According to Ahrefs (one of our favorite SEO tools), 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps.

So, without enterprise search engine optimization, you’ll miss a large chunk of traffic.

However, enterprise SEO requires a strategic approach that scales to meet the expansive needs of large organizations like yours. 

We'll draw upon our experience and solid digital marketing techniques to explore:

• What enterprise SEO is
• 8 unique aspects of SEO strategies designed for large corporations
• 5 challenges you can face and how to solve them

Heads up: Expect our in-house expert insights, tactical advice, and examples from our seasoned professionals.

Let's dive in.

TL;DR:

• Definition & Importance: Enterprise SEO is a strategic approach tailored for large organizations to enhance their online presence and search engine rankings. It's crucial because it targets broad traffic sources including Google Search, Google Images, and Google Maps, which comprise over 92% of global traffic.
• Unique Strategies: Enterprise SEO involves handling millions of keywords, balancing branded and non-branded keywords, and competing for high-volume keywords. Content strategies include managing duplicate content, focusing on bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content, and conducting regular content audits.
• Technical Challenges: Technical SEO for enterprises addresses issues like site architecture, automated checklists, schema markup, managing redirects, and speed optimization. Frequent technical audits and optimized site architectures are essential for maintaining competitive online visibility.
• On-Page and Link-Building Strategies: On-page optimizations for enterprise sites include advanced meta tag optimization and structured data implementation. Link-building strategies focus on creating high-quality content and tools that attract backlinks and utilizing proactive PR to secure editorial links.
• International SEO: For global enterprises, international SEO is crucial to address regional markets with localized content and to optimize for local search engines. Implementing hreflang tags and adapting content to local cultural nuances are key strategies.
• SEO Tools and Stakeholder Management: Utilizing specialized tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Analytics is vital for comprehensive competitive analysis and SEO audits. Enterprise SEO also requires managing complex approval processes across multiple stakeholders.
• Challenges and Solutions: Common challenges include convincing stakeholders of SEO's long-term value, managing the extensive time requirements of enterprise SEO, and prioritizing SEO tasks effectively. Solutions include using data-driven approaches, employing unified SEO platforms, and outsourcing to leverage specialized skills.
• Final Note: Blue Things offers comprehensive services to manage all aspects of enterprise SEO, promising tailored strategies and continuous communication to align with the expansive needs of large enterprises.

What Is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is a strategic approach tailored specifically for enterprise-level companies like yours.

This process is designed to enhance your online presence and search engine ranking and involves enterprise SEO tactics that: 

• Tackle technical SEO issues
• Optimize content
• Refine the architecture of your enterprise websites

Basically, you want to dominate the search engines in your industry to achieve and maintain a competitive edge. Therefore, enterprise SEO helps you attract more organic traffic and potential customers.

Companies that need enterprise search engine optimization include Fortune 500-type companies, major ecommerce websites with over 10,000 pages, or large international companies.

What Makes Enterprise SEO Different?

Enterprise search engine optimization has specific particularities you must consider to ensure a solid online presence. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWCymjjNTYU&ab_channel=Demandwell

Here’s what we’re taking into account at Blue Things:

1. Enterprise SEO Entails Specifical Keyword Research Difficulties

Our enterprise SEO clients face specific keyword research challenges that differ markedly from those of smaller companies. 

Here’s what you need to consider:

• Scale and scope: You're managing a keyword portfolio with millions of keywords, a scale unimaginable for smaller businesses. This requires broad and deep analysis to ensure coverage across various business units and geographic markets.
• Branded vs. non-branded: You should not rely solely on branded keywords. Sure, they leverage your established reputation. But balance them with non-branded keywords to attract new organic visitors who might not yet be familiar with your brand.
• Competitive and high-volume keywords: Many smaller companies we work with prioritize long-tail keywords. That’s a great SEO strategy to avoid fierce competition. But your enterprise's resources and capabilities allow you to compete for high-volume, competitive keywords that drive substantial search volumes.

Case Study Break: Miro

One of our corporate clients is Miro, a visual workspace tool.

We handle SEO for their Miroverse, a gallery of templates you can use to streamline your work.

This graph shows many things, like the consistent growth in organic traffic and traffic value.

You can also see the Miroverse ranks for over 22,900 organic keywords at the time of this writing. 

Many of them are branded keywords, but others are non-branded, long-tail keywords that are easy to rank for:

We call these low-hanging fruit keywords.

However, Miro targets plenty of competitive keywords with very high KD:

2. Enterprise Content Creation Requires Different Strategies

In enterprise SEO, your content challenges extend beyond what smaller companies typically handle.

