Enterprise SEO: Everything You Need to Know (2024)

SEO. While this is a strategy we've been aware of for a while, did you know that 89% of marketers say SEO is successful?

Enterprise SEO: Everything You Need to Know (1)

And since more than 50 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search and 93 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine, it's not surprising.

However, what do upmarket companies, with thousands of web pages and keywords, do when they're in the maturation phase of implementing SEO?

Instead of focusing on the small business and mid-market SEO strategies, they'll need to begin focusing on enterprise SEO.

In this post, let's review what enterprise SEO is, what tools to use, and what it looks like in practice.

What is enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is the process of focusing on SEO strategies that will improve organic presence and revenue for larger organizations (usually defined by the number of pages on the site, not necessarily the number of employees). These strategies need to be scalable and strategic so an enterprise company can maintain its rankings on search engines.

What makes enterprise SEO different?

The main difference between small business/mid-market SEO and enterprise SEO strategies is that the tactics for larger organizations need to be scalable for thousands of web pages.

While a small business or mid-market company might have a few pages, or a couple hundred, larger organizations have thousands of web pages on their site. And it makes sense that the strategies that work for a small number of pages might not necessarily work for larger sites.

Why is enterprise SEO important?

Enterprise SEO is important because strategies that work for smaller businesses won't work for larger ones.

One of the main strategic differences between the two is that small businesses usually aren't targeting highly competitive, short tail keywords, while larger enterprise organizations are.

Additionally, larger companies need a specialized enterprise SEO team to keep track and maintain organic rankings. At smaller companies, the person in charge of SEO is usually also the content marketer and might even be in charge of social media.

When you're targeting more competitive keywords, and have thousands of pages on your site, you need a dedicated team working on your SEO, instead of one jack-of-all-trades that's spread too thin. Lots of companies opt to use automated SEO tools like SE Ranking, which can reduce bandwidth by generating regular SEO reports, tracking a vast number of keywords across multiple locations, building a robust backlink profile, and ensuring that your website is free from any technical or crawling errors.

If you've worked at companies and felt like SEO just wasn't working for you, it's probably because you didn't have a dedicated team with experts when your company needed it.

Enterprise SEO will benefit large organizations because their SEO issues will be more complex due to the number of web pages on the site, the number of backlinks already acquired, domain authority already acquired, etc.

As a larger site, enterprise companies usually have great brand authority. But that means you can't undermine that authority by deleting or redirecting pages that have acquired backlinks and high page authority. You also need to keep this content up to date and fresh. And as you can imagine, the larger the company, the harder that is.

Ultimately, enterprise SEO needs to be smarter, scalable, and more sophisticated.

Now that we know why enterprise SEO is important, let's discuss some of the more sophisticated strategies you'll need to implement as a larger company.

How to Do Enterprise SEO: Top 10 Enterprise SEO Tips

  1. Maintain page speed.
  2. Group content in subdomains.
  3. Refresh old content, but protect domain authority and backlinks.
  4. Quality content creation at scale.
  5. Strategic keyword selection.
  6. Automation.
  7. Don't forget about technical SEO.
  8. Link Building.
  9. Internal pillar/cluster content linking.
  10. Create templates for your pages.

1. Maintain page speed.

One of the technical SEO elements that becomes more complex with larger sites is maintaining page speed.

First, you'll need to test your website speed with a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to see how quickly your website loads for users.

Then, to improve the page speed of individual pages you can compress images, reduce redirects, and cache your web pages.

2. Group content in subdomains.

Another strategy for enterprise SEO is to group your content into subdomains.

A subdomain is a type of website hierarchy under a root directory, but instead of using folders to organize content on a website, it kind of gets a website of its own.

This subdomain is still closely associated with the root directory, but it will usually have a separate content management system, template, analytics tools, and more.

See the image below to get an idea:

Enterprise SEO: Everything You Need to Know (3)

This is helpful for enterprise SEO because subdomains can house a lot of content that would be difficult to manage all on one website.

While some SEO experts believe that Google's crawlers could confuse a subdomain for an entirely different website from the main domain, others say its crawlers can recognize subdomains as extensions of parent domains.

Essentially, subdomains lead to a better user experience, which could result in better engagement rates, therefore improving your SEO. Ultimately, you'll have to decide what works best for your company and have your enterprise SEO team discuss what would be best.

3. Refresh old content, but protect domain authority and backlinks.

One of the challenges for enterprise SEO teams is keeping content up to date, accurate, and refreshed for current industry standards.

