Faithful readers of the FindResolution blog and followers of my del.icio.us bookmarks will know this already, but I have a new post up at the FindResolution blog about enterprise SEO and preparing for Q4 now. If you manage digital content for a Fortune 500 site, you may be as tired as I am of the focus so many SEO sites seem to have on optimization for small business sites. No doubt small businesses are equally important, and there are far more people optimizing content for small to mid-size businesses (including me and my team), but there are a number of us out here with other problems that don’t get nearly as much attention.
For example…
What does KEI matter when I’m working with a site that has a toolbar PageRank that rivals Google?
Why do I care about acquiring links when my CMS is scrambling the massive natural link popularity that I already have?
Web search traffic is fine, but how do we expand our reach through mobile search optimization, image search optimization, local search optimization and video SEO?
And of course, how can we implement SEO best practices throughout an organization when best practices for branding, design and development are often at odds?
My FindResolution post is largely about this last question, offering advice to enterprise SEOs to get started sooner rather than later in communicating your Q4 initiatives.
Having started optimizing at Walgreens.com, and currently managing natural search strategy for a number of blue chip clients, enterprise SEO is important to me. There are a number of less visible blogs and columns that I subscribe to that post occasionally on the topic (or in Aaron’s case, exclusively), but in general the information available on optimizing larger sites is scarce at best. Is this because enterprise SEOs are scarce as well, or because they don’t find much in the current search blog landscape that pertains to them?
The answer might be a combination of both. Nonetheless, as I am an enterprise SEO and part of the current search blog landscape, I will be looking out for the big guy, as well as their better-publicized small business counterparts. The FindResolution article is just a start.
Am I falling on deaf ears? Are there any enterprise SEOs out there? What other enterprise SEO-specific problems would you contribute to the conversation?
Bryson,
Your message comes through loud and clear. Enterprise SEO discussion has fallen to the way side in favor of SEO discussion in regards to small or medium sized business. The challenges with enterprise SEO that you mentioned in your post are only a small sampling of the stumbling blocks that come with managing a Fortune 50 SEO program. In my experience, the biggest challenges are communication and deep-seated technology infrastructures that completely shut out search engines.
Communication challenges can be overcome, but require active moderation by an engaged SEO focused on bringing together diverse stakeholders and showing them that SEO isn’t just a merketing concern, but one that impacts IT, legal, copywriting, design, merchandising, eCommerce, public relations and just about every other major corporate division.
Technology challenges come in all shapes and sizes and the first step is understanding what types of legacy systems are in place and the impact they have on the business. The second step is getting involved in the natural cycle of corporate technology turnover to ensure that requirements and SEO best practices make the “must-have” list and don’t get left on the “nice-to-have” list.
Dan
I can’t say I’m an “enterprise SEO”, although I can say that I’m currently working with a client that has a huge site, filled with tens of thousands of content pages, and hundreds of pages created daily.
I have a blog post ready about doing optimization for large content sites, but it’s still in development… You’re motivating me to finish it.
My theory why there is so much less talk about enterprise search is because there’s no much motivation for enterprise SEO’s to talk. Any “freelance SEO’ or company needs to develop more ‘relevant content’ to rank.
Most of us SEO’s aren’t landing an enterprise search gig – those companies have in-house teams. (Except for the slow and backward ones.) The in-house team doesn’t need to talk about what they are doing – they don’t get more business or recognition.
In fact, some manager or HR person will probably give them flack for talking about “proprietary search methods”….
Most CMS navigation systems are really f*cked up. The search engines must make special exceptions to large sites to index all of the content. Then you need to “fight IT” to fix it up.
(Luckily, I have relationships with developers who have deals with enterprise companies, and they send me some leads. Since they happen to be the IT team, I don’t have to fight with anyone!)