The goal of a comprehensive Enterprise SEO strategy is to make your business rank higher in search results. The digital world is a very competitive environment and businesses can appreciate the push that comes with a higher ranking.
Choosing an effective SEO strategy for corporates is a lot about showing up as or amongst the top results. Search results compete for eyeballs and being at the top is a decisive advantage.
As reports have repeatedly shown, only a small percentage of users see the second page of search results. Click-through rate drops dramatically after the top 5 search results.
Most users looking for a service or product will perform an internet search and then follow the results.
There’s your reason why optimizing for search engines is the key.
Every search is an opportunity for your business to reach out to prospective clients. You have to find ways to stand apart from the multitudes clamoring for attention. Any business, big or small, cannot afford to turn away from the enormous benefits of good search engine optimization (SEO).
There is explosive growth in the number of people using the internet to make purchases. The trend will continue in 2020 and presents great opportunities to position your business in the market.
A well-developed and well-managed strategy is essential. It is important to understand that search engine optimization is not a one-and-done deal. See it as a continued effort and investment into your business. A long-term strategy with clear and reasonable goals is an excellent approach.
SEO is a technical process, but it is not an exact science. Some changes that the SEO plan of action brings will be visible immediately. However, it will be days or weeks before apparent changes on SERP (search engine result page). There are tools to see if progress on the SEO project is headed in the right direction. We’ll talk more on the latter in a bit.
These are the broad factors that influence SEO and form the base of any healthy strategy.
An audit is usually the first step enterprise SEO agency take before starting the optimization of a website. The audit presents information related to the existing SEO, the website structure and code, and what parts can be improved and optimized.
This part focuses on website architecture, code, and similar factors that influence the rankings. Pages with clean code, good user experience, and fast loading times fare better with Google SEO. Other search engines too employ similar factors, but Google being the behemoth that it is, deserves special attention.
Optimizing for a desired geographic area has emerged as a necessity for businesses. There is no point optimizing for the USA if your business caters to India. The example mentions countries, but local SEO can be optimized down to the city and even the GPS location of the user.
part is all about the content, presentation, keywords, meta tags, etc.
Factors not on your website, but which influence search engines are covered here. Back links from other websites are a major aspect and affect how influential and trustworthy your site appears to search engines. Greater trust brings greater rankings.
The goal of search engines is to direct users to the most useful results of their queries. As such, they prefer pages most likely to have the desired results. Having quality content is the most disseminated advice. It is also an SEO tutorial cliché that ignores some finer points.
Content is king, but with caveats.
Consider an analogy. As a business, you understand the importance of advertising and getting the word out. Simply having a good product is not enough.
Good content is enjoyable for humans. It should also be clear to the machines (search engines). Give relevant pointers to the search engine so it can better understand and process the content. Match good content with a well-thought SEO template and you’re good to go.
Corporate strategizing on how to implement SEO must consider user intent. A business obviously wants to sell things. However, the user conducting the search may not always be interested in a purchase. Sometimes, the user may want to research before committing to a purchase. Or perhaps they are interested in some information.
Answering to the user’s intent can very well bring the user to your website. That allows your business to build a rapport, answer questions, and pitch your product to a prospective customer.
This applies to B2B SEO strategy as well. Business customers are likely to be more thorough with their research and have more specific questions.
For example, targeting searches for “Nike shoes” and showing off the complete inventory may not fulfill user intent. Consider the full intent, which may be “Nike shoes for flat feet”.
Understanding user intent in search query makes your ranking more reliable and useful.
Simply knowing how to do SEO is not enough. It is also important to measure the impact of the efforts and knowing that you are headed in the right direction. A very wide range of tools exist to help in planning, strategizing, and measuring impact.
Some very popular and well-regarded tools are Moz, Semrush, Ahrefs, etc. Notice that these tools are not cheap. They are powerful and immensely useful, but budget can be a concern. Cheaper tools like ScreamingFrog can be helpful in some scenarios. Additionally, specialized tools are perhaps best left to SEO experts and agencies.
