an enterprise website’s rankings and online presence, you’ll need to understand what those different strategies require.
What is Enterprise SEO?
While enterprise SEO can vary across industries, in general terms, it’s the practice of optimizing gigantic websites with much higher stakes than your typical business.
You may use the same strategies: conduct keyword research, rectify technical issues, and create optimized content, but, you’re dealing with an entirely different beast when it comes to these high-profile companies.
Not only are your typical SEO problems magnified tenfold (think optimizing 10,000 pages instead of 100), you’ll also have to navigate through all the internal politics and stakeholders that come with larger enterprise businesses.
Any minor changes to metadata or broken internal links that you want to fix? They all need to go through multiple directors and departments before you have the approval to do so. Getting anything done at all on an enterprise website requires overcoming various hurdles, all while continually proving your worth and value.
Critical SEO Strategies
Though the scale of enterprise websites is much larger than what the average SEO may be used to working on, there are some benefits you can take advantage of right off the bat:
Brand Authority: Many enterprise businesses have a high level of brand authority and recognition, which automatically increases search rankings. By utilizing the authority that a brand already maintains, you can more easily rank for highly competitive keywords that may be out of scope for your smaller clients.
Valuable Content: Another benefit is that most enterprise websites already come with a large amount of high-quality content, and in turn, a large number of valuable backlinks. The more pages you continue to add, the more significant traffic you’ll be able to then drive to the website.
One thing to keep in mind is that there are no secret strategies for optimizing massive websites. It’s all the same tried and true tactics you already know, just on a much larger scale.
Below are the top five optimization strategies you should be implementing for enterprise sites.
1. Site Structure
One of the biggest focuses of enterprise SEO should be the structure of your website. If you want Google to rank all 10,000+ pages, it needs to easily find, crawl, and index them.
You want to construct a well-thought-out site architecture, where all of your pages and content are easy to reach by users and easy to find within your crawl budget. The hierarchy of your pages should be crystal clear to search engines, and solidifying your internal linking strategy is a must.
However, this can be challenging for SEOs dealing with hundreds of pages, let alone thousands. But, by taking the time to really dig into the website and ensure every piece of content is in its rightful place, you’ll guarantee that Google can find each and every page when triggered by its designated search query.
2. Keyword & Topic Research
Keyword research is, without a doubt, one of the most essential tasks when it comes to SEO across any business.
To drive organic traffic to your site, you’ll first need to identify what information your audience wants. Then, you’ll need to research the phrases they’re searching for to get that information and create that content with those keywords in mind.
Once you’ve identified the most relevant topics and terms, you want to refine that list to highlight the biggest opportunities. This involves looking at the SERPs around that term, analyzing the intent of each keyword, and investigating variations that may provide even better results.
The last step is to organize and prioritize that list of keywords. What are your primary terms, and out of the topics and keywords you’ve researched, which are the most pressing items that should be targeted?
3. Competitor Research
Another essential strategy necessary for enterprise SEO is to keep track of what your competitors are doing. Though you may have a slight edge due to the sheer size of the business, it’s impossible to grow your search visibility without understanding what drives traffic to your competitors as well.
When conducting a competitive analysis, you want to first identify who you’re fighting against in the SERPs. Then, you’ll need to determine what keywords they rank for and how you can build upon those phrases to create new opportunities for yourself.
You can also utilize your competitive research to benefit the keyword and topic research phase. By seeing what works for your competitors, you can gain a broader understanding of how customers search for information related to your product or service. Analyzing your competitors may also help you identify linking opportunities you otherwise would have skimmed over, thus further increasing your site’s authority.
4. Write SEO Content
SEO content is the bread and butter of any successful SEO campaign.
As an SEO, the majority of your work is in some way focused on content, whether it’s mapping the strategy or writing it yourself. It’s the biggest slice of the rankings pie, and it’s just as essential for enterprise sites as it is for any other.
However, writing SEO content involves more than simply putting words to a page. You need to craft the content to prioritize the user’s experience and needs. Every piece will need to target all necessary keywords, contain engaging and relevant images or videos, and include strategic interlinking between additional relevant pages.
Check out this informative video from our team to learn more about SEO content marketing:
5. Technical SEO
Websites are constantly evolving, but as a result, things may change and break that prevent search engine crawlers from accessing them, hindering all other SEO efforts. And–when it comes to enterprise businesses–the larger the site, the more likely you are to encounter these issues.
That is why technical SEO strategies are essential alongside your content and keyword research. When working on the technical side, you want to conduct regular site audits, review and optimize site speed, implement schema markup, manage redirects, and so much more.
To ensure your enterprise website doesn’t fall apart, you’ll need to conduct regular health checks and resolve as many errors as you can. You can utilize tools such as SEMRush and Screaming Frog to get a comprehensive list of any and all technical errors your site may have.
One thing to note is that the process of resolving these technical issues often requires working with development teams, which may be yet another hurdle to leap through for enterprise SEO. It is essential to be in regular contact with the site’s developer from the start so you can quickly and efficiently communicate these changes.
Work With LSEO Today
When it comes to enterprise websites, you’ll need to take your standard SEO practices and amplify them to suit a much larger number of pages. At LSEO, our team of experienced strategists can help take your enterprise business to the next level! Reach out to us today to set up a consultation and improve the visibility of your business.