For many businesses, feeling overwhelmed by SEO best practices, endless checklists, and heaps of data is all too familiar—especially when competitors seem to be growing faster than ever. As SEO evolves, navigating these challenges is becoming even more complex.
Driving sustainable growth as an enterprise brand is even more difficult, with limited resources, small teams, and ever-changing SERP algorithms making it hard to know where to focus your efforts.
Without clear results, getting executive buy-in can become a struggle, leaving you wondering if you’re focusing on the right areas.
We’ll dive into how top SEOs at some of the world’s most successful traffic-driving websites use real data to align their teams and drive growth—without relying on guesswork.
Why This Webinar Is a Must-Attend Event
SEO success isn’t just about following best practices anymore. In this session, you’ll learn how to leverage data-driven insights to cut through the noise and implement changes that deliver real impact.
In this webinar, we’ll cover:
– Why traditional SEO best practices might be holding you back, and how data can reveal where you should really focus.
– How top companies identify and prioritize optimizations that deliver the biggest impact, so you can fast-track your growth.
– Proven strategies for aligning your team and gaining executive buy-in, to ensure consistent and effective SEO efforts.
Expert Insights From Chris Sachs and Jeff Smith
This session will be led by Chris Sachs and Jeff Smith of seoClarity, breaking down five actionable tactics to help you unlock your growth, and the strategies behind them. Chris and Jeff have worked with over 6,000 enterprise brands, and now they’re ready to share their insights with you, to unlock your full SEO potential.
Who Should Attend?
This webinar is ideal for:
– Enterprise SEO professionals looking to achieve meaningful growth using proven methods.
– Marketing managers seeking to align their team around data-driven strategies and get executive buy-in more easily.
– Executives who want to understand how SEO can drive measurable results for their brand.
Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
After the presentation, join Chris and Jeff for a live Q&A session, where you’ll have the opportunity to ask specific questions about the tactics shared and how they can be applied to your unique challenges.
Even if you can’t make it that day, reserve your seat, and we’ll send you a recording so you don’t miss out on these valuable insights.
Google updates can cause uncertainty, confusion, and fear amongst non-SEO and non-marketing business stakeholders.
As an industry, we like to fixate on the winners and losers of any given update, and typically, websites (and categories) that take the larger hits gain more traction and shares.
As a result, the algorithm update horror stories also tend to end up in C-level inbox circulation more frequently.
When communicating to wider business stakeholders, creating frames of reference is essential for ensuring that your message is clear, relevant, and resonates with the audience.
From experience, there are five key elements to creating effective frames of reference for client C-level and non-marketing stakeholders.
Component
Notes
Contextualize
Start with the big picture and relate ideas to familiar concepts. Make this “real” for who you’re communicating with.
Use Relevant Data
Present data in terms of ROI, benchmarks, or impact that matters to the audience.
Simplify Complex Ideas
Break down information, avoid jargon, and use visuals where possible. Keep it simple, as going too complex or complicated with visuals can cause other complications.
Highlight Impact
Emphasize tangible business outcomes and use scenarios to illustrate effects. (E.g., a reduction in Search visibility in Segment A could lead to an X% decrease in MQLs over Y months based on the current website CVR.)
Be Consistent
Align with business strategy and reinforce key messages.
You may also choose to use external, neutral sources that support or validate your communications.
For example, I tend to use a lot of Search Engine Journal’s coverage of Webmaster Hangouts and point to direct quotes from Googlers.
Communicating Updates, Even If They Don’t Matter
Let’s revisit a point I made at the beginning of this article: We can’t assume that we are the client’s sole source of SEO or Google-related news.
When speaking with the CMOs who helped shape these initial articles, one key issue they highlighted was the lack of clarity around Google updates in their past engagements.
They specifically mentioned challenges in understanding updates like RankBrain and initiatives like Hidden Gems.
It’s our responsibility to ensure that our C-level stakeholders are not only informed about changes in the search landscape but also understand how these changes impact them directly.
This proactive approach helps prevent any confusion or the impression that we’re not adequately addressing and mitigating risks for their organization.
The impact of these updates can vary greatly across different sectors – some may experience significant ranking shifts, while others might see only minor adjustments.
Additionally, Google employs systems that, while not typically labeled as “updates,” still play a vital role in shaping search results.
For instance, RankBrain, an AI system, aids Google in interpreting the intent behind queries, especially those it hasn’t encountered before.
Meanwhile, initiatives like Hidden Gems are designed to bring lesser-known but high-quality content to the forefront.
If we don’t make these distinctions for the client stakeholders, we leave them open to interpretation and potential incorrect/contradictory information online or from other vendors.
The 30,000ft View
The 30,000ft view in marketing communications refers to a high-level, strategic perspective on how Google updates or changes in the search landscape can potentially affect – or have started to affect – the organization.
The focus is on the big picture, considering the overarching goals and how
Key Updates
Highlight the most important developments and how they affect the overarching business strategy. This could be changes in the market, internal progress, or shifts in priorities.
