Enterprise SEO finally gets the attention it deserves.

The world's largest companies remained largely in the Mad-Men era traditional ad campaigns for a long time. This was possible because of their established brand presences.

But for a time.

It's clear that every brand, no matter its size, must embrace content marketing, and more specifically, an enterprise-level SEO strategy. Google and other search engines have completely democratized brand visibility. It is impossible for large brands to compete with smaller players in the industry who have higher brand recognition and budgets.

These smaller, entrepreneurial businesses are often more successful than larger, established companies. These smaller, more entrepreneurial companies are often better at SEO than large corporations. If your company is large, it's often more difficult to coordinate and faster. Without a concentrated effort, it's easy for your company to fall behind.

This post will discuss why large businesses need to implement a strong enterprise search engine optimization strategy, and the 10 steps they can take.

Quick Take-Aways

• Enterprise SEO is an essential part of managing large-scale content production.

• Two key steps to strong enterprise SEO are content planning and internal best practices.

• The best SEO results are achieved by consistently publishing high-quality content.

• Large companies can use link building and striking distant keywords to improve their enterprise SEO.

• Strong website performance is possible by paying attention to site structure, technical issues, duplicate content, and thin or weak content.

• Regular reporting on key KPI metrics is a great way to build support for enterprise SEO within your organization.

What is enterprise SEO? Why is it so important?

Enterprise SEO refers to the implementation of large-scale, comprehensive strategies for increasing organic search visibility of enterprise-level websites. An enterprise SEO strategy is a broad-based strategy that requires leadership and organizational commitment. It also needs to align with the larger business goals.

It's not a small task, in other words.

It is crucial to the success of large businesses, even those with a substantial market share, because consumer behavior is changing and so are norms about how businesses communicate with customers.

Search engines and the internet have made it much easier for brands to be found online. A company can be no matter how well-respected it may be among its competitors, but without an enterprise SEO strategy, it risks being outranked by smaller, more innovative companies in search engine results pages.

High-quality, consistent content is the heart of any SEO strategy. No enterprise SEO strategy can succeed without strong content. Our 10-step guide to enterprise SEO focuses on great content and then key follow up strategies to keep things fresh, avoid common mistakes, maximize performance, and minimize risk.

Here are 10 steps to make your enterprise SEO strategy a success

Make a content strategy

Enterprise SEO is an important part of any enterprise content strategy. To maximize your SEO opportunities, a good content strategy must include a content plan. This is why we recommend it as the first step.

Although large enterprises might have the resources of smaller companies, they face unique challenges due to their size. Large enterprises face greater challenges when it comes content marketing because they lack the ability to coordinate, be consistent, and act quickly.

Content Marketing Institute recently conducted research that found 74% of enterprise marketers said it was difficult to coordinate efforts across departments and 60% claimed their organizations have too many silos within each department.

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These issues may not be easily resolved, but it is possible to minimize them by taking the time to develop a solid content plan before you implement any tactics. The internal content planning team should be cross-functional, and have representation from all areas of the company.

Your marketing team should lead the creation of your execution strategies and timeline. However, having a wider range of people involved in the planning phases will not only give you more ideas, but it also creates more buy-in from the entire organization. As you continue to optimize your website and keep your messaging consistent, this buy-in is crucial.

Use best practices in internal SEO

Many people within any company won't be experts in SEO. However, their job responsibilities include website updates, social media, copywriting, and video production. All of these will impact your website's SEO performance.

Every enterprise SEO strategy must prioritize best practices in internal SEO. There are many ways to do this:

• All website owners and updaters should be trained in SEO

• Create an SEO guide that is always available

• Before publication, establish clear processes to ensure content quality control

• Report regularly on the content's performance

Content, content and more content

When it comes to enterprise SEO, there is no way to have too much content. Your brand will be more visible if you create high-quality content.

There are many content types you can create, and you have the option to incorporate them into your overall strategy. You can create content that contributes to your enterprise's SEO performance, including videos, websites, blogs, infographics, podcasts, social media posts and infographics.

