Article's Content
Article's Content
Think about a specific component of B2B marketing and sales—lead generation, outreach, email marketing, customer relationship management, and the like. Now think about how you’d approach this process as a startup or SMB and compare it to an enterprise company.
Does it look the same? Probably not.
Well, you can add SEO to that list of processes that changes heavily as a business scales.
Enterprise SEO is an important strategy for large companies and rapidly-growing SMBs that are looking to take over their industry. It helps to ensure that your website is visible in search engine results and attracts potential customers.
According to the experts at BrightEdge, over 53% of all web traffic comes from organic search—meaning that the majority of internet users still rely on search engines like Google to solve their problems.
Enterprise SEO optimizes a large-scale website to improve its visibility, ranking, and traffic in search engine results pages (SERPs). It requires a tailored approach considering the unique challenges and complexities of managing SEO for large enterprises with multiple products, services, and locations.
In this article, we will explore what Enterprise SEO is, its importance in the SaaS industry, and some best practices to help you develop an effective Enterprise SEO strategy for your business.
What is Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is an essential part of the digital marketing playbook for large and rapidly-growing companies. It helps to ensure that your website and content are optimized for search engine visibility, allowing you to reach more potential customers than ever.
Enterprise SEO can help organizations build brand awareness, increase traffic, improve conversions and sales performance, and ultimately boost their bottom line. By utilizing the right tactics and strategies with enterprise-level search engine optimization strategies, tools, and services, businesses can benefit from greater online success in both short-term results and long-term ROI.
Through a comprehensive approach that includes keyword research & analysis, technical optimization & usability assessment, link-building activities, and other relevant tasks, brands will be set up for optimal web presence across all major search engines.
Differences between SEO and Enterprise SEO
As someone interested in SaaS marketing, you’re likely well-aware of search engine optimization—improving the visibility of your website to search engines and web users.
In terms of these fundamentals, enterprise and traditional SEO are similar. However, there are key differences between the two approaches to search engine optimization.
Scale and Complexity
Traditional SEO typically focuses on optimizing a single website or a small set of websites. Enterprise SEO involves optimizing a large-scale website with thousands—even millions—of pages.
Enterprise SEO is more complex than traditional SEO because it involves dealing with multiple products, services, and locations. Where a local business or online retailer may only prioritize the visibility of a few pages in specific geographic regions, an enterprise company needs to capture valuable SERP real estate for audiences around the globe.
Keyword Targeting
Startups and SMBs often target a smaller set of keywords related to core aspects of the business. With lower domain authority, these businesses often need to target low competition, low volume long-tail keywords to build up an online presence.
While this approach is also useful to large companies, enterprise SEO strategies often need to slug it out with competitors over valuable, high-competition, high-demand keywords. This is a time- and resource-intensive process that needs to be completely integrated with other marketing tactics like content creation, link-building, and social media (but more on that later).
Goals, Strategies, and Metrics
Traditional SEO often focuses on improving search position to increase web traffic and brand awareness. The success of this process is usually tracked using metrics like SERP position, impressions, organic traffic, and backlinks.
Enterprise SEO aims to achieve broader business goals such as increasing revenue, expanding market share, and improving customer retention. Tracking the success of these objectives requires a more comprehensive and data-driven strategy considering the organization’s unique needs and challenges. This includes some important metrics such as revenue, conversions, and ROI.
Dedicated SEO Department
Traditional SEO is often managed by the marketing department, a small team, or even an individual. While cost efficient, these small sizes limit the ability of the business to scale SEO efforts effectively.
Enterprise SEO requires a larger team with clearly defined roles and responsibilities and, you guessed it, a larger budget. It also requires collaboration with other departments, such as marketing, IT, and product development.
Cross-Channel Integration
Enterprise SEO must be integrated with other marketing channels such as social media, email marketing, and paid search. This integration helps to ensure a consistent and cohesive message across all channels.
Tools and Technology
Traditional SEO can be managed using various free or low-cost tools, while Enterprise SEO requires more advanced tools and technologies to handle the scale and complexity of the website. This includes enterprise-level SEO platforms, analytics tools, and content management systems.
Why Enterprise SEO Matters
As a key component of the digital marketing strategy for large-scale businesses, enterprise SEO helps improve online visibility, bring in high-value leads, and boost revenue.
Looking again at the research data from BrightEdge, it’s crystal clear that search is still the most dominant channel for enterprise companies: Optimized organic search content brings in more traffic than social, paid ads, and other channels combined.
Image Source: https://videos.brightedge.com/research-report/BrightEdge_ChannelReport2019_FINAL.pdf
Implementing an effective Enterprise SEO strategy can help businesses capture a larger share of this traffic and generate more leads and sales. Moreover, it can help businesses stay competitive in the increasingly crowded digital marketplace.
Companies Winning Through Enterprise SEO
To hammer home the importance of enterprise SEO, let’s take a look at how three tech companies are using it to dominate the search game for their respective industries.
1. Airbnb
Vacation rental behemoth Airbnb uses templated landing pages with the H1 format “vacation rentals in [City]” to help build out its SEO moat.
