Navigating enterprise SEO presents distinctive hurdles that SEOs and digital marketers must surmount to achieve optimal results. The deliberate pace of decision-making within large organizations, the presence of organizational silos, historical neglect of enterprise SEO, and a lack of appreciation from stakeholders regarding the significance of SEO can undermine the efforts of even the most experienced search professionals.
In response, SEOs and channel owners must reassess their strategies and pinpoint flexible solutions to address prevalent challenges in enterprise SEO, ensuring that their initiatives yield the greatest possible return on investment.
What is an Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is the practice of search engine optimization (SEO) tailored specifically for large-scale organizations or enterprises. Unlike standard SEO strategies that may be applied to smaller websites or businesses, enterprise SEO addresses the unique challenges and complexities that arise in the context of sizable corporations with extensive online presence.
Key characteristics of enterprise SEO include:
- Large-Scale Websites: Enterprises often have extensive websites with a multitude of pages, products, and content. Managing the SEO for such large websites requires specialized strategies to ensure that all relevant content is optimized for search engines.
- Organizational Structure: Enterprises typically have hierarchical organizational structures. Decision-making processes can be slower, and SEO efforts may need to navigate through various levels of management and approval.
- Multiple Stakeholders: Enterprise SEO involves coordination with various departments and stakeholders. This may include marketing teams, IT departments, content creators, and more. Alignment and collaboration among these different groups are crucial for effective SEO.
- Global Presence: Many enterprises operate on a global scale, serving diverse markets and regions. International SEO considerations, such as language and regional targeting, become essential for enterprises with a global presence.
- Competitive Landscape: Large enterprises often face stiff competition in their respective industries. As a result, enterprise SEO involves not only optimizing for visibility but also strategically outperforming competitors in search engine rankings.
- Technical Challenges: The technical infrastructure of enterprise websites can be complex. Addressing issues related to site speed, mobile optimization, and crawlability becomes crucial for a successful enterprise SEO strategy.
- Data and Analytics: Enterprises deal with large volumes of data. Effectively utilizing data analytics to measure and improve SEO performance is a key aspect of enterprise SEO.
Enterprise SEO is a specialized approach to search engine optimization that takes into account the unique characteristics and challenges of large organizations. It requires a combination of technical expertise, strategic planning, and effective collaboration across different departments to achieve and maintain strong visibility in search engine results.
What is the difference between regular SEO and enterprise SEO?
In its most basic terms, the fundamental distinction between regular SEO and enterprise SEO lies in the scale of the businesses involved. Enterprise SEO is tailored to the needs of large organizations, requiring strategies for effective navigation within the complexities of a sizable corporate structure.
Consequently, unlike the scenario at small and medium-sized businesses where you might report directly to the CEO or founders, in enterprise SEO, reporting typically occurs to leaders positioned a few layers down the organizational hierarchy. This dynamic introduces challenges such as slower decision-making processes, increased bureaucratic hurdles, organizational silos, and other specific obstacles that demand strategic solutions from search experts and marketing leaders.
What is a scale in SEO?
When discussing scale in SEO or scalable enterprise SEO, we’re addressing the capability to enhance SEO efficiency and optimize impact in alignment with core business objectives.
The key to triumph in enterprise SEO revolves around a fundamental question: can you evaluate, prioritize, and execute SEO initiatives on a scale suitable for expansive websites? While contemporary SEO experts possess the requisite knowledge, they encounter challenges unique to enterprise-sized organizations, demanding an additional set of skills and solutions for effective overcoming.
Common Enterprise SEO Challenges and Solutions
Regard us as your ally in enterprise SEO. Whether you’re contending with significant legacy errors in enterprise SEO or encountering obstacles in gaining approval for your next ROI-driven initiative, we hold the solutions you need.
In larger organizations, the coordination of efforts can be complex, with teams dispersed across multiple offices often lacking synchronization. Even when goals align, past optimization efforts may pose difficulties. Legacy systems, outdated micro-sites consuming resources, or a lack of influence in the IT department can hinder important changes needed at the enterprise level.
Various issues and challenges are likely to emerge over time. Outlined below are some of the prevalent SEO challenges encountered in large enterprises, along with corresponding solutions.
Enterprises with Legacy or Proprietary CMS Systems
Challenge: The presence of outdated CMS systems poses significant challenges. Some departments may lack access, with varying levels of SEO capabilities, and navigating the steep learning curve associated with these systems can be daunting.
Solution: Understand the capabilities of the system and begin outlining the processes involved. Key aspects to familiarize yourself with include Structured data, Redirect options, Template designs, Sitewide edits, Internal link options, Plugin options, Ability to edit <head> data.
If executing these tasks proves challenging, exploring a system update or considering migration to a new CMS might be a viable solution.
Using Inappropriate Tools
Challenge: Enterprises might find themselves using tools that are ill-suited for the task, often resulting from misleading promises made by sales teams. Many tools lack the necessary features to function seamlessly across various teams.
Solution: Initiate a thorough analysis of all tools in use to distinguish between those contributing to the organization’s success and those hindering progress. Subsequently, engage with vendors to explore enterprise-specific options, and phase out tools that do not provide the requisite functionality for effective search engine optimization.
Insufficient Communication and Alignment Among Groups
Challenge: Managing SEO becomes considerably more challenging when multiple teams and groups are involved, and establishing cohesion among them can be a daunting task.
Solution: Enterprise SEO demands the development of robust relationships across the organization, extending beyond your immediate team. To foster collaboration, consider the following actions:
- Network with individuals throughout the enterprise.
- Initiate the creation of shared goals.
