Enterprise Level SEO

Moderator
Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES, Search Engine Watch, ClickZ
Speakers:
Bill Hunt, SES Advisory Board & President, Back Azimuth Consulting
Russ Mann, Founder & CEO, Covario

Russ
SEO is more than tips and tricks, it’s a group effort. You can’t do it all yourself. The more successful approach for enterprise SEO is to be the team captain who manages the many contributors to the cause. The ultimate goal is to become the general (c-level) who promotes the greater cause.

SEO function requires many skill sets, but enterprise SEO requires so much more because of strategic and management responsibilities. You have to work with strategy, structure and systems.

No single technology is a silver bullet.

mastering your enterprise strategy
you should make sure that your SEO strategy is in line with the corporate strategy. Have a press alway available to show c-levels how your current SEO strategies are helping the corporate goals

• corporate strategy: business you should be in
• business strategy: tactics to beat the competition

Managing at scale requires integration of many parts. Build a search center of excellence. Adopt a corporate executive sponsor. It’s not about what you need, but what does your sponsor need?

• brand reputation crisis management
• overall reporting of your marketing action plan – cross-media optimization. Where are you on your goals?
• what have you achieved?
• how are you doing vs competitors?
• where are we going and how fast?

compare the increase in traffic to the cost of paid search to show ROI. You can show real savings in media budget via SEO and Social.

Covario.com white paper has more info

You need to understand how your organization works so you can effectively create change within the organization.

Show options and staging when making requests. Do project management. Get approval for a test case before you request the whole thing.

bill
Tactics to manage challenges

technical challenges

• many brands and products
• multiple language versions

politics of the enterprise

• keywords management want to perform
• keywords that should perform
• higher weighted priorities – put words into tiers

Show your management what the cost will be to get “share of voice” for keywords – SEO & SEM

managing the process
Don’t hire experienced SEOs to manage the team. They’re too technical. Hire someon that can manage and understands the process.

enable program scalability

• centralized keyword management strategy
• reporting + performance optimization
• standards + training + operations
• integration into content & infrastructure workflow

indexing

• server configs
• URL structure

relevance

authority

click ability

Create web standards

Refocus your search team.

1. SEO algorithm & technology compliance
2. portfolio & external opportunity maximization
3. business & search program process analysis
4. center of excellence management

Change policy for links from your partners to specific pages instead of the home page

Content collaboration matrix – helps you figure out who to work with

managing words

Centralized keyword management – provides a central resource combining all major data points for keywords

• aggregate all keyword data in a central repository
• allow for more efficient keyword attribution

managing the technology

Talk to stakeholders. Talk to anyone who impacts SEO performance.

Search integrated content deployment. What slows things down of doesn’t work the way it should

Identify and prioritize recommendations

agile development issues

• most SEOs aren’t participating in scrum
• poorly defined requirements by SEO team – NEVER assume they know what to do

Build an idiot proof specification

cost of IT delays

Show the cost of not ranking

Index count monitoring

Webmaster tools traffic change

Create template governance

Template optimization business value

Search friendly technology deployment

Show the cost of not doing things right

Leverage your interconnected network

• leverage existing resources and ensure ongoing training
• set up diagnostics to ensure

BOOKS: leadership secrets of Attila the Hun, the art of war, search engine marketing, inc.

Related articles

• New Signals to Search Engines Revisited (searchenginewatch.com)
• About Actionable Insights (actionableinsights.covario.com)
• #pubcon LiveBlog: Enterprise Level SEO with the Best in the Business | Search Engine Journal (seome.me)