However, you don't want to delete old content that has high page authority and backlinks. Instead, you'll want to refresh your content, while balancing the line of adding new information, without taking away secondary keywords that content is ranking for.

With an enterprise company, refreshing content is a delicate process. But it also needs to be scalable for your SEO team to find out which pages need to be updated and what would make them more competitive. The entire point of enterprise SEO is to have a process that's scalable.

4. Quality content creation at scale.

Of course with SEO, quality content creation is one of the most important components of your site.

Again, on an enterprise level, this needs to be scalable for your SEO team to find new keywords to rank for and handoff to a content creation team.

Usually, your enterprise SEO team will choose target keywords and give writers guidelines on how to make the post competitive, whether that's including secondary keywords, tips on image alt-text, including snippets, etc.

To implement enterprise SEO, you'll need a team that is dedicated to creating content instructions and doing keyword research at scale.

5. Strategic keyword selection.

As we've been talking about, keyword selection becomes more difficult the more you've written about a topic. Sometimes it can feel like you've said everything there is to say.

That's why you need a dedicated enterprise SEO team to conduct regular keyword research and content gap analysis to find new topics to write about.

6. Automation.

So we've talked a lot about doing things "at scale." But how can you do that? One of the best ways for an enterprise SEO team to scale its processes is to use automation.

Automation can help with SEO tasks like keyword research, identifying problematic areas on your site, monitoring the quality of backlinks, analyzing title tags and meta descriptions, and more.

Additionally, you can use workflows to simplify project management. With larger organizations, you might have several locations with distinct websites and SEO needs. This means that your SEO teams should be using the same workflows so the process is scalable.

7. Don't forget about technical SEO.

Besides page speed, there are more technical SEO elements that your enterprise SEO team will need to manage.

This means that your SEO team will need a scalable process for using 301 redirects, eliminating technical issues that hamper crawlability, etc.

8. Link building.

Again, one of the most important elements of SEO is link building. On an enterprise level, this becomes more complex (as does everything, I suppose).

The more backlinks a page has, the more organic traffic it gets from Google. You can use outreach strategies to find unlinked mentions and request to turn the mention into a backlink.

Additionally, you can always do cold outreach as well if you find articles where your site naturally fits. As a larger company, you'll have the benefit of already having brand authority and recognizability.

9. Internal pillar/cluster content linking.

Another SEO task that will need to be done at scale is internal pillar and cluster content linking. Your enterprise SEO team could either find these internal links for your content creators during the keyword research process or could advise your writers to link to the pillar and any necessary internal content.

10. Create templates for your pages.

When creating new pages for your site, SEO plays a large role. That's why your team can create templates that your developers can replicate over and over again in line with enterprise SEO needs.

So, now you might be wondering, "What does this look like in action?" Let's look at some examples below.

Enterprise SEO Examples

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is a great example of enterprise SEO because while we might not have the same amount of employees as other big tech companies, we have over 35,000 pages on our site.

Additionally, our site ranks on the first page of several hundred thousand keywords, and in position 1 for over 30,000 keywords.

Because of the number of pages and keywords we target, this means that we need a highly specialized, dedicated enterprise SEO team to focus on backlinks, comarketing, technical SEO, and to protect our domain authority.

With enterprise SEO, we need to be careful about updating keywords on content that has high domain authority while keeping our content fresh and updated.

2. GitHub

GitHub has an estimated 81 million pages on its site. And the impressive part is that it ranks in position 1 on Google for over 80,000 keywords.

This means that the company is able to manage its site in bulk and focus on maintaining old pages, while still earning links to reinforce its organic rankings for hundreds of thousands of keywords.

3. Microsoft

Enterprise company Microsoft has more than 8 million pages on its site. With several varying products, it's no surprise that the company ranks on the first page for over 1 million keywords. Additionally, it ranks in the number 1 position for over 450,000 keywords.

A major difficulty with Microsoft's enterprise SEO is that the team is targeting very different types of keywords because of the variety of products. And they need to protect their domain authority across several industries from business tools to video gaming consoles.

The Future of Enterprise SEO

For large organizations, enterprise SEO is the future. To protect current domain authority and backlinks, while keeping content fresh and updated on thousands of pages, you'll need a dedicated, sophisticated team of experts.

This means an enterprise SEO team will focus on strategizing how to enhance content, working on comarketing, attaining backlinks and protecting those backlinks, and more. The more pages your site has, the harder and more complex it becomes to maintain your SEO.