Recommended Actions
Outline the next steps, focusing on what needs to be done, who’s responsible, and how these actions align with activities already in-flight (and planned), and the activities of other marketing channels.
Implementation Timeline
Provide a clear timeline with key milestones and deadlines. This also includes a follow-up plan to ensure everything stays on track and any adjustments are made as needed.
The above can be communicated effectively through DARCI and RAG visuals.
DARCI and RACI are both frameworks used in project management, but they serve slightly different purposes and offer varying levels of detail.
DARCI builds on the RACI framework and adds a layer by including a Decision-Maker role.
Decision-Maker.
Accountable.
Responsible.
Consulted.
Informed.
This is particularly useful in more complex projects where decision-making is crucial and needs to be clearly defined.
DARCI is often used in more complex or higher-stakes projects where the clarity of decision-making is critical, while RACI is sufficient for more straightforward tasks.
In a client/agency environment, the Decision Maker could well be your main point of contact or the client SEO lead, supported by the agency.
Visual Communications
Torino Scales
Organizations like NASA traditionally use the Torino Scale to assess the potential threat of near-Earth objects (NEOs), like asteroids and comets.
At the April 2024 edition of BrightonSEO, I introduced them as a tool for communicating and assessing the “potential impact hazard” of Google updates, emerging technologies, and changes to legislation…you could visually map anything that you would identify through a PESTLE analysis on a Torino Scale.
Torino Scales can be a useful, visual tool in communicating potential risk.
For example, a high rating on this scale would indicate significant potential changes to organic search performance, warranting close attention and possible strategic adjustment.
As this is a visual aid, you can update it between meetings and provide context in your scheduled stakeholder meetings as to why certain things have been upgraded or downgraded in terms of risk to the business and organic search performance.
Google Updates Vs. Seasonality
Seasonality affects most businesses, and sometimes, non-marketing stakeholders can confuse seasonal trends with a decline in organic performance or the adverse effects of a Google update between the periods being compared.
The only way to resolve this is through education, and by using year-on-year traffic and sales data, you can show consumer and market trends.
Screenshot from author, August 2024
Overlaying data in this way helps educate stakeholders who may not be familiar with the consumer acquisition side of the business or are external consultants with specialisms outside of marketing.
Showing the average demonstrates anomalies in the data outside of the general seasonality and helps set performance expectations.
This data also helps educate stakeholders on why certain SEO (and other) marketing activities are being prioritized to reach the highest volume of audience members showing intent.
Visualizing traffic or revenue data over time, even at a high level, can be invaluable in educating non-marketing stakeholders within the business. In the example I provided earlier, aside from anomalies, there are consistent month-on-month declines in June, July, and October.
Many industries operate with a certain rhythm, and this visualization helps illustrate that pattern.
By understanding these natural fluctuations, businesses can avoid misallocating resources to identify root causes when, in reality, the issue may simply be that a smaller percentage of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is actively buying or converting during those periods.
Communications Delivery
Timely, concise, and relevant updates build trust and empower C-level leaders to make well-informed decisions that can drive long-term success for both the client and the agency.
There are several ways, outside of the standard reporting and account management cadences, that allow you to communicate algorithm updates and other market factors effectively.
Centralized Wikis
By consolidating the latest updates, best practices, algorithm changes, and case studies in one easily accessible location, agencies can provide clients with real-time insights into factors that may impact their digital presence.
These Wikis also then serve a dual purpose, as anyone new to the business (or client) has a repository they can refer to for back history and information that otherwise may have been lost or buried in the BAU comms of the relationship.
Instant Messengers (IMs)
I’m not a big fan of normalizing IMs for client communications, as they tend to create single points of failure/stress points on an account.
To me, they can serve the purpose of delivering a message quickly and effectively, with further information to follow – much like Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride.
By creating dedicated channels or groups for each client or specific topics, agencies can ensure that relevant information is delivered directly and promptly.
These updates can then be expanded on through calls, or more comprehensive updates.
Clear Is Kind, And So Is Brief
Clear communication is challenging in SEO. You have a lot to cut through — not only the complexities of your work internally but also the messaging that people consume externally.
Frames of reference play a critical role in ensuring your communication is clear and delivers your intended message. C-level executives and non-marketing stakeholders are a specific audience with unique challenges and intents. You must communicate with them in a way that serves their needs.
Approach communication as a service that helps key stakeholders make informed decisions. This approach builds trust and helps you advocate for impactful resource allocation.
There’s a lot of well-meaning PPC advice out there. This advice often finds its way to bosses/clients who ask, “Why aren’t we doing ___?”
The problem is most of these studies and data sets are focused around ecommerce. Enterprise accounts (even enterprise ecommerce) will behave differently than their non-enterprise counterparts.
There are a few reasons why there’s a shortage of enterprise advice:
Ad networks (particularly Google) tend to focus on ecommerce.
It’s easier to build statistically relevant data sets for ecommerce because there’s more data than lead gen.
Enterprise brands tend to have a lot of red tape to get through, so it’s harder to share what works.
