Do you want to rank your company’s website in Google’s top pages?
In this complete guide, we’ll be showing you the exact strategy and tools Mabbly used to help companies like Microsoft, Berkshire Residential Investment, Ameda, Airsys, and even the City of Chicago to create a massive online presence, increase search visibility, and reach their goals.
The process may seem complicated (and it is), but we’ve simplified it so that you can easily implement it to get significant results.
Most large companies and enterprise marketers don’t understand that the practice of optimizing an enterprise website is quite different from small business SEO.
They seem to erroneously assume that Google would easily figure out their websites and list it on its top organic results pages. Unfortunately, Google can’t!
What they don’t understand is enterprise SEO is much more complicated than that and Google has several severe limitations.
With a recent report that Google ignores about half of the content on enterprise websites, companies may feel like Google dislikes large or technologically advanced websites.
The truth is, Google and enterprise websites are not opposing each other and don’t have to be at odds but these organizations with huge websites quickly forget Google’s goal, which is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Hence, any enterprise website that wants to rank high on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) and generate high organic traffic needs to adopt new SEO strategies.
Yes, enterprise SEO is very important because it can generate hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in revenue from organic search alone.
The challenges and problems faced by enterprise websites are amplified and technical relative to those faced in more basic SEO.
This is because enterprise SEO requires different strategies and a different approach – enterprise websites need a complete shift in content creation, on-page SEO, link building, and reputation management.
Optimizing large enterprise websites go beyond basic keyword rankings and getting some links – those are just part of the complete puzzle.
Instead, they have to focus on a deeper SEO process, starting with their technical foundation and how Google crawls it, to how their target audience engages with them.
“Technical SEO is a necessity, not an option” – Andy Betts
With the recent update to Google’s algorithms and the integration of machine learning to Google search, SEO has changed from the simple process it used to be to become harder. But it’s still doable and we’ll share strategies that you can implement today.
To help enterprise websites rank high on Google, we have compiled the top SEO strategies and tools that will help business executives to succeed.
But before then, let’s look at the core reasons why enterprise marketers need top SEO strategy and tools in the first place.
Why Enterprise Marketers Need SEO Strategy
Most established companies don’t yet understand why they need effective SEO strategies and the benefits they stand to get from those SEO strategies if well implemented. After all, they’re already successful to a degree.
Well, you may be well acquainted with the basics of SEO and understand that:
- SEO ensures that Google finds and understands your website – right from its code to content.
- SEO helps Google searchers to find your website or web content when they are looking for it or related content, helping you to connect with more customers and prospects that need the products and services your company offers.
Certainly, effective SEO will improve your website’s overall searchability and visibility, but SEO holds more importance, which includes:
1) SEO Builds Trust and Credibility – Authority
SEO is not all about generating traffic. An effective SEO strategy also helps to build a clean and beautiful website with an effective user experience (UX) that not only attract visitors but also build trust and credibility of the company.
Many SEO elements go into establishing trust and authority on Google. That’s the whole essence of Google E.A.T. — Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.
In addition to a clean and beautiful website, optimized on-page elements and content, machine-learning signals, positive user behavior, and quality backlink profiles are necessary factors to accrued authority over time.
All these are elements of SEO. And guess what the trust and credibility do? They influence customers’ purchasing decisions positively.
2) SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle in a Positive Way
The essence of popping up in Google first SERP is to ultimately grow sales and customers would always do their research before settling down for their final product
Hence, enterprise marketers can use SEO strategy to relay messages to customers about their good deals, groundbreaking products or services, and the importance of depending on what they offer.
If this is done right, it’ll place brands in the right places where people need them for a profitable connection to be made, which can positively impact the buying cycle, driving both sales and leads.
3) SEO Increases Customer Attribution
SEO will not only increase your brand awareness but will also increase your customers’ attribution points — from the first point through the various touch points until the customer is closed, based on Salesforce’s study.
Remember, SEO makes your website come up in search results any time a related search is made. This, therefore, increases the number of times searchers and prospects would see your brand or business.
Did you know that the more times customers and prospects see your website, the more likely they are to purchase from or engage with your business?
Hence, an effective SEO strategy will help to dramatically increase your attribution with prospects.
4) Organic Search Receives 90% More Clicks Than PPC
Aside from the fact that SEO is less expensive than PPC, it is much more effective than PPC. So, if you are planning on ditching organic SEO for paid ads, try having a rethink.
SEO thrives over PPC and the reason is not far-fetched. SEO listings receive 90% of clicks. You know why?
A lot of Google searchers tend to skip paid ads. The majority of PPC users care less about the use of effective SEO practices and rely solely on Google ads to automatically bring up their web pages on Google SERP.