Topics: SEO

Enterprise SEO: Everything You Need to Know (2024)

FAQs

Enterprise SEO: Everything You Need to Know? ›

Enterprise SEO is the art of optimizing large websites with hundreds to millions of pages to rank higher on search engines like Google. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on smaller websites, enterprise SEO requires a more complex and strategic approach to address the scale and scope of large enterprise sites.

What is enterprise SEO strategy? ›

Enterprise SEO is the practice of improving search engine rankings for a large, enterprise company. Common enterprise-level SEO approaches include scaling content, ongoing technical SEO management, and automation.

Is Enterprise SEO necessary? ›

Enterprise SEO is important because strategies that work for smaller businesses won't work for larger ones. One of the main strategic differences between the two is that small businesses usually aren't targeting highly competitive, short tail keywords, while larger enterprise organizations are.

What are the 4 important stages in SEO? ›

What Are the Stages of Search Engine Optimization? There are 4 stages of SEO: keyword research, readability check, linking, and marketing. While each is important on its own, you'll see the best results by ensuring the stages are supporting one another. Let's take a closer look at each of these.

What 4 pillars are important in SEO? ›

The four pillars of SEO are: On-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and content.

What are the top 5 SEO strategies? ›

Try our new free SEO checker at SEO.com
  • Maintain a Fast, Mobile-friendly Website.
  • Target Long-tail Keywords.
  • Optimize Local Listings.
  • Create Helpful Content (and Optimize It for SEO)
  • Re-optimize Past Content.
  • And Remember — Measure Your ROI.
  • Help Your Business Improve Its Leads, Sales, and Revenue with SEO.

What is the difference between enterprise SEO and traditional SEO? ›

Enterprise SEO focuses on larger websites with multiple levels of content, often owned by large organizations like international corporations or universities. Traditional SEO involves optimizing individual web pages for maximum visibility, usually within smaller companies or personal projects.

What is the difference between enterprise SEO and local SEO? ›

Difference in Importance

If your business does not have any website, local SEO helps your business to grow and drives more traffic online through leads. While enterprise SEO is a strategic, large-scale approach to search engine optimization.

Do I need SEO on every page? ›

For the uninitiated, SEO (search engine optimization) is a set of best practices that helps to improve a website's rankings in Google search results. Now, if your business website has multiple web pages (i.e. one for each product or service you offer), it is critical to optimise every web page on your site.

When should you not use SEO? ›

When your business doesn't need SEO
  1. You require fast results. ...
  2. You operate on a tight budget or limited resources. ...
  3. You face low demand for your product or service. ...
  4. You are not concerned about outranking your competitors. ...
  5. Your target market does not use search engines.
Sep 11, 2023

What are the 3 C's of SEO? ›

Simply put, the fundamentals of SEO can be boiled down to The 3 Cs: content, code and credibility.

What are the 4 P's of SEO? ›

It is essential to apply the 4 P's “product,” “price,” “place” and “promotion” in the SEO strategy to improve online visibility and attract targeted traffic. In this way, the offer not only matches the target audience, but the content is also optimally displayed in search engine results.

How much does SEO cost per month? ›

How much does SEO cost? While many businesses pay between $1,500 to $5,000 per month for SEO, you could pay as little as $100 per month or upwards of $30,000, depending on several factors. SEO service pricing can vary largely depending on the size of your business, the scope of your project, and your SEO provider.

How to create a SEO strategy? ›

To develop an effective SEO strategy, we need three distinct steps:
  1. Step 1: SEO research – Keywords, competitors, currently ranking content.
  2. Step 2: SEO strategy – How to do something different or unique to stand out.
  3. Step 3: SEO planning – The execution plan to deliver your strategy.
Feb 19, 2024

Is off-page SEO important? ›

On-page SEO is essential for a website, but off-page SEO is also important when it comes to ranking high on Google and getting your brand the right leads and exposure. With enough relevant backlinks, a site can rank much higher on search results than it can without them. But off-page SEO goes beyond backlinks.

What are SEO strategies? ›

An SEO strategy is a plan to create, optimize, and promote content to improve its visibility in search engine results, attracting more organic traffic to a website. It involves a variety of techniques, such as keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and link building.

What are the 3 important components in SEO strategy? ›

3 Key Components of a Successful SEO Strategy
  • On-Site Optimisation. Think of on-site or on-page optimisation as the content structure and layout of your website. ...
  • Off-Site Optimisation. Off-site SEO refers to the external factors that affect the search engine ranking of a website. ...
  • Quality Content:
Jun 6, 2024

What does the SEO strategy stand for? ›

SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” but to fully answer your question, the simple meaning of SEO in marketing your business is the process of improving your website so that search engines like Google are more likely to show your business in users' search results.

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