With the massive amount of tourist destinations searched every day by web users, and the strong brand name and domain authority of Airbnb, this enterprise SEO strategy enables them to quickly scoop up high-intent keywords like “vacations in New York” and “vacations in San Diego.”
2. NerdWallet
NerdWallet is another large tech company applying enterprise SEO tactics to beat out the competition. The personal finance platform separates its content into a series of topic clusters that it can use to capture specific keywords, qualify leads for different products, and, ultimately, increase sales.
As you can see in the graphic below, NerdWallet creates these specific hubs for a range of financial products like credit cards, mortgages, insurance, and small business accounts — terms that also happen to be high-value keywords.
3. WebFlow
WordPress alternative WebFlow has also used enterprise SEO to close the gap on its big-name competitors. The CMS platform used product-led SEO tactics to provide its target audience with high-value, educational content while also capturing hundreds of thousands of keywords.
How to Do Enterprise SEO
Effectively implementing an enterprise SEO strategy takes more than opening a business account with Semrush or ahrefs and hiring a few SEO specialists. Businesses must follow a structured approach that considers the unique challenges and complexities of managing SEO for a large enterprise.
This involves the following:
- Planning for Enterprise SEO.
- Implementing the right SEO tools and technologies.
- Building an effective Enterprise SEO team.
- Managing SEO projects to align with business objectives.
Planning for Enterprise SEO
Planning for Enterprise SEO involves creating a strategic approach to the way your company will analyze, optimize, and monitor a large-scale website.
This in itself is a multi-stage process that begins with conducting a comprehensive audit, defining goals, and developing a strategy.
Conduct A Comprehensive Website Audit
Your website audit should include analyzing the current state of your website, identifying any areas of improvement, and creating a hierarchy of items that your enterprise SEO team will use in their approach.
Some items of particular interest during the website audit include:
- Using a web-crawling tool to identify crawl errors, broken links, and other issues relevant to accessibility and indexing.
- Analyzing the information architecture and structure of web components like URLs, internal links, subfolders, and subdomains.
- Reviewing the length and keyword usage in all meta descriptions, alt-tags, title tags and other on-page SEO elements.
- Evaluating the keywords that your website currently ranks for and identifying potential words to add to or remove from the mix.
- Assessing the quality of your web copy and content, ensuring that you are creating content that is educational, engaging, entertaining, and empowering.
- Conducting a backlink audit to ensure that you are getting external links from high-quality websites.
The audit should also look at the technical aspects of your website, such as page speed and mobile optimization.
Define SEO Goals
Once you have conducted a comprehensive website audit, it is important to define your SEO goals. These goals should be specific and measurable to track progress over time. Additionally, they should be realistic and achievable within a certain timeframe. Once you have defined your goals, you can develop an effective strategy.
According to a study by Search Engine Journal, businesses that set specific SEO goals are 3 times more likely to achieve them than those that don’t. By setting clear and measurable goals, you can focus your SEO efforts and track your progress over time.
Develop An SEO Strategy
After defining your SEO goals, it is time for you to develop an effective strategy to reach them. This strategy should include the concrete steps your enterprise SEO, marketing, and other teams will take to improve organic search performance. Two key strategies for this include content marketing and link-building, but we’ll touch on those more in a later section.
Your enterprise SEO strategy should also include systems and tools for tracking progress. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Search Console are the bare minimum for measuring success over time, but you’ll likely also want to supplement your analytics with 3rd-party tools like Semrush, ahrefs, and Moz.
Build an Effective Enterprise SEO Team
Creating an effective Enterprise SEO team is essential for optimizing your website and achieving long-term success in organic search rankings. To build an effective team, identify the key roles and responsibilities needed to ensure success.
Hire the right people with relevant skills and experience in SEO, digital marketing, and content creation.
Provide ongoing training and resources to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in SEO. Furthermore, foster a culture of collaboration among team members to foster teamwork and innovation.
Finally, set clear goals and KPIs for your team and measure their performance regularly using analytics tools, so you can make data-driven decisions.
Key Components of Enterprise SEO
Enterprise SEO is a strategic approach to optimizing a large-scale website for search engine visibility and traffic. Here are some key components of Enterprise SEO:
Enterprise SEO Tools
Choosing the right SEO tools and technologies is crucial for the success of your Enterprise SEO efforts. Many tools on the market can help you with keyword research, on-page optimization, content marketing, link building, and more. By selecting the right tools, you can streamline your SEO workflow, save time and effort, and achieve better results.
A study reveals that about 64% of SEO professionals are either moderately or highly reliant on advanced SEO platforms. These tools help them to automate tasks, analyze data, and identify opportunities for improvement.
Some of the popular SEO tools and technologies include:
- Google Analytics: It helps you to track website traffic, user behavior, and more.
- SEMrush: This all-in-one SEO tool provides keyword research, on-page optimization, and competitor analysis.
- Ahrefs: This is another all-in-one SEO tool that provides keyword research, backlink analysis, and content marketing features.
- Moz: This suite of SEO tools includes keyword research, on-page optimization, and link-building features.