Most times, Google brings up paid ads that are less related to the search terms. This makes people trust less in Google ads and more in organic results, which are more tailored to the search term.
By investing in SEO, your enterprise website is more likely to gain more traffic than that of a paid ad user ranking for the same keywords.
Now that you have seen a few of the reasons why companies need SEO strategies, let’s discuss the top SEO strategies and tools that will help them to succeed:
1. Website Audit and Analysis
The first SEO strategy to discuss is website audit and analysis. This will help enterprise managers to understand the current state of the enterprise website, the shortcomings, and what needs to be done.
A website audit is an examination or analysis of the performance of web pages before undertaking a large-scale SEO strategy on the website.
A website audit would help business managers to determine whether or not their website is optimized to generate traffic, and if not, how they can improve their website to increase its performance.
There are four assessments to consider during website audit and analysis.
I) Website Performance Audit
This assessment focuses on how visitors navigate your webpages/blogs and their related content.
Asking yourself the following questions can help you evaluate your website for optimization.
Are Your Web pages Optimized for Maximum Usability?
More visitors are attracted to your website, the more opportunities you have to generate more traffic and ultimately convert leads to customers.
But what happens if your web pages aren’t optimized? Less traffic, fewer leads.
What’s Your Website’s Overall Speed?
Did you know that your website’s speed is one of Google’s ranking factors?
Besides, a recent report revealed an average bounce rate of 9% for pages that take 2 seconds to load and an average bounce rate of 38% for pages that take 5 seconds to load.
Therefore, you need to always check for long page load, excessive page sizes and server response times. Check if your website goes down frequently.
More so, your website’s overall speed can be impacted when image files are too large or when your CSS and HTML need to be cleaned up.
Always remember that fully-optimized and fast-loading webpages will not only generate large traffic but also higher visitor engagement, lead conversions, and customer retention.
II) Content Audit
The next step is to analyze your web content to ensure it is meeting visitor’s needs or solving their problems. Answering the following questions can help you with the assessment:
Is Your Web Content of High Quality?
Even when you can guarantee the quality of your content, think about how your target audience feels about it.
Does the content leave them satisfied? Did the content answer all of their questions? Does the content contains resources relevant to the topic?
More so, aside from being thorough, well-written and interesting, your content should leave your readers with the next steps to take i.e. CTAs, etc.
Is Your Web Content SEO-Optimized?
You need to follow the best on-page SEO practices for all of your web content. Conduct a keyword analysis to determine the performance of keywords and which keywords would perform best in generating large traffic and leads.
III) Conversion Rate Audit
Creating high-quality, SEO-optimized content is good but not enough. Understanding what happens when visitors are on your website is what really counts – this helps you to measure conversion.
Here are common questions to answer:
Is Your Website Optimized for Lead Generation and Conversions?
How effective are your call-to-actions (CTAs), landing pages, marketing offers, etc. are at converting visitors to leads? This audit will help you to understand how well your website is at keeping visitors engaged.
- Did you include actionable CTAs in your content?
- Do you have any landing pages or conversion forms on your website?
- Do you have marketing offers that appeal to your visitors?
If no, you are missing opportunities. If yes, then how optimized are your CTAs, landing pages, and marketing offers?
IV) Technical Audit
Once the first three audits have been conducted, then it’s time for technical assessment, which will help to maximize your website’s UX.
Here are some pertinent questions and you may need a website designer or developer to help you with the answers:
Is Your Website Design Responsive to Various Screen Sizes?
If your website is not responsive to mobile devices, you may be losing lots of visitors. You know why? Mobile device users accounted for about half of all page views worldwide.
Is Your Website Free from Error Messages?
All those 302, 404, or 500 error codes that pop up on your website are indicators to visitors that something is wrong with your website.
Are Your Website URLs Optimized?
How long are the URLs of your webpages? Are they too long due to keyword stuffing? Do they contain lots of dynamic parameters or several session IDs?
If yes, Google may find it difficult to index your URLs and this will result in lower click-through-rates from SERPs.
Does Your Website Have Too Much Flash or JavaScript?
If yes, get rid of these “annoying” flash and JavaScript. Aside from the fact that too much flash or JavaScript piss off visitors, who are often looking for a quick and specific piece of information, it also makes it difficult for Google to read and access pages containing them.
Is Your Site Structure SEO-Optimized?
Note that if your webpages are not internally linked to or from other webpages on your site, those webpages are less likely to be indexed by Google.
Did You Define How Your Web pages Should Be Crawled And Indexed By Google?
Did you check your “Robots Files or Tags” and you haven’t erroneously specified that your pages should be indexed by Google search engine?
- Create Content That Ranks For Search Query
You probably have heard it several times that content is king. That’s why content optimization makes the second strategy for ranking in Google on this list.