Here’s a breakdown of the most common issues we’ve found with our clients:

• Duplicate content: On vast enterprise sites, managing duplicate content across numerous product pages, regional sites, and language variations is a common challenge. This can dilute your SEO efficacy and confuse search engines about which page to prioritize.
• Content syndication: We understand that syndicating content can expand your reach in certain cases. We did it as well. However, this content must be strategically managed to avoid issues with originality and search engine penalties. Basically, you want to ensure your original site retains the SEO benefits.
• BOFU content focus: Many enterprise companies concentrate heavily on bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content aimed at driving sales, which can neglect top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) users who are not yet decision-ready.

The type of content your enterprise needs includes:

• Advanced content types: White papers, case studies, and industry reports are essential. And we’re not just talking about credibility but about engaging a knowledgeable audience that expects in-depth information.some text
  • Pro tip: These types of content pieces are great link-building strategies, but we’ll discuss that in a second.
• Sales funnel coverage: You must address all sales funnel stages, from awareness through decision-making, with tailored content that guides potential customers at each phase.
• Content promotion: Ongoing promotion of your content through channels like public relations, newsletters, and social media is crucial to amplify reach and enhance organic visibility.
• Regular content audits: To maintain content relevance and effectiveness, you need regular audits to identify and remedy content gaps or outdated information.

This comprehensive approach ensures that your content reaches and resonates with the right audience at the right time. More importantly, it aligns your content with your broader enterprise SEO goals and marketing efforts.

Case Study Break: inBeat

inBeat is one of our best case studies.

As an influencer marketing platform, we helped inBeat with content creation, link-building strategies, and on-page SEO.

In addition to refining existing content, Blue Things also produced new, impactful resources to engage the target audience. This included blog posts and articles that delivered key insights and practical advice on influencer marketing trends and best practices.

And that’s the organic traffic curb you can see for inBeat:

3. Enterprise Technical SEO Issues Are More Advanced

Enterprise SEO also presents a unique set of technical challenges that differ significantly from those smaller companies face. 

At Blue Things, we dealt with these enterprise technical SEO issues

• Site architecture: Your extensive site architecture must be meticulously organized to ensure search engines can efficiently crawl and index your pages. This involves a sophisticated internal links structure and strategic SEO approach that supports user experience and search engine visibility.
• Automated checklists: Given the scale of your digital presence, automated checklists are a must. That’s how you can systematically address SEO ranking factors across thousands of pages. The end goal is to ensure consistency and coverage.
• Schema markup: Implementing schema markup on an enterprise scale can dramatically enhance your search engine results. That’s because you’re providing more detailed information and improving click-through rates. However, schema markup requires precise execution to avoid errors that could impact visibility.
• Redirects: Managing redirects, particularly after site restructures or during mergers and acquisitions, is vital to maintaining link equity and preventing broken links. From our experience, this task becomes exponentially more complex with the size of your site.
• Speed optimization: For enterprise sites, even slight delays in page loading can lead to significant drops in user satisfaction and conversions. That’s why advanced speed optimization techniques are essential.

In terms of technical adjustments, your enterprise requires:

• Frequent technical audits: Regular audits are critical to identifying and resolving technical SEO issues that could undermine your organic search performance. This helps maintain an edge in a competitive online environment.
• Optimized site architecture: More time and resources should be dedicated to refining site architecture. You need it to support your enterprise's scalability and the complex needs of various stakeholders, from content teams to marketing efforts.
• Enhanced speed: Enterprise websites must leverage advanced technologies and optimization strategies to improve site speed, recognizing that performance is directly tied to user satisfaction and SEO outcomes.

Case Study Break: Allbirds

Even a free tool can help you quickly get to the root of some of your problems.

Let’s see how the large ecommerce website Allbirds is doing.

The website seems to have one technical issue:

This can affect Allbird’s overall ranking consistently.

Our fast SEO audit identified other problems regarding on-page optimization.

That brings us to the next point:

4. Enterprise SEO Needs Specifical On-Page Optimizations

Enterprise SEO demands a rigorous on-page optimization strategy that transcends the scope typically required by smaller companies. 

Consider just two main issues enterprise companies face from an SEO standpoint:

• Internal linking: Your expansive site has hundreds of pages and probably hundreds of thousands of keywords. This requires a robust internal linking strategy to distribute page authority and improve navigation. After all, each piece of content should contribute to your search engine ranking.
• Page bloat: We’ve seen it first-hand. Large-scale enterprise sites often struggle with page bloat—excessive pages that dilute SEO efforts. We advised these websites to streamline content and eliminate redundant or outdated pages. As a result, they could maintain an efficient, SEO-friendly site.

