The SEO process looks the same, for the most part, for any website owner. Small businesses and large businesses have the same goal–to improve their search engine presence in order to generate more visitors to the site. The process begins with industry and keyword research, then on site optimization, and then ongoing link building. Because enterprise organizations have more resources than smaller companies, it would seem as if an enterprise SEO campaign would be more successful. This isn’t always the case, especially since enterprise organizations often make mistakes that smaller companies do not. Here are 3 common mistakes that large corporations make during an SEO campaign.
Not sufficiently staffing for SEO work
The larger the organization is, the larger its website is (usually) since the website content needs to reflect every part of the business including all of the different departments or product or service offerings. There could be thousands of interior pages. The larger the website, the more SEO work there is to be done because best practice dictates that keyword research should be conducted for every page and each page needs to be optimized by incorporating these keywords naturally. It may seem like an enterprise organization should have the budget to hire multiple in-house SEO Specialists but that’s often not the case, and the existing marketing department is probably already maxed out on time. Hiring an SEO firm is often still a good choice for a large organization. It will take time to work through the SEO campaign, but at least the work will be getting done and not pushed to the side when other big projects come up.
Keeping SEO in a silo
In a smaller business, there is one marketing department and it may even only consist of one or two people. In a large corporation, each marketing specialty has a separate department, dedicated individual, or is outsourced to a firm. In addition to the SEO team or person, there is the PR team, the social media team, the content team, etc. SEO today needs to be integrated with all of these other strategies. When each is operated in a silo, opportunities are missed. The goals of each department are the same which is why everyone needs to be on the same page.
Too much red tape
The SEO process needs to be streamlined and keep moving in order to be effective. Because the SEO professionals might not be experts in the industry, there is an approval process. In a small organization there might be one or two “point people” that approve keywords, content changes, link opportunities, etc. In a larger organization it sometimes isn’t that easy and the approval process can be intense. The marketing managers, the content team, the PR team, and the department managers all want to have a say in how the site is optimized, meaning that any SEO content needs to be viewed by a lot of eyes. Obviously, this takes time. When there is too much red tape in place an SEO campaign can stall and it will take even longer to see results.
What mistakes are you trying to avoid? Sound off in the comments.