Content Marketing Institute reported that enterprise marketers used 10 types of content over the past twelve months. Blog posts (89%) were the most popular, followed by pre-produced videos (81%).

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Remember: SEO rankings don't emerge overnight. SEO is a long-term process that requires persistence and commitment. You'll make an impact if you produce lots of content and post it frequently.

Prioritize link building

Link building is still a key factor in Google rankings for businesses of all sizes. Link building is a greater opportunity for enterprise-level companies because they have more websites and are generally better known brands. This makes it easier to get other companies linking back to your content.

The easiest way to build internal links is one that can be used as part of enterprise SEO. Look for opportunities to link within your website and blog content. Your most valuable and highest-performing content should be linked often to other areas of your website.

Consistent and valuable content is key to gaining external links. This is especially true for businesses with a strong brand presence. You can also guest blog or partner with industry influencers to increase your external links.

Strive for keywords that are within striking distance

It's even easier than starting over to rank new keywords. You can look at the keywords you rank for only from the first SERP. (which, let’s be real, is almost as bad a not ranking at all). These keywords are sometimes called striking distance keywords. They're the low hanging fruits of enterprise SEO.

You can easily identify them with keyword research tools such as SEMRush. Here's how:

Due to the size and presence of their brands, enterprises are likely to rank for thousands of keywords. It is important to keep your eyes on the keywords with the greatest potential, which are usually those on page two or three. These may require small tweaks and updates to increase their rankings.

Your keywords should be mapped

Keyword mapping can be used to make sure your pages rank for the correct keywords based upon user intent.

If a customer asks a general question but is directed to pages about specific products, the user experience suffers. To find the information they are looking for, they will have to search your website.

Keyword mapping is, basically, the act of intentionally grouping keywords according to theme or user intent, and aligning them with the appropriate pages on your site so that your ranked content has a high potential to convert leads.

Conduct regular content audits

Enterprise SEO, like any other component of your content strategy, is not a one-and done deal. Regular content audits can help you identify which content is performing well, spot potential improvement opportunities, and spot issues early.

Because SEO tactics and ranking factors change, content audits are important. Audits can help you maintain your content and make sure that your content is not lost in search engines.

Because of the amount of content enterprises publish, this practice is even more important. If a broken link is found internally, it can have serious consequences for your website's performance. It is better to take control of your audits than play catch-up after content performance has suffered.

Optimize your website structure

Rankings are largely determined by the indexing of all pages on websites. Google and other search engines crawl the web constantly and index sites to improve SERP accuracy.

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Search engines generally do not index web pages if the site structure or technical problems are poor.

Your enterprise's IT and web development teams should be onboard with your SEO strategy. They should also work closely with you. Monitoring your website regularly for potential problems, similar to content audits, is a good way to reduce risk and to identify potential issues early to prevent performance issues.

It is possible to integrate it into your existing processes through a partnership between web and IT teams. This will help you understand SEO better and how important it is for your organization.

Reduce duplicate content and remove thin content

Duplicate or thin content is more common on larger websites. Duplicate content can be described as the same content appearing in different places on your website. A thin page is one that has very little content, or doesn't offer high value to your visitors.

This content is inaccurate. However, it confuses search engines about the most important content. You can ensure that your SERPs users will find valuable content by removing unnecessary content.

Measuring goal-driven KPIs

KPI measurement should be a regular part your strategy. This is crucial for a number of reasons. It tells you if your strategy is effective. Your enterprise SEO strategy will be useless if you don't measure results. Regular reporting of key metrics improves accountability and allows you to make adjustments as necessary to optimize your content.

It also shows executives and other employees how SEO can impact website performance and content. This helps to build buy-in within the company and increases the effectiveness of your strategy over the long-term.

Great content can boost your enterprise's SEO strategy

Marketing Insider Group's team of SEO and writers can provide you with optimized content that is ready to publish every week for a whole year. Our Content Builder Services include a comprehensive content audit and a customized editorial plan.

Call us today to set up a consultation and find out how we can help jumpstart your content strategy.