Choosing the right SEO tool depends on your specific needs and budget. Some tools offer free versions with limited features, while others require a subscription. It’s important to research and compare different options before making a decision.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is another important part of Enterprise SEO. It means creating and sharing high-quality content that will attract visitors to our website. You can create different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics (using free infographic templates), and more.
The key is ensuring that the content is relevant and valuable to the target audience, while still helping you capture valuable SERP real estate and promote your products or services.
Here are a few content marketing strategies you can use to increase the success of your enterprise SEO efforts:
1. Comparison Pages
Companies across industries, from B2B SaaS to 3D cameras, are using comparison pages to gain ground on established competitors. These types of “Product Y vs. Product Z” pages may not be a groundbreaking concept, but they are incredibly influential to leads that you can be sure are close to making a purchase.
Essentially, the “vs.” keywords are seriously valuable online real estate.
2. Learning Centers and Glossaries
Creating an SEO moat with education subfolders is another popular SEO strategy in SaaS and beyond. Enterprise companies like Moz, Mailchimp, Zapier, and Salesforce each use learning centers and glossary pages to scoop up valuable short and long-tail keywords.
These top- and mid-funnel keywords are an important part of a website visitor’s journey from stranger to paying customer. If you’re a growing SMB or enterprise in an industry with lots of technical terminology and jargon, this strategy is for you.
3. Alternative Pages
A particularly useful content marketing tactic for enterprise companies that aren’t category-leading, alternative pages let you capitalize on the brand name and flaws of competitors.
For example, companies like ahrefs use alternative pages to take advantage of the search volume for the branded keywords of competitors like Semrush and Moz. Once site visitors reach the alternative page, the ahrefs team can then focus squarely on the features and benefits that their product has over the competition.
Link Building
Link building is an essential part of any successful enterprise SEO strategy because it helps improve search engine rankings by increasing the number of backlinks pointing to your website from other websites with high domain authority scores.
According to a massive analysis of nearly 12 million SERP results by Backlinko, websites in the top position have 3.8x more backlinks than those ranked 2-10.
Enterprise SEO teams build up a quality backlink portfolio through guest blogging or by creating relationships with influencers in their industry who are willing to link to another (your) site from their websites or social media profiles. Investing in high-quality, industry-leading content is another great way to build up back-links, as other websites use your work as a source in their own material.
What Are Some Best Practices For Enterprise SEO?
Some best practices for enterprise SEO include keyword research, optimizing existing content for search engines, tracking progress using analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Search Console, creating relationships with influencers in your industry who are willing to link back to your site from their own websites or social media profiles, and providing users with helpful information about topics related to their queries on search engines.
Mobile Optimization: Importance and Strategies
Mobile optimization is an important part of enterprise SEO as it helps to ensure that your website is primed to capture web users who increasingly use mobile devices to navigate the web.
Since the 2016 introduction of Google’s mobile-first update, the search engine’s algorithm has placed increasing importance on the mobile experience of a web page. This includes ensuring that the website loads quickly, that all images are compressed, and that all buttons are large enough for users to click on them easily.
To optimize your website for mobile users, you should also use responsive design techniques so that the website looks great no matter what device it’s being viewed on.
Accelerated Mobile Page technology (AMP), which helps pages load faster on mobile devices, can also help you cut down the load time, so your customers don’t move on before your page is interactive.
Implementing Structured Data for Enhanced Search Results
Structured data is a code that provides search engines with additional information about the content on a website, making it easier for search engines to understand the context and relevance of the content.
Structured data can help enhance search results by providing rich snippets, knowledge graphs, and other Google SERP features that make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. For example, a restaurant website can use structured data to provide information such as the menu, reviews, and reservation options, which can appear directly in search results. Utilizing structured data can significantly improve restaurant SEO by making it easier for diners to discover important information.
Google’s Search Center gives a great introduction to the concept of structured data, including how a simple SERP result like an image clip has a much different appearance to the search engine that reads it.
Optimizing for Voice Search
If you’ve ever used Siri, Alexa, or a Google Home, then you’ve used voice search. It’s an increasingly important technology that’s impacting how people conduct web searches—which means it’s important to businesses of all sizes.
To optimize for voice search, enterprise companies must focus on natural language, long-tail keywords, and featured snippets. This means using conversational language in website content and targeting longer, more specific keyword phrases that match how people speak.
Another way businesses can optimize for featured snippets is by providing concise, high-quality answers to commonly asked questions.
Kickstart Your Enterprise SEO Strategy Today
Optimizing large-scale websites for search engine visibility and traffic is essential, and Enterprise SEO is the key to achieving this goal. It matters because it helps businesses improve search engine rankings, generate leads, and achieve business objectives.
For effective implementation, businesses must conduct a comprehensive website audit, define clear SEO goals, develop a tailored strategy, focus on key components, choose the right SEO tools and technologies, build an effective team, and measure success regularly.
By implementing an enterprise SEO strategy, businesses can streamline their SEO workflow, save time and effort, and gain a competitive edge in the digital landscape by capturing valuable SERP real estate.
To learn more about how the top tech brands are using SEO and other marketing strategies to challenge and surpass their competitors, check out the detailed case studies available through our Insider and Inner Circle memberships.
