Enterprise SEO Guide: Strategies for Large-Scale Success

I’ve got a question for you. Does your business or agency have an effective enterprise SEO strategy in place?

Naturally, this won’t fit every business, but if you’re a large-scale, complex organization with significant resources and capital, a comprehensive plan can help you: 

• Identify and target the right keywords
• Improve website performance for both users and search engines
• Build high-quality backlinks
• Monitor and measure success

This strategic approach is especially important for larger companies with tons of web pages as it enables greater visibility. This strategy is also great for agencies that are looking to do SEO consulting for enterprise companies.

In this piece, I discuss some of the steps you need to make an enterprise SEO strategy work for your business or agency. 

Key Takeaways

• Enterprise SEO requires scalable strategies and seamless integration across large, complex websites to ensure consistent optimization and performance.
• Leveraging advanced analytics and data insights is crucial for enterprise SEO to identify trends, monitor performance, and inform strategic adjustments.
• An effective enterprise SEO strategy needs collaboration between various departments, including marketing, IT, and content teams, to align goals and streamline implementation.
• Technical SEO, including site architecture, load times, and mobile optimization, is fundamental in ensuring search engine accessibility and improving user experience on a large scale.
• A robust content strategy focused on high-quality, relevant, and authoritative content is essential for driving organic traffic and maintaining a competitive edge in enterprise SEO.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is Enterprise SEO?
• What Makes Enterprise SEO Different From Traditional Strategies?
• Best Practices for Enterprise SEO
  • 1. SEO Content Creation for Enterprise Companies
  • 2. Link Building for Enterprise Companies
  • 3. Technical SEO for Enterprise Companies
• How Agencies and Professionals Can Scale Up Their Enterprise SEO Strategy
  • 1. Understand the business inside and out
  • 2. Keep up with the latest trends & best practices
  • 3. Create customized solutions
  • 4. Get specialists on board
  • 5. Invest in tools
  • 7. Assess your experience levels
  • 9. Establish Clear Communication Channels
  • 10. Regularly Monitor and Report Performance
• Tools and Services To Support Enterprise SEO Strategies
  • Moz Pro
  • Ahrefs
  • Google Analytics
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is a specialized approach to search engine optimization often used by large businesses with hundreds or even millions of pages. Agencies can also provide SEO consulting for enterprises to help their largest clients rank online. 

The idea is to improve SEO, get more organic traffic, and ramp up conversions and profits.

Take Hubspot, for example. The site has over 100,000 pages and ranks for 3.5 million keywords. 

Some techniques are the same as regular SEO: creating a content strategy, researching keywords, and optimizing content. However, the approach needs to be scalable, and sometimes, some brands and agencies may use different methods, like subdomains.

What Makes Enterprise SEO Different From Traditional Strategies?

An enterprise-level SEO strategy differs from traditional SEO because the techniques you use for small-scale SEO won’t always work for websites with hundreds of pages.

For example, you wouldn’t want to use the same SEO strategy for a small, local business selling software as you would for a huge corporation like Adobe, which can get millions of organic visitors for one product.

Other factors to consider for Enterprise-level campaigns: 

• Ensuring content is maintained and stays up to date 
• Using automation tools that provide more advanced features, scalability, and customization options. 
• Completing competitive analyses that involve more thorough evaluations of direct and indirect competitors, including strategies, strengths, weaknesses, and their market positioning.
• Completing regular SEO audits using a specialized team with the tools and expertise to handle the scale and complexity of a large website, focusing on technical analysis, content evaluations, and marketplace alignment compared with simpler audits for smaller companies. 
• Using high-competition and high-value search phrases
• Enterprise SEO strategies also require a specialist or dedicated team with the knowledge to track and understand analytics to measure SEO performance and adjust strategies accordingly.

Other differences with enterprise SEO include:

• It’s more complex: Enterprise business websites are more complicated than small business websites. This means more pages to optimize, additional website functionality, myriad data to analyze, and plenty of content to refresh.
• It takes longer to see results: Because enterprise websites are typically much larger and more complex, it can take longer to see results from an enterprise SEO strategy. As a result, it can sometimes take months or even years to see significant results from enterprise SEO.
• It needs a more strategic approach: Enterprise SEO demands a more strategic approach to keyword research, website architecture, on-page SEO, and content development due to the scale of such projects, technical SEO and related tech issues, and content volume.

Best Practices for Enterprise SEO

Successful SEO for enterprise companies begins with a clear and concise strategy. It needs to meet your business’s or agency’s unique needs, and you’ll have to review it regularly and update it, if needed.

Follow these best practices to get the most out of your enterprise SEO strategy.

