SEO in the Enterprise
Enterprise Search Engine Optimization differs from SEO in the enterprise because one is a business process that ensures continued success, the other is based around the knowledge of a single person that currently works in the enterprise. SEO is about long-term success with the search engines, and to be a success in that, there has to be a business process in place that ensures the long-term and continued success of SEO.
A talented person can do all the SEO tasks, the technical side, writing good content, link building and the metrics, but in an enterprise that doesn’t work. Those activities are often charged with different departments, with different management techniques and inherent communication difficulties. When one person tries to do it all, they often run up against gaps in departmental approval.
Good SEO couples the increasing the top line of Marketing with the reducing the bottom line of IT.
In addition to the communication and role-responsibility problems, most enterprise SEO is charged with large scale optimization over complex sites. This creates it’s own unique set of problems from duplicate content, multiple owners, and millions of pages.
The single most important aspect of enterprise SEO is corporate buy in. Once that is achieved, all the rest can follow, but without that, SEO is doomed to die in the boardroom, then in the trenches. Conductor has some great excel templates that can help persuade executive level the importance of SEO. They include a ‘Marketing Opportunity’ and ‘Share of Search’ templates.