By promoting your content strategically, you would not only make it to the front page of Google but also the top-most positions.
Ensure that your web pages/blogs have content that follows the best on-page SEO practices. While conducting your keyword analysis, review which keywords would generate the most traffic and leads.
Consider the length of your relevant content and how well to factor keywords into it. Include keywords into you’re your URLs, title tags, meta descriptions, and content in a relevant manner.
Note, sometimes a keyword or search term may have a particular meaning to you, whereas it could have an entirely different meaning in Google.
So to ensure your target keyword or search terms are aligned with the main business objectives, you must understand both the search intent behind the keywords and what is required to rank for the keywords.
Aside from using keywords, content optimization involves creating content with the human in mind (i.e.,your content must be clear and concise, avoid jargon, provide accurate information in your content, and cover related subtopics).
So you must always keep these in mind from once you begin creating your content. Use proper H1 tags to improve the overall readability of your content, and name any image file used appropriately.
More so, link your web content in such a way that your visitors are provided with the next step or logical destination. This involves proper internal cross-linking, clear CTAs, and navigation to the copy.
- Building Authoritative Links
Building authoritative links involve adding links to any of your webpages to other famous websites – off-page SEO. Note that Google would rank your linked pages on SERPs based on the quality and relevance of your backlinks.
Enterprise managers can give their website an instant boost by simply linking to their webpages from an existing high-authority website?
According to expert digital marketers, about 75% of SEO strategies are off-page. More so, building authoritative links is essential as links are still one of Google’s top-ranking factors.
To maximize this strategy, start by looking for websites with which you can generate valuable and highly authoritative inbound links – building links from websites that are spammy and non-authoritative is harmful to your website ranking.
Then, create an engaging, link-worthy, informative, and well-structured content based on your top-performing keywords. Publish the content on your webpage or blog and link this to the authoritative website.
This will help you to generate inbound links and improve your rankings on Google. You can also leverage social media like LinkedIn or Quora to support your link building. Don’t forget to monitor mentions of your brand for the third-party websites.
- Using SEO to Drive Conversions and Revenue
The ultimate goal of SEO strategy is not just to improve your visibility in Google and amass traffic to your website.
Improving your search visibility and driving traffic to your website is only a stepping stone to the main SEO goal, which is to generate and increase revenue-driving conversions and maintain a growing customer base.
Having a proper understanding of how SEO relates to real-world business can reduce fear among business managers and make them improve upon their overall SEO strategy.
Conversion rate is the measure of visitors who completed a CTA or performed the expected action after visiting the website. This, in essence, is the percentage of visitors who engaged with your website.
Since the end-result of SEO is to generate traffic who will become converted to leads and customers, SEO and conversion rates move together.
If your SEO strategy was effective, you would see the results in your conversion rate and vice versa.
To use SEO strategies to drive conversions and revenue, the first step every business manager has to take is to assess the current SEO practice. Is the SEO strategy increasing conversion rate or not?
More so, enterprise marketers must understand the intentions of the visitors to their website. This is very important to the conversion rate as not all visitors visit to make a purchase.
However, established companies and enterprise marketers, in particular, can use SEO to drive conversion and revenue by doing the following:
a) Making Their Enterprise Website Mobile-Friendly
Considering the growing number of mobile users on the internet, mobile-friendliness is an important SEO strategy nowadays. Having a mobile-friendly website is a great way to find and convert mobile visitors.
Check your enterprise website for compatibility with mobile browsers, adaptability and responsiveness on mobile browsers, content legibility, mobile page speed, and touchscreen readiness.
b) Ensure Your Website Loads Up Quickly
If you quickly want to discourage both humans and Google from your website, then make your website have a long load time.
Otherwise, get a good SEO audit, determine what slows down your website, and eliminate the bottleneck.
Cutting down as low as a few seconds from your website loading speed can be a huge boost to your sales. If you doubt, ask Amazon, a company that increased sales by up to 118% in a few days just by increasing product page speed. In fact, just 1-second delay could cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales.
c) Fix All Navigation Issues
Chances are that visitors to your website would move around your websites by following links.
But what happens if your website is full of broken links? It’s more like shutting the gate to your store.
If no one gets access to the necessary webpages, they can’t convert nor generate revenue. More so, Google hates broken links and you know what that tells on your ranking.
d) Secure Your Website by Adopting HTTPS
As an enterprise marketer, your audience needs to feel secure on your website. Imagine visitors to your website receiving a big scary red warning on their browsers because your website is not secure.