1. SEO Content Creation for Enterprise Companies

Effective SEO for enterprise companies begins with content creation — and plenty of it. There are some best practices to consider, though:

2. Link Building for Enterprise Companies

When link-building for SEO enterprise companies, there are some essential practices you’ll need to follow if you want to maximize your success, like:

• Use a tool like Content Explorer on Ahrefs to identify top-performing content in a specific niche with many backlinks to use as link prospects. You can also use it to find linkable assets or discover potential websites for guest posting or link requests.

• Analyze competitor links for new opportunities. 
• Consider using review platforms and aggregators. They’re often expensive, but they also give you valuable exposure.
• Monitor for penalties due to user-generated content issues. Even enterprise-sized sites can face minor penalties due to copyrighted content etc.
• Build relationships with authoritative websites, industry influencers, and thought leaders to build your link profile.
• Create high-quality, helpful content to gain links organically.
• Audit your backlinks regularly to ensure you have relevant, quality links.

3. Technical SEO for Enterprise Companies

Your enterprise SEO strategy isn’t complete unless you follow technical SEO best practices to ensure your website runs smoothly. Here are some tips to help you do that.

• Use tools like Ahrefs’ site audit to identify and prioritize technical SEO issues.

• Concentrate on the essentials, like indexation, fixing broken links, and improving page speed. You’ll also want to use schema makeup, automate sitemaps, and conduct log file analysis.
• Ensure the website has a clear and organized site structure to make it easy for search engine crawlers to navigate and index.
• Monitor and address crawl errors and broken links regularly. Implement 301 redirects for any removed pages to maintain link equity and provide a smooth user experience.

How Agencies and Professionals Can Scale Up Their Enterprise SEO Strategy

Providing enterprise-level SEO services can be challenging regardless of your agency’s experience. And enterprise professionals may also struggle to serve these clients well.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though. Here are some tips on how to scale up your enterprise SEO strategy for large clientele:

1. Understand the business inside and out

Before you can start scaling up your enterprise SEO strategy, you need to have a deep understanding of the business:

• What are the main goals? 
• Who is the target audience? 
• Who are the main competitors? 

When you confidently know the answers to these questions, you’ll be better equipped to develop an effective enterprise SEO strategy for your client.

2. Keep up with the latest trends & best practices

One of the most important things you can do when scaling up your enterprise SEO is to keep up with the latest trends and best practices for organic search. This includes everything from keeping abreast of algorithm changes to understanding consumer behaviors and newer technologies like generative AI. 

By staying current with industry trends and developments, you can ensure that campaigns are always on the cutting edge. 

3. Create customized solutions

Another key to success in scaling up enterprise SEO is creating customized solutions for your clients. 

For instance, some clients may benefit from optimizing their existing content. In other situations, creating a fresh content strategy and focusing on new keywords may be more beneficial.

4. Get specialists on board

If you haven’t already, now might be a good time to work with a professional or agency specializing in SEO consulting for enterprise companies. 

Remember, you won’t be optimizing a handful of pages. Enterprise SEO strategy spans hundreds or thousands of pages and requires monitoring, reporting, and keeping up-to-date. 

To keep up with the demands of this strategy, you’ll need additional help from specialists who can assist with keyword research and website optimization. Get the right people on board so you can hit the ground running.

If this is an area where you’d like some help, my team at NP Digital would love to work with you on building and executing an enterprise SEO strategy.

5. Invest in tools

Managing an enterprise SEO strategy is a huge project that you can’t do alone. That means investing in some tools.

Ahrefs, Moz and Semrush offer enterprise-level SEO tools that are suitable for agencies and businesses. If these are out of your price range, Ubersuggest, which is $99/month for the enterprise level, is an affordable option. I’ll dive into some of these tools later in the article.

7. Assess your experience levels

Enterprise SEO isn’t for you if you’re a small-scale business. As we’ve detailed, if you’ve got thousands of pages of content and you’re a global business, that’s when you’d want to consider this strategy.

Likewise, new agencies with limited resources may want to steer clear of offering these types of services, as they’re likely to lack the budget, staff, and technical expertise to succeed.

You’ll also need industry knowledge for the types of companies that need enterprise-level SEO, like large e-commerce sites.

8. Don’t give away free services you can legitimately charge for

It’s important that you don’t miss out on profitable business, so remember it’s okay to charge your clients for services that will help grow their reach. 

Introduce scalable sales strategies like charging for premium customer service and training, so you and your client can get the most out of your partnership.

9. Establish Clear Communication Channels

Strong communication is essential for enterprise SEO due to its scale. Keeping your communication channels with your clients open and organized ensures everyone is aligned and you can address concerns promptly.

You may want to set up a weekly or bi-weekly meeting schedule with your clients to review performance, recommendations, and receive feedback. It’s also a good idea to set up regular meetings with your internal team of specialists. 

