Archive for category: Online Marketing and Website Development

Whether you are B2B, eCommerce, manufacturing, SaaS, a university, or any other large enterprise, one of the main benefits of SEO is its ability to build a self-sustaining flywheel of traffic by using more and more evergreen content.

Once you reach the point where more of your content ranks on page 1 of Google, you can start celebrating, especially since it will be easier to rank future pages. But that doesn’t mean that you can just coast – your competitors are always nipping at your heels.

Enterprise SEO efforts need to be consistently applied in order to exponentially grow traffic, leads, and sales.

That’s why I’ve put together 7 tips for creating enterprise SEO rockstar content that educates, converts, and scales.

1. SEO Quick Wins (Striking Distance Keywords)

It’s no secret that SEO takes some time to gain traction. It’s common to break even on your investment around 12 months. While it takes time, it’s worth sticking with it due to all the long-term benefits it provides.

SEO will yield results for you well into the future, and you’ll depend less on paid ads. It will also boost your other marketing channels by generating more email subscriptions.

The good news is that you don’t have to wait an entire year to start seeing some results.

That’s where SEO ‘Quick Wins’ come into play. These are some quick tweaks you do to your existing content for speedy boosts in traffic.

My favorite quick win is to identify ‘striking distance’ keywords.

The chances are high that you have a lot of your content ranking on pages 2 and 3 of Google. That’s quite common for my new clients, and they often see little to no traffic from those pages.

I view these pages as within striking distance of SEO traffic.

You’ll need to identify the 1 keyword that each page can use to gain more traction to rise to page 1 (or higher on page 1). Use a keyword research tool to find these striking distance keywords. Next, you’ll need to hit your content with what I call the SEO ‘one-two punch’:

1. First, inject the exact top keyword into five content fields:

• Meta title
• Meta description
• H1 tag
• The copy below your H1
• The URL slug

2. Next, boost your page’s authority by linking high-authority internal pages to it

NOTE: Don’t forget to 301 redirect the old url to the new one (since you changed it).

Implementing this one-two punch can provide a quick boost to your rankings on Google. Within a couple of months, you’ll start generating higher ranking and additional traffic from content that was hiding from searchers.

2. Competitor Research (Direct + Indirect)

Next, you’ll need to look at what your competitors are doing with their SEO. If you never pay attention to the competition, you won’t know how you compare to them.

Also, analyzing competitors can give you valuable insights to incorporate into your strategy. For example, you may find that competitors are doing certain things that you aren’t. Here are a few things to pay attention to when looking at your competitors:

• Their UI & UX since this is becoming more of an SEO focus

1. Url folder/directory structure
2. Main and footer menu links

• From what sites are they getting quality links (where you aren’t)

1. Highlights relevant sites you could reach out to get a quality link
2. Highlights relevant sites you could build industry relationships with

• From what keywords they are successfully getting SEO traffic (where you aren’t)

1. Informs new content article creation
2. Informs different keyword targets for existing pages

A lot of clients make the mistake of only analyzing their direct competitors. If you want to cover all your bases, you should look at your indirect competitors, too.

A direct competitor sells a product similar to yours. An indirect competitor doesn’t sell what you do, but they’re in the same industry. Many indirect competitors are media sites and publications. It’s essential to pay attention to them because they may rank for similar keywords.

3. Site Organization Recommendations

You’ll want to make sure that Google has visibility of all your web pages – or it’s all for naught. That’s why you’ll need to organize your site in a way that makes sense to Google. Otherwise, you’ll confuse the algorithm and won’t show up in search results.

That’s the last thing that you want, so here’s how to organize your website:

• Sitemap.XML File. Your sitemap lets search engines know about all the pages on your website. It lets Google know the order of importance of your pages, recent updates, and more. To ensure Google has visibility of you, upload your sitemap to Google Search Console. Bonus points for creating an HTML version as well.
• URL Directories/Folders. You’ll need to have your URL structure immaculate so that Google can crawl your site with ease. Order everything hierarchically to keep everything in place. Also, use crucial SEO keywords in your URL folders. Also, it’s best not to split your site into subdomains – as that can spread your authority too thin (rather than aggregating it on one site: better for SEO).
• Site Navigation. It should be effortless to navigate your site for users but also for Google. Ensure that your main navigation bar has a nice layout with About and Contact pages. Also, use linked breadcrumbs to improve navigation. Breadcrumbs keep track of each page a user visits. It looks like this: Home > About Us > Our Mission.
• Internal Linking. You’ll want to find areas where you can link to your other blog articles. That creates a spider web of interrelated content on your website. That’s great for SEO and encourages readers to click on related articles.