That’s a red alert and they will run for their lives. Soon, no one may visit your website and you would have nothing to convert.
e) Add Engaging Visuals to Extend the Length of Visit
There is a good chance that your ranking will improve if visitors stay longer on your website. Besides, you are gradually building your authority.
f) Publish Useful Content to Your Pages/Blogs
When your website has rich content, your website ranking will be improved. This means more visitors, who will be encouraged to convert.
g) Utilize Long-Tail Keywords in Your Content
Short keywords are good, long-tail keywords are also good too. A good combination of both is the best.
This is how they work, short-tail keywords generate large quantities of traffic while long-tail keywords generate fewer but more targeted website visitors.
You can picture the idea of what a balanced combination of both keywords would achieve in your SEO process.
If you’ve just launched your website, targeting long-tail keywords is advisable.
Now that you’ve learned about the strategies for ranking on Google, it’s important to constantly measure the performance of your SEO strategies and that leads to knowing the basic enterprise SEO KPIs.
Enterprise SEO KPIs
Enterprise SEO KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are simply measurable values that show how effective enterprise owners are achieving their key SEO objectives.
According to a study by Conductor and Ascend2, “72% of enterprise marketers rate SEO as successful for increasing web traffic and generating leads.”
SEO KPIs help to reveal the true value of a company’s SEO efforts – either they are making success or failure. This gives their efforts more clarity to increase their focus on successful SEO practices.
Here are the 5 most important enterprise SEO KPIs:
- Google Rankings
How an enterprise website rank on Google SERPs is a very good indicator that shows how the how well the website has been optimized.
Google rankings can be assessed through Google Search Console, where business managers would see how many impressions a certain keyword has generated, as well as where each of their webpages ranks on Google SERP and their click-through-rates.
- Organic Search Performance
This is referred to as the most important enterprise SEO KPI for enterprise marketers that care about inbound results. Organic search performance is simply the performance of webpages on the Google results page.
If you search for a keyword or search term you supposedly ranked for but your webpage does not appear on the first search engine results pages (SERPs), then your SEO efforts are either not successful or just yielding.
For example, the image below is a search for KPI on Google and Klipfolio appeared on top of the organic results.
- Website Loading Speed
Website loading speed had been one of Google’s site ranking factors since 2010. If your webpage has longer loading speed, you’re creating a poor UX for your visitors and this will drop your ranking on Google.
You can easily assess your website loading speed by using Google Pagespeed Insights or the Pingdom Website Speed Test. All you need to do is enter the URL to the web page you want to test.
- Landing Page Conversation and Bounce Rate
This enterprise SEO KPI goes a step further beyond measuring impressions or visits to your website. It tracks what your visitors did when they arrived at your website.
This enterprise SEO KPI demonstrates your visitor’s progression from the Google search result page through to your marketing funnel.
- Indexed Pages
This shows the number of pages on your website that can be indexed by Google.
Google has to crawl on all web pages to index them but Robots.txt and sitemap.xml are two files that can be used to restrict Google from crawling on any of your web pages.
You can check the number of indexed pages on your Google Search Console account.
If either intentionally or accidentally, your disallowed Google from crawling your website or web pages, then none of your web pages will be crawled and none will show up in Google search result.
You need to control and optimize the robots.txt and sitemap.xml files to allow Google to claw.
By carefully using the five enterprise SEO KPI above, enterprise marketers would be able to easily evaluate the performances of their SEO processes.
Enterprise SEO Tools
When it comes to enterprise SEO tools, there’s a gazillion of them. Apart from the popular SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs, there are specific tools that are primarily geared towards enterprise tasks.
By now, you are inspired and ready to start up your SEO strategies to place your webpages on Google’s first SERP.
But SEO processes can be time-consuming and you want to accomplish more tasks in less time. Hence, 57% of brands manage their SEO program via a third-party SEO software, according to SEMPO’s State of Search 2016 report.
Here are a few enterprise SEO tools for savvy enterprise marketers. With these enterprise SEO tools, you would complete the execution of SEO strategies as fast as possible and as perfect as you can get:
1) SEOquake
SEOquake is one of the most popular enterprise SEO tools. It comes as a browser extension that displays an instant SEO overview of any given webpage either via a toolbar or search result overlay.
2) SEO Site Checkup
SEO Site Checkup tool gives enterprise marketers instant analyses of SEO issues. It also shows the competitor’s SEO profile and generates reports that enterprise marketers can act upon.
3) SEO Book’s Robots.txt Generator
This tool enables users to easily generate the robots.txt file that will instruct Google and other search engines on which webpage to crawl or not to crawl.
Other enterprise SEO tools include XML Sitemaps Generator, Moz Link Explorer, and Keyword Tool.
Conclusion
This guide is specifically written to teach savvy companies and enterprise marketers the necessary enterprise SEO strategy and tools they can use to drive their website ranking higher on Google SERP.
Often, implementing these strategies requires some technical know-how, so you may want to hire an enterprise SEO agency to handle it for you.