Project management tools like Trello and Asana or collaboration platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams allow real-time communication so everyone can stay in the loop.

10. Regularly Monitor and Report Performance

One of the most important steps of any enterprise SEO campaign is setting clear and measurable goals. Maybe you want to increase organic traffic by 20% or get at least 100 conversions in six months.

Regularly monitoring campaign performance keeps you on track and helps you find areas for improvement. Use your data to measure things like traffic, click-through rates, keyword rankings, conversion rates, and other performance metrics.

Tools and Services To Support Enterprise SEO Strategies

Creating an enterprise SEO strategy can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, there are all-in-one suites that allow you to manage and automate elements, like:

• Keyword research
• Competitive analysis
• Site audits
• Content optimization

This data informs your strategies and allows you to monitor your performance to ensure you’re on track.

Here’s a side by side comparison of the two tools I recommend for enterprise SEO strategies:

	MOZ PRO	AHREFS
Ease of Use	User-friendly interface, although some say less intuitive than Ahrefs.	Steep learning curve, but lots of support via its help center.
Cost	From $99 to $599 per month.	From $99 to $14,990 per month.
Free Trial?	30-day free trial.	Free limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools sign-up.
Key Features	Keyword Research and AnalysisSite Audit and Performance MonitoringBacklink Analysis and Link BuildingRank Tracking and ReportingCompetitor Analysis	Site Explorer for Competitor AnalysisSite Audit & Website OptimizationKeyword Explorer and ResearchRank and Progress TrackerContent ExplorerBacklink monitoring

Moz Pro

Moz Pro has a comprehensive suite of SEO tools that includes keyword research, link building, site audits, and tracking rankings.

It’s great for enterprises that want to track their progress and optimize their website for better search engine visibility.

TechnologyAdvice rates Moz Pro as the best tool for on-site optimization.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another all-in-one SEO for enterprise toolkit. It offers similar features to Moz Pro. However, one of its main selling points is its extensive database of backlinks, which can be helpful for link-building and competitive analysis.

The software allows you to:

• Identify broken links
• Analyze websites
• Track social media
• Explore content and keywords

Subscriptions for small businesses start at $99 a month, and TechnologyAdvice rates Ahrefs as the best at generating quality backlinks. This makes it a valuable addition to creating scalable backlinking strategies.

Google Analytics

If you’re testing the waters and not ready for a paid subscription, Google Analytics  is a free tool that can help track a website’s traffic, engagement, and performance.

GA4:

• Measures website and app analytics
• Uses event-based data
• Gives you access to data trends
• Improves Google Ads integration

While Google Analytics  has many advantages, as Hubspot explains, you need the time and ability to analyze results. 

FAQs

What is enterprise SEO and how does it differ from normal SEO?</

Enterprise SEO refers to search engine optimization strategies specifically tailored to large-scale websites with thousands or millions of web pages. It differs from normal SEO in terms of scale and complexity and requires optimizing for a much wider range of keywords.

What are some common challenges faced in enterprise SEO?

Some common challenges faced in enterprise SEO include managing large-scale websites, ensuring consistent SEO strategies throughout the website, scaling the SEO team, managing technical complexities, and tracking results.

What are the key steps for effective keyword research and selection in enterprise SEO?

The key steps for effective keyword research and selection in enterprise SEO are as follows: 

First, brainstorm a list of keywords related to your services, products, and industry. Next, use keyword research tools such as Semrush or Ubersuggest to determine your current rankings for these keywords. Referring back to this benchmark data is necessary to gauge the success of your SEO efforts. These tools will help uncover new, related keyword opportunities for you to target as well. 

You can also utilize these to tools to identify content gaps and analyze the keywords your competitors are using.

Test out a multifunctional tool. For example, Botify helps you find keywords you’re missing clicks for, see popular keywords among your audience, discover striking distance keywords, and uncover keyword opportunities for mobile.

Also, look for niche-specific keywords, long-tail keywords and keywords with high search volume and low competition.

Which SEO tools are recommended for enterprise SEO?

For a budget-friendly option, Ubersuggest is an excellent enterprise-level SEO tool for $99 a month. Ahrefs and Semrush also offer enterprise-level solutions, but you need to contact them directly for pricing.

Conclusion

An enterprise SEO strategy can help large corporations rank higher on search engines and acquire more organic traffic.

However, getting results from this approach takes time, effort, and expert guidance. 

If you’re a large-scale business thinking of taking the enterprise SEO route, or an agency considering offering these services, you need to understand the challenges, review your expertise and resources, and consider scaling up your team. It’s not a project to consider unless you have the resources to get results.By understanding what search engines are looking for and how users interact with search results, businesses and agencies can use their knowledge to create a comprehensive and effective SEO strategy combined with regular tracking, reporting, and analysis.