SEO for Enterprise: A comprehensive guide for marketers working in large corporations

SEO for Enterprise is a challenging exercise. It requires skills that go beyond traditional SEO and is about satisfying multiple internal stakeholders. 

On one hand, if done correctly, enterprise SEO improves online brand perception and makes the website outshine your competitors in the competing category. On the other hand, failure can have a significant, negative impact on revenue and brand reputation. 

Hence, the stakes are higher and there are more potential issues. In this blog, we will cover all you need to know about SEO for enterprise businesses. So keep on reading and learn what enterprise SEO is, the tools that can help you boost your SEO efforts, and how to set up an enterprise SEO strategy.  

What is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is all about implementing search engine optimization strategies on a large scale for big businesses, so-called enterprise businesses. The aim is to enhance the overall organic visibility of a website that often consists of thousands or even millions of pages.

The term and meaning of Enterprise Businesses

Although no clear consensus exists, on a basic level, when speaking of enterprise businesses one refers to a large organization that operates in various locations and offers a big variety of products and services. 

Usually, these enterprise businesses have a complex and intertwined organizational structure which makes their management a challenging task.  

The same goes for their website, which oftentimes consists of a vast amount of pages and poses challenges to those who are managing it. As a consequence, the website of an enterprise business has a large impact on the organization’s essence and profit. 

Here are some examples of sites that qualify for enterprise businesses and might require enterprise-level SEO:

• Walmart

• Apple

• Coca-Cola

Taking a closer look at Apple, they have approximately 135.000.000 sites indexed. 

Trying to manage these sites with a traditional SEO approach won’t result in the same output as on normal sites. Hence, a certain level of expertise and experience is required to succeed with enterprise sites in terms of SEO.

The Difference between Enterprise SEO and Traditional SEO

Due to the complexity of the enterprises’ websites, there are some major differences between enterprise SEO and traditional SEO. Navigating through the vast sea of enterprise SEO requires more strategy, planning, and diligence than traditional SEO.  

Scale

One of the most striking differences between traditional and enterprise SEO is scale. Doing some simple on-page optimization tasks can suddenly become complex and difficult to fix on an enterprise site. 

Consider for example internal link building, which is a common and valid SEO strategy. Setting a few internal but relevant links on a smaller site can have a significant effect on your rankings. However, it will most likely not have a noticeable impact on an enterprise site like Greenpeace. 

For internal linking on a site like this, you have to scale up. Big time. 

Not only does it require more planning and strategic considerations you may also want to use scripts that automatically add internal links to important pages. 

Numerous Sites

Frequently enterprise SEOs have to manage different properties while at the same time keeping some sort of congruence. 

Hence, a comprehensive strategy for SEO is essential to avoid issues like duplicate content, competition between pages targeting the same keywords, and lack of cohesion in the overall content.

To sum up, for regular SEO tactics to be successful in enterprise content, one has to think on a larger scope. Having defined the playing field we can now move on to the best tools used in large SEO strategies. 

These are the Best Enterprise SEO Tools

By using enterprise SEO tools, the efficiency and productivity of SEO teams in large organizations can be improved. 

Among other things, SEO tools can help your team scale tasks by automating and streamlining SEO exercises such as keyword research, content optimization, and link building. 

In addition, they support data-driven decision-making by providing a vast amount of data and analytics. These insights can assist make informed decisions and steer the ship of enterprise SEO toward higher search rankings. 

Next, SEO tools can monitor your competitor's performance, giving you a better understanding of the marketplace and helping you to stay ahead of the competition. 

Lastly, enterprise SEO applications can help identify technical issues, which might be very complex on an enterprise level. 

Here are some tools that we frequently use in our work with enterprise businesses:

• Ahrefs – for keyword research, technical analysis and, backlink analysis

• Screaming Frog – for website crawling and identification of technical issues

• Searchmetrics – for competitor analysis and keyword rank tracking

Create a Unique Enterprise SEO Strategy 

The vastness and interconnectedness of large companies' websites, which often include multiple languages, target markets, and business units or brands, can pose a challenge in defining and prioritizing an enterprise SEO strategy. 

Hence, integrating SEO at every level of the corporation is at the core of Enterprise SEO and having a kick-ass SEO strategy in place is inevitable. Follow these 6 veins to succeed: 

Strategic Keyword Research and Selection

With a large amount of content being on an enterprise site, keyword selection might become increasingly challenging. Thus, having a dedicated SEO team who performs keyword research on a regular basis is crucial to your success. Potential areas to write about can be identified by doing a content gap analysis. 