For your enterprise, we recommend these specific on-page optimizations:

• Advanced meta tag optimization: You must implement meta tags that are tailored to competitive keywords and search intent. Just double-check they're optimized for both search engines and user experience.
• Structured data: Implementing structured data helps search engines understand the context of your content. And that’s particularly important for large enterprise sites that cover a wide array of topics and services.
• Content optimization: Beyond basic keyword inclusion, your content must be fine-tuned to address specific user questions and needs. We advise you to focus on high-quality content that aligns with user intent and, more importantly, conversion rate optimization.
• Mobile optimization: Given the scale of your digital presence, ensuring that your site is fully optimized for mobile users is more important than ever. Remember, mobile friendliness impacts your SEO ranking and user satisfaction.

From our experience, addressing these on-page factors with a dedicated SEO team and strategic approach skyrockets your digital presence.

Case Study Break: Allbirds

Let’s get back to Allbirds, as promised.

Here are the quick on-page optimizations that could boost their presence:

‍

At Blue Things, we solve these issues regularly, with awesome results for our clients like the ones you saw above.

5. Enterprise SEO Link-Building Requires Unique Strategies

Enterprise SEO link-building is very distinct from small company link-building.

Here’s what you’re up against:

• Consider the scale of pages: Your extensive array of pages demands a vast, well-organized link-building strategy to ensure solid external links support every relevant page.
• You can’t rely on guest posts: Smaller websites can quickly increase their domain authority and search engine ranking with guest posts or relationship link-building. But to stay competitive, you must continuously create high-quality, linkable content that distinguishes your brand from others.
• You probably have many unlinked brand mentions: Identifying and converting unlinked brand mentions into links is essential for a large enterprise. However, this might take a lot of time for your internal team due to the sheer volume of mentions across the web.

We recommend these key strategies for larger companies in terms of link-building:

• Consistent creation of linkable tools and assets: Constantly develop tools, calculators, and resource libraries that provide value and attract external links. Also, create white papers, detailed guides, and industry research to enhance your backlink profile with valuable links.
• Proactive PR link-building: Staying on top of digital public relations ensures continuous generation of high-quality backlinks through news, innovations, and corporate developments, which helps maintain your online visibility and organic traffic.
• Editorial links: Actively seeking editorial links from high-authority publications boosts your SEO ranking and establishes your authority in the industry.
• High DA websites: Securing links from high Domain Authority (DA) websites is imperative. These links significantly impact your search engine ranking and online presence.

Case Study Break: inBeat

Blue Things partnered with inBeat.co to develop free tools tailored to their target audience's needs.

These tools provided value, drove traffic, and established inBeat as an industry authority.

For example, inBeat now ranks number one for “fake follower checker” because it developed this tool based on its audience’s needs.

Plus, our focused link-building campaign secured over 1,000 high-quality backlinks for inBeat.co.

These backlinks and other targeted SEO efforts enhanced the site's credibility and authority in the influencer marketing space.

‍Results: The Increased visibility and traffic led to significant growth in inBeat.co's pipeline value, surpassing $70.45 million.

This underscores the concrete business impact of our SEO and content marketing efforts.

6. Enterprises Typically Need International SEO

Enterprises like yours, which operate globally, require international SEO to effectively reach and engage different regional markets. 

Here are some unique challenges our clients have faced:

• Global market penetration: International SEO is essential for reaching diverse markets. So, optimize your site for different languages and regional nuances to cater to local search engines and audiences.
• Localization: Adjusting your content to local languages, currencies, and cultural preferences enhances user experience and local relevance. As a result, it supports better engagement and conversion rates.

Here’s what we at Blue Things consider in terms of international SEO:

• Building multiple service pages: Develop and maintain various versions of service pages, each tailored for different regions.
• Local search engines: Beyond Google, optimize for region-specific search engines (like Baidu in China). Of course, this involves understanding and aligning with distinct SEO rules and user behaviors.
• Hreflang tags: Implementing hreflang tags correctly helps you manage language and regional URLs. As a result, search engines serve the most relevant version of your content to users based on their location and language preferences.
• Cultural nuances: Adapting your keywords and content strategies to reflect local cultural contexts is essential but complex. That’s why we extensively study the local market trends and consumer behaviors.

Insider tip: Ahrefs allows you to choose a local engine and search for local keywords easily, right from their “Keyword Explorer:”

7. Enterprise SEO Tools Are More Specialized [And You Need Them]

For enterprises like yours, wielding the right SEO toolbox is essential for managing your extensive online presence. 

Here’s how specialized tools fit into the framework:

• SEMrush: At Blue Things, we rely on SEMrush extensively. It’s ideal for enterprise SEO due to its comprehensive capabilities in competitive analysis and SEO audits. These features help you navigate and dominate competitive keywords and maintain a high search engine ranking.
• Ahrefs: Another cornerstone tool for us, Ahrefs excels in keyword research, backlink analysis, and link building. For enterprises, its ability to track the backlink profile and organic performance of both your sites and competitors' sites is invaluable. This helps in refining your link-building and content strategies.
• Google Analytics: Essential for understanding organic search traffic and user behavior, Google Analytics allows you to tailor your marketing efforts and content optimization based on actual data. Knowing where your organic traffic is coming from and what it's doing on your site is crucial for conversion rate optimization.