- Engage with various teams regarding upcoming changes.
- Leverage communication and collaboration tools.
The objective is to unite all stakeholders, ensuring alignment and facilitating the essential changes required for the organization to achieve its SEO objectives.
Ineffective Content Usage Resulting in Missed Opportunities
Challenge: The value of content lies in its proper usage. Enterprises often face a significant challenge when missed opportunities arise due to suboptimal content deployment strategies.
Solution: Facilitate alignment of content goals across the organization by implementing the following:
- Develop a comprehensive content calendar for the entire organization.
- Establish governance models to guide content creation and deployment.
- Create and regularly update workflows for efficient content management.
- Clearly define the content approval process involving editors, writers, and final approvers.
Once workflows are established, content deployment can be expedited, allowing the organization to seize timely opportunities related to news and trends. Additionally, implement procedures to prevent issues such as duplicate meta titles and keyword cannibalization.
Resource Drain Due to Micro-Sites
Challenge: Enterprises often accumulate microsites over time, posing a challenge in terms of effective management.
Solution: While microsites offer opportunities for link-building and concentrated information, they can consume substantial resources. Ideally, consolidate these microsites into your main site, ensuring that all stakeholders are involved in the transition process.
Resistance from Development Teams towards SEO Strategies
Challenge: Ensuring the buy-in of development teams for your SEO strategy can be an uphill battle. However, there are several strategies to encourage cooperation and support from IT departments.
Solution: Recognizing the critical role played by development and IT teams in technical SEO, it is imperative to establish effective collaboration. To garner their support, consider the following:
- Cultivate positive relationships with these teams.
- Engage in discussions about your plans and challenges.
- Collaborate on solutions that leverage the expertise of development teams.
Close collaboration with development teams is instrumental in advancing an enterprise’s SEO objectives. Moreover, highlighting shared successes, such as improvements in server scaling and speed optimizations leading to improved rankings and results, can underscore the importance of working together. Acknowledging and praising their contributions in meetings can further strengthen this collaborative effort.
The “It Works” Mindset
Challenge: In a scenario where sales are on the rise and the company is experiencing growth, management often hesitates to modify or augment the marketing budget, citing the belief that the existing strategies are effective. This mindset poses challenges when seeking buy-in from teams.
Solution: To secure support for your strategy and encourage its advancement, a tailored approach is essential. This approach should consist of:
- Demonstrating tangible results.
- Creating visual representations, such as charts and graphs, illustrating the impact of changes on the business.
- Sharing user stories that highlight improvements in their experience.
Teams are more likely to embrace a strategy when they witness its effectiveness in contributing to business growth. Providing evidence of results is important, and in cases where immediate results may not be apparent, projecting how proposed changes will positively impact the enterprise can help garner support.
Lack of Tools for Tracking Effectiveness
Challenge: Enterprises anticipate a return on their investment, and SEO is a crucial investment that requires tracking to demonstrate its effectiveness. Unfortunately, many organizations lack the tools needed to monitor the outcomes of their campaigns.
Solution: Demonstrating tangible results is imperative to satisfy the expectations of managers and owners. If you cannot illustrate how your efforts impact the business, job security may become a concern. Use tools to track:
- The timing of implemented changes
- The business impact of those changes
- Reports detailing campaign effectiveness
Being able to showcase the value of SEO makes it considerably easier to get support for your plans and strategies throughout the entire organization.
Absence of Governance
Challenge: The absence of governance can swiftly lead to disorder for both existing and future SEO teams. If an enterprise lacks governance, the responsibility falls on you to instigate pivotal changes.
Solution: Establishing rules is essential for businesses to uphold the highest standards and quality. Governance may consist of various areas within the enterprise, with detailed rules and procedures for adherence by:
- Content teams
- Publishing teams
- Designers
- Developers
- and other relevant parties
Governance entails policies, standards, and precise processes that must be diligently followed. Implementing proper governance ensures that everyone adheres to established rules. With effective governance in place, it not only facilitates current operations but also ensures that future teams can seamlessly follow the established principles. When executed correctly, governance contributes to the development of a unified digital strategy, supports web accessibility, minimizes errors and bugs, and promotes consistency within the enterprise.
Neglecting Technical SEO Challenges
Challenge: Working with enterprises involves digging into numerous phases of a large corporation, and among them, technical SEO plays a significant role. Although the technical dimensions of SEO may not carry the same allure as other aspects, they are indispensable and demand attention.
Solution: In instances where technical SEO has been overlooked, it is imperative to rectify and focus on:
- Improving site speed.
- Establishing a robust internal link structure.
- Identifying and rectifying crawl errors.
- Addressing any concerns related to duplication.
- Implementing canonical tags.
- Improving server response time.
Often, seemingly minor technical SEO issues go unnoticed and accumulate over time. Addressing these concerns early on facilitates a smoother path toward achieving optimization goals.
Inadequate Redirect Control
Challenge: In an enterprise setting, the management of redirects can swiftly become unwieldy, potentially causing more harm than benefit to an SEO campaign.
Solution: Exerting control over redirects is important, and immediate steps to regain control include:
- Using crawlers to identify all redirects.
- Rectifying broken redirects or loops.
- Establishing a comprehensive redirect database.
- Implementing governance procedures for redirects.
Additionally, it is advisable to designate a final approver for redirects, ensuring a secondary check to mitigate potential issues.
Would you like to read more about “Common Enterprise SEO Challenges and Solutions” related articles? If so, we invite you to take a look at our other tech topics before you leave!
Use our Internet marketing service to help you rank on the first page of SERP.