If budget is an issue and your requirements are flexible, there are some pretty awesome free options available. Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster tools are a necessity for good planning. Google Trends, Answer The Public, and SmallseoTools are other free tools to consider.
These tools are generally available for free, but some features may be reserved for paid members. Yoast SEO (WordPress only) is perhaps the most popular tool in this category
For corporates, the strategy must focus on your business. A good SEO strategy often ties into a wider digital marketing strategy. Here are some steps that can be taken to finetune your approach.
Keywords lay the ground rules to SEO. Some could very well consider them to be the bread and butter of SEO. However, keep in mind that these are not all there is to do. When picking keywords, consider the competition, volume, and your budget.
Some keywords are dominated by industry behemoths. Others may have a very large number of competitors. Unless you have the budget and resources to crack these very difficult scenarios, find keywords where the competition is less intense.
These ties into your choice of keywords and both considerations will affect each other. Choose topics relevant to your niche and plan some content around them. This brings focus to short-tail keywords and can be very relevant.
Some cornerstone and major topics will cover the long-tail keywords. It is important to avoid overlap because we don’t want our own keywords and topics to be competing against each other.
SEO practices generally fall into three categories.
The most infamous of techniques, Black Hat’s goal is largely to game the search engine into allowing higher rankings for a website. Most of these strategies don’t take good practices into account and are unlikely to have any actual value to users. It’s a short-lived strategy. The technology and search engine paradigm changes continuously. A business doesn’t want to be in a situation where an algorithm update by Google or another search engine erases its gains.
This approach focuses on doing things the right way. It provides value, information, and gives value to user intent. Strategies discussed here are focused on the white hat approach.
As the name implies, this is a mix of black and white hat strategies. In many real-world scenarios, it involves practices that are frowned upon by Google and other search engines. This includes buying backlinks or, strangely enough, writing guest posts.
For a simple answer: yes, somewhat.
The answer is more complex for a more competitive setting. If your business has created and manages its website, there’s a good chance you have already done some SEO. Some strategies are simple enough to implement.
But, the question to ask is, do you have the same expertise at your disposal as a professional/agency?
An SEO company may be better suited to provide a competitive SEO strategy for corporates. Meanwhile, your business can spend its energy and resources doing what it does best – growing and managing the business.
Improving your business strategy is a multi-pronged effort. It depends on the skillful use of tools available, keywords to target, and understanding the concepts of optimization. Some strategies to employ are:
This free service puts your business on the biggest search engine and can hone local SEO.
Positive reviews and happy customers are excellent indicators for people and search engines.
A fast-loading website is looked favorably upon by users and search engines
HTTPS gets better ranking.
Helps improve page speed.
To better target search engines.
Optimizing the content and the webpage to be more interesting to search engines and humans. Keyword research, optimization strategy for content, and catering to user intent are essential strategies.
This involves getting a better reputation for the website. This strategy includes acquiring backlinks from relevant sources, encouraging positive customer reviews, and a better social media presence.
Apart from technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO, b2b SEO requires more skillful planning. Taking a multi-dimensional approach that highlights the business is the way to go.
Rather than simply planning for a keyword, b2b SEO can take the approach of targeting keyword clusters. Prioritize some keywords and create content around them. Understanding search intent with keywords is important. By answering the intent of a search, businesses can gain potential leads.
In a b2b environment, it is possible to take a hierarchical approach and a hub & spoke approach to content. This makes it possible to start simple and approach very complex topics. These may not be useful for a wider audience, but b2b strategy can afford to be more complex.
An SEO strategy plan revolves around setting up a blueprint to follow for the optimization process. It involves:
Understanding the current website structure and its approach to optimization.
Understanding your audience and finding keywords relevant to them. Includes content optimization.
Look at your competitor’s approach and see if there’s something to learn.
Continued checks to ensure that the SEO plan is delivering results.
The first step for an SEO strategy for corporate is an audit. This is to understand where the website does well and what it lacks. This can include:
If you are looking for the Corporate SEO Agency to show your business in competitive Google results, we can help you do all of it.
For more information on Corporate Search Engine Optimization services, please contact our experts by clicking here; Contact Us.