If you have all your ducks in a row here, you won’t run into issues with confusing search engine algorithms.

4. “Local” Landing Page Keyword Strategy

If you have multiple physical locations, you’ll want to use some “local SEO” techniques in your strategy for quality traffic. Local SEO refers to targeting local search queries in your area.

For enterprise-level companies, you’ll want to separately target each of your locations. That will increase your chances of being locally relevant and gaining more traffic. For local SEO keywords, you’ll want to include the location. An example would be, “car rental Green Bay WI.”

In that query, it’s evident that the user needs to rent a car in the Green Bay area. What’s great about local SEO is keywords often have more purchase intent than others. The fact that they include the location in their search shows that they are likely lower in the sales funnel.

5. Technical SEO Site Audit

Next on the list is a thorough technical SEO audit of your website. It’s where you take a look at key technical aspects that affect your search engine visibility.

Here are some of the factors that you need to audit:

• Fixing broken links, images, and JavaScript. “Broken anything” means bad news for your SEO. Broken links and lines of code confuse the algorithm, so you need to fix them ASAP. If you find any broken links, know that broken internal links hurt more than external ones. Strive to fix your internal links first for this reason.
• Images that are missing alt tags. Every image needs an ‘alt tag’ describing the image’s content. Google can’t see pictures, so it needs a description of what you’re trying to show.
• Page speed issues. Your page needs to load quicker than it takes you to blink. Not only will slow websites frustrate customers, but Google ignores them. If you don’t pass the Core Web Vitals test, you’ll get overlooked.
• 404 Pages and 302 redirects. Every time you see a 404 Not Found or 302 (temporary) redirect, use a 301 (permanent) redirect. Google prefers 301 redirects because they pass the domain/page authority test.
  Among others…

Fixing crucial technical errors can provide a quick boost to your SEO.

6. Article Keyword Research + Editorial Calendar

Playing the SEO game is all about releasing stellar content. You also need to remain consistent with your release schedule. That’s why you’ll need to develop an editorial calendar to keep you on track.

Regularly releasing blogs is a great way to see continuous boosts in traffic. Just make sure that you base these articles on solid keyword research (popular, relevant keywords that aren’t too hard to rank for).

Use your competitor keyword research, and supplement with others you think of along the way. Also, don’t neglect your content from the past; updating old articles (that are already getting some SEO traffic) can give you a new boost.

7. Backlink Outreach Strategy

Lastly, you’ll want to include link-building as a core part of your strategy. In addition to finding spots for internal links, you’ll need external links (other sites linking to you), too.

Adding links from high authority sites is a great way to give your content a power boost. If your content is linked from pages that Google views as trustworthy, it will boost your authority too.

For me, the first place to start link-building is with email outreach. I use the ‘skyscraper’ technique for email outreach. That’s where you find high-ranking pages in your niche with desirable backlinks.

Your goal is to acquire these backlinks for yourself. How do you do that?

To outdo their content, provide more value. Dive into more detail, offer new insights, and include images and videos. Once it’s evident that your content is superior, it’s time to email the owner of the website you want to link. Politely let them know that your content adds more value and that you’d like to link to their page.

Enterprise SEO That Scales

Those are the 7 core components of a successful enterprise SEO strategy. Remember, it’s about quality over quantity. A few solid backlinks will do more good for you than 1,000 poor ones.

The same is valid with your content. Focus on releasing SEO optimized articles that aim to educate and convert above all else. You want to be intentional and consistent with your SEO tactics to achieve the best results.

Bio/byline: Miles Anthony Smith, a tech keynote speaker and SEO consultant, delights in delivering invaluable content to people hungry for answers to their most vexing questions or challenges.