Enterprise websites need a totally different approach to SEO than regular websites do. Learn what an enterprise site is and why automation, UX, outstanding content, and more are important for an enterprise to dominate search rankings.
What is an Enterprise Website?
An enterprise website is a site with pages that number in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions. There's no official number that classifies a site as being an enterprise one, but it's got to be pretty big.
But there are other factors that influence whether a site falls into the category of 'enterprise'. For example, some think that brand authority is a factor, meaning that an organisation can be fairly small but have high brand clout and an authoritative site. On the flip side, others believe it's the size of the company that determines it—if a business requires a large team to maintain its website, it's probably an enterprise site.
However, you define it, what's important to remember is that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for search engine optimisation (SEO), and an enterprise website will need its own unique procedures to optimise it for organic listings.
What is enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is a scalable version of standard SEO. This means that it requires a high level of automation in order to cope with the vast number of pages on the site, collaboration between content creators and SEO teams, and a fairly large workforce to keep the site, and by default, the organic rankings, up to date.
SEO Strategies for Enterprise Sites
Target More Competitive Keywords
Smaller websites and businesses are often less likely to target highly competitive keywords, because they simply can't compete with large enterprises for those organic results. So for an enterprise site, leveraging the size and clout of your site is a must for targeting the right search terms.
Speed is Your Priority
There are loads of stats about how important site speed is in improving organic listings. For example, according to HubSpot, the first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. Website conversion rates drop by 4.42% on average for every additional second of load time between zero and five seconds. Needless to say, your page-load time can make or break your business.
Target the Audience at the Right Time
The marketing funnel—awareness, consideration, decision, and conversion (or variations thereof)—is especially important for enterprises that wish to maintain high levels of organic traffic. Targeting the customer with the right message at the right time is vital. For example, during the awareness phase, you don't want to have a hard-sell that might put the potential customer off—not while they're only just becoming familiar with your brand. Similarly, if you don't have a hard-sell message during the conversion phase, you might miss the opportunity for a sale.
Use Automation
As we already mentioned, automation is important for enterprise sites because, no matter how big your SEO team is, it's impossible to manage millions of pages individually all the time. There are various tools out there that automate some of the repetitive SEO tasks that need to be actioned, such as checking for broken links, analysing page performance, and calculating load times for every page.
Relevant Content
More than ever, now with Google's Helpful Content update, it's vital to have original, unique content on your enterprise site. This needs to be updated regularly by industry experts. This requires a team of content creators dedicated to producing the types of content that your website will need to rank highly in Google search results. Every time you produce a new page of content, it triggers a ranking signal to search engines, so the more authoritative content you have, the more likely it is that your search rankings will improve.
Remember Your UX
More and more, businesses are seeing the value of UX in their enterprises. UX stands for user experience, and it's a field of digital marketing that specialises in creating the best possible experience for users on websites and apps. Investing in a UX specialist can take your website from great to amazing. And having a positive experience on a website means a positive outcome on your search rankings.
Partner with an SEO Agency
It's one thing to have a good understanding of SEO; it's another to put that knowledge into practice. And when your website is massive, it only makes sense to get some experts on board. With the technical aspects of SEO being so important, it's a good idea to team up with an SEO agency that specialises in boosting organic listings.
At P.tch, we offer enterprise SEO solutions tailor made for each business. We first audit your website to discover all the areas that need improvement, and then use our expertise to ensure that your on-page and off-page SEO are as good as they can be, helping you dominate search results over and over. Connect with us on hello@pitchsm.co.za today.
