If you are frustrated trying to answer the question, what is enterprise SEO, don’t feel bad — it’s a loosely defined term that people describe in a variety of ways.
Essentially, enterprise SEO (or enterprise-level SEO) is just like standard SEO, only on a larger scale.
What Is Enterprise SEO — It’s All About the Number of Website Pages
A standard SEO campaign typically involves a website with, say, 50-500 pages. When you inch toward the 500-page end of the spectrum, a certain amount of automation is to execute the SEO campaign. For instance, the SEO agency will probably set up rules for formatting and writing meta tags for new website pages — this ensures consistency across pages and prevents someone from having to think out formatting and content from scratch.
Automation ramps up considerably for enterprise SEO because here, instead of 50-500 pages, the website in question may have 1,000 pages, 5,000 pages or even well in excess of 10,000 pages. Websites on such a large scale will have target keywords that number in the hundreds of thousands.
If you have a small e-commerce website or a 200-page lead generation website, you may not realize how easy it is for a website to attain such a vast number of pages. However, it’s not that difficult for a large e-commerce site to build out thousands and thousands of pages.
Consider this: For an e-commerce site that enables you to sort products in various ways (e.g., by color, size, price range), every sorted page is a unique URL — a single product could show up in hundreds of pages (i.e., unique URLs). When you multiply the URL variations by hundreds or thousands of products, the resulting number of pages expands dramatically.
E-commerce websites are not the only ones whose pages can run into thousands. A national insurance company, for instance, might have landing pages optimized for geographically localized keywords — “life insurance quotes in phoenix”, “life insurance quotes in los angeles”, etc.
Is there an exact number of pages that represents the dividing line between enterprise SEO and standard SEO? No. Companies usually progress from standard to enterprise SEO as they see the labor costs of their standard SEO campaign rise to an unacceptable level. When the work becomes too costly and labor-intensive to generate satisfactory ROI, companies tend to add automation and more disciplined processes, gradually moving into a full-blown enterprise campaign.
This is why, if your business is going to grow, it makes sense to partner with an SEO agency that can move with you from a standard to an enterprise SEO campaign.
What Is Enterprise SEO — Areas of Focus
All of these pages cannot be managed in an SEO campaign without a high degree of automation and very detailed campaign execution processes. Rules for formatting and content creation are no longer “nice to haves,” they are necessities — and this is only one of many examples. Other aspects of SEO execution specific to or executed on a much larger scale in enterprise SEO include:
- Continual, automated reviews to ensure Google is actually indexing and ranking target SEO pages (the number of targeted pages in an enterprise SEO campaign can easily reach into the thousands)
- Procedures to identify duplicate content and ensure that Google crawlers are indexing and ranking the preferred pages
- Continual, scheduled review of target page performance, possibly on a daily basis
- Continual, scheduled testing of target page variables, including title tags, meta data, content, conversion elements, web page design and keyword focus
- Templates and rules for adding new web pages, to maximize consistency, accuracy and SEO characteristics
- Large-scale creation of landing pages to target hundreds or thousands of keywords, often with local geographic focus
- Automated, robust data collection and reporting
- Multi-language SEO
- Multiple local SEO campaigns running in tandem with national campaigns
What Is Enterprise SEO — Approaches to Campaign Execution
From what’s been sketched out above, you can see that enterprise SEO cannot be executed by just any SEO agency — the experience, skill and automation tools required for success are only possessed by a relative handful of firms.
Many companies in need of enterprise SEO manage some or all of the work in-house. In-house teams have numerous advantages, including unmatched familiarity with the market, complete control over staffing and procedures, and on-site management. Outsourcing enterprise SEO has advantages as well, including a broader perspective on SEO strategies and tactics, and a firm grasp of SEO best practices and innovations.
Companies often recognize the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches and wind up executing enterprise SEO by combining in-house talent with SEO agencies that are adept in work areas where the in-house team is weak. For instance, content might be created in-house where writers know the products inside-out, and keyword research might be done by the agency, using the tools and methodologies it has been successful with for thousands of other enterprise campaigns.
To learn about an SEO campaign scope that makes sense for your business, contact us now or call 855-883-0011.