Each tool complements the others, giving us a holistic view of your SEO landscape. This suite of tools lets us conduct effective management of large-scale SEO campaigns. We use them to address everything from technical SEO issues to user experience improvements—all vital for maintaining your enterprise-level online visibility.

8. Enterprise SEO Requires Approval From Multiple Stakeholders

In an enterprise like yours, implementing changes such as altering site architecture or publishing new content involves a complex approval process. Here’s what that looks like:

• Initial proposal: A dedicated team drafts the proposed changes or new content.
• Review by SEO team: The SEO team assesses the impact on SEO ranking and organic search performance, making necessary adjustments.
• Technical evaluation: Technical issues are addressed by IT to ensure compatibility and site performance aren’t compromised.
• Stakeholder approval: Key stakeholders from marketing, sales, and executive levels review the proposal to ensure it aligns with broader business goals and SEO goals.
• Legal and compliance check: Particularly crucial for regulated industries, this step ensures all content meets legal standards.
• Final sign-off and implementation: With all approvals in place, the changes are finally implemented.

To streamline communication across these stages, consider these approaches:

• Centralized communication platform: Implementing a tool where all stakeholders can log and view updates, feedback, and approvals helps keep everyone on the same page.
• Regular stakeholder meetings: Scheduled updates or scrum meetings preempt delays and misunderstandings by keeping lines of communication open.
• Unified enterprise SEO team: Outsourcing to a unified enterprise SEO team like Blue Things can significantly streamline processes. Our team acts as a central hub, coordinating between your various departments and ensuring that your SEO strategies are consistently applied and aligned with enterprise objectives. Our focused MO speeds up the approval process and frees up time for other teams to focus on their core responsibilities.

5 Enterprise SEO Challenges

Enterprise SEO faces several other challenges that require a specific approach. Here’s what some of our clients—and us, too—have dealt with.

1. Convincing Stakeholders to Invest in SEO

Convincing stakeholders to invest in SEO is a significant challenge because enterprise-level investments must be justified with clear, quantitative data. 

Conversely: 

• Enterprise SEO doesn’t bring immediate ROI: This is a long-term strategy for organic traffic, so it’s harder to sell.
• Enterprise SEO is complex: It’s more difficult for non-specialists to understand. That’s why it’s challenging to appreciate the full value of the investment.

To convince your stakeholders, use data like monthly search volumes, click-through rates, and potential increases in organic visitors to highlight the tangible benefits of SEO. Show how these metrics correlate with increased leads, conversions, and, ultimately, revenue.

Don’t forget to do a thorough competitor analysis, cost vs. benefit analysis, and long-term growth projections. 

2. Enterprise SEO Takes Longer

Enterprise SEO demands more time due to the scale and complexity of your operations.

For example, you must coordinate across multiple content teams, business units, and regions. Each has distinct needs and challenges.

Of course, you must also get approvals and consensus from various stakeholders.

You need a unified SEO platform to manage tasks and communicate across teams to solve that issue. Also, automate wherever possible.

Use enterprise SEO tools for tasks like audits and dynamic optimization to save time.

3. Enterprise SEO Needs Setting Your Priorities

Enterprise SEO implies an extraordinary range of tasks, data, metrics, and resources to consider.

That’s why you need smart prioritization to strategically decide what to focus on.

We advise you to:

• Align SEO tasks with business objectives to prioritize actions that drive the most value.
• Prioritize by impact. Use data to identify and prioritize areas that will have the greatest effect on your organic search performance.
• Continuously assess and adjust priorities based on performance analytics and changing market conditions.

4. Enterprise SEO Needs Very Accurate Reporting

First, precise data is crucial for stakeholders to make informed strategic decisions.

Besides, you need to track how effective your SEO strategies are across various markets and segments.

You must also prove ROI from SEO efforts to continue receiving necessary resources.

To solve this issue, use comprehensive analytics platforms that can handle large datasets and provide real-time insights.

5. Enterprise SEO May Entail Outsourcing Your SEO Efforts

Outsourcing gives you access to specialized skills and the latest SEO strategies that might be too complex or resource-intensive to develop in-house.

Plus, you can scale your SEO efforts up or down depending on business needs without the fixed costs of hiring.

Even better, outsourcing frees your internal teams to focus on core business activities while experts handle the SEO.

Our enterprise SEO company can help you with all that. 

Blue Things can manage all aspects of your SEO, from audits to content creation and link building.

We tailor strategies specifically designed to meet the needs of large enterprises.

And we ensure you’re always informed with regular, detailed reports and communication.

Curious to learn more?

Let’s schedule a free strategy call.