An approach that never gets old is focusing on keywords that rank within arms-length (positions 11 to 20). These are also referred to as low-hanging fruit and can usually be harvested early. Another exciting thing about SEO for enterprise businesses is that, due to their size, you often can target competitive keywords. 

Generate a Large Volume of High-quality Content

The content on your site should be high-quality, relevant, and valuable to your target audience. This includes creating and optimizing product pages, blog posts, and other content to target specific keywords and phrases.

Having identified relevant keywords and long-tail versions, you can then expand on your already existing content with the purpose that it better meets the search intent of the user. This makes your content more relevant and useful for readers. 

Moreover, if you want to be successful and get the top rankings in the SERP, it is key that you never stop creating and developing high-quality content. In doing so, we should stop seeing content as only text. 

Take a look at the excerpt from google:

Today, content can come in many different forms such as images, video and text. An additional valuable tactic is to optimize your content for the answer box or people also ask sections.

Consider what might be helpful to your users and implement it on your site. You can read more on how to optimize visual content for SEO in our guide. 

Unique Link Building Opportunities for Enterprise Businesses

Use the power of internal link building by setting up clear pillars and clusters for your content and linking among related pages. Internal linking opportunities can be found by the enterprise SEO team during the keyword research process or content production. In the second case, the SEO consultant can advise the writer to link to the pillar and any other relevant content. 

Having the benefit of high brand authority and recognizability, you are provided with unique backlink opportunities as an enterprise business. 

Consider the example of the link-building strategy called Brand mentions. Here, the goal is to reach out to people that have mentioned your brand without linking and ask if they could add a link. 

When a person has already referenced your brand, the likelihood of them including a link increases as they have a reason for mentioning your brand in the first place. Therefore, it's relatively easy to ask them to add a link.

For a large enterprise, there are countless unlinked mentions every month, which all provide potential backlinks. 

This is nothing new in the SEO landscape, but the more other pages link to your site, the higher your organic traffic from Google is. 

Local SEO for Enterprise Websites

For enterprise companies with multiple locations, it is important to optimize for local search. Also, Google has been putting great emphasis on searches based on local results. 

This typically involves a large challenge for enterprise companies that usually target a large audience. 

For enterprise businesses, this involves creating and optimizing local business listings and using location-specific keywords on their site. Some more concrete examples might be: 

• Establishing authoritative pages for each location

• Include addresses and phone numbers on content pages

• Specific content with customer reviews, location-specific products or services, hours of operation (if applicable) and events happening at the location

• Images of location including alt text descriptions

In addition to the above-mentioned points it is important to prioritize off-site activities too. After all, focusing on ranking for local SEO can be an extremely successful strategy for an enterprise company and drive a lot of revenue their way.

Don’t forget about Technical SEO

Technical SEO involves optimizing your website's technical infrastructure to ensure that search engines can easily crawl, index, and understand your content. This includes ensuring that your site is mobile-friendly, that it loads quickly, and that it is free of errors or broken links.

Measuring and Tracking your Enterprise SEO Efforts

Before implementing an enterprise SEO strategy it is vital to identify some KPIs you want to use for evaluating whether your project is a success. 

Measuring and tracking the effectiveness of your enterprise SEO efforts is crucial to understand how your efforts are impacting your business. Frequently used parameters involve the tracking of organic traffic, conversions, and revenue, as well as monitoring your search engine rankings, backlinks, and other key indicators of SEO performance.

Why Enterprise SEO Matters

Enterprise SEO matters because it can have a significant impact on a company's bottom line. It helps to increase the visibility of a company's website in search engine results, which can lead to more traffic and more potential customers. The rise in visibility can also lead to increased brand awareness and credibility, which can help to build trust with customers.

In addition, enterprise SEO can help to improve the user experience on a website by making it easier for people to find the information they need and navigate through the site. This can lead to higher engagement and conversions.

Furthermore, SEO on a larger scale can help to drive qualified leads to a company's website. By optimizing for relevant keywords and phrases, and hence meeting the users search intent, a company can attract visitors who are actively searching for products or services that the company offers. This can lead to higher conversion rates and ultimately, more revenue.

Overall, enterprise SEO can play a vital role in driving business growth, and it is therefore an essential aspect of any digital marketing strategy.

Join forces with an Enterprise SEO Agency

Having an agency that can support you with your enterprise SEO can be highly beneficial. An agency specializing in SEO can provide extra knowledge and expertise and back you up when other teams within your organization challenge your advice.

Having worked on multiple enterprise SEO cases we would love to team up with you and your enterprise. At Bonzer we can help you to identify an SEO strategy and execute or consult you along the way. Get a free SEO audit of your website.