We’re going to invest a bit of time digging into enterprise PPC, and how to set yourself up for success in your account as well as how to communicate that success to stakeholders.
Like anything in PPC, it’s important to balance this advice with what you know is actually important for your account.
The Checklist
We’ll be diving into each of these in-depth, but if you only have time for a quick skim, here are the main questions to ask yourself:
Have I built in enough time to launch the campaign?
Do I trust my CRM set-up and my internal processes?
How much flexibility do I have with technical implementation?
Which channels will meet with creative approval?
Did I opt out of all auto-generated content (and should I fight to let some stay)?
Are my budget pacing rules in line with my finance team’s expectations?
Have I set myself up for all markets I need to serve (national/domestic)?
Will I be able to pull reports on metrics my stakeholders are expecting?
Have I Built Enough Time To Launch The Campaign?
Whether you’re building for an enterprise or an SMB (small/medium business), ad platforms take time to stand up. This is due to ad platform verification and learning periods.
As a general rule, you will need to build in at least one to two weeks for account verification. This is required for everyone and is a safety measure to ensure the ad account represents the business it’s going to be promoting.
Ad networks (particularly Google) are fairly strict about double serving (i.e. you can’t have more than one ad account targeting potential traffic). The verification process (done through postcard) is a way to ensure your account is assigned to you and protects you from bad actors setting up another ad account targeting your business.
Beyond verification, you’ll need at least five to seven days minimum for your accounts to clear learning periods. These are for ad networks to understand your account/campaign and make meaningful budget allocation choices. During this time, you may need to use volume or impression share bidding due to the lack of conversions.
We’ll go into conversions in depth later in the post, but there are some pitfalls for brand-new enterprise accounts to avoid:
Using any smart (conversion) based bidding until you have at least 60 conversions in a 30 day period.
Setting up your account as a “Smart” campaign account (you need to create your account without a campaign).
If you’re adding a campaign to an existing account, you’ll be able to bypass most of these items, however, you still want to make sure you build in time for:
Confirming conversion actions are correct.
Learning period for new campaigns (still takes five days).
Ad approval process (two to three days).
Do I Trust My CRM/Internal Processes?
Ad networks are moving away from offline conversions, which means it’s even more important than ever that your CRMs are able to connect with your ad networks.
Screenshot from author, August 2024
Using Enhanced Conversions With CRMs
There’s a lot that can go wrong with CRM set-up and management, and those mistakes can skew lead scoring and reporting. Make sure that you trust how leads are received and tagged before beginning any serious spend.
It’s worth noting that Google (and other ad platforms) can take in the customer value (and lifetime value) of a client. So you’ll want to consider passing that info through as revenue and profit-based bidding tends to lead to better results than just conversions.
Image from Optmyzr, August 2024
Image from Optmyzr, August 2024
However, the CRM is just one piece of the puzzle. You also need to make sure your internal teams are prepared to handle the new leads and tag them correctly.
Depending on how your team is incented, they may put in dummy data or inaccurate data to stop their co-workers from “taking” their deals
How Much Flexibility Do I Have With Technical Implementation?
One of the most insidious parts of enterprise setup is clearing IT permissions.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is the easiest/safest way to go through tracking pixels because once you get that installed, you can add any new pixels without needing to touch the site.
However, if you’re not allowed to touch the main site at all, you may need to look at landing page solutions or lead gen/call ads.
Here are the main considerations to be prepared to answer when helping your IT team get on board with implementing entities for you.
Privacy compliance requires that users be asked for consent to track. Even if there’s no conversion tracking, there are still cookies to remember preferences. This is needed for everyone, and if they’re going to help you get that set up, it will cause no performance issues to include conversion tracking pixels.
Plan to test conversion actions and build in rules around spam leads (excluding “1234567890” as a phone number, “test” in any field, etc.). Additionally, you may need to ask for help configuring revenue tracking in analytics/CRMs. Make sure you ask for exactly what you need and include documentation on why.
In an ideal world, you’d have your IT team set you up with consent mode. However, if you can’t, pushing for GTM is an acceptable compromise.
If your IT teams will budge at all, you may need to opt for auto or smart bidding. This means opting for max clicks or target impression share with a bid cap or manual bidding with bid adjustments.
Which Channels Will Get Creative Approval?
Different channels are going to have different tools for approval. Google is really useful at allowing for both control and leaning into AI.
And when you lean into AI, you’re able to use brand safety standards. Additionally, there are placement controls so that you can ensure brand alignment. These include:
Brand standards for AI.
Placement reports for exclusions.
Ad previews.
Microsoft also allows full control and allows you to use Copilot to generate images and videos. LinkedIn, by and large, is in full control.
Meta is the one with the most risk for control because it tends to require more automation for performance gains. That said, all brands can avail themselves of more rigid controls.
Finally, there are several visual platforms that allow you to use either influencer, user-generated, or other content for ad placements. When you’re working with humans for videos, it’s on you to ensure that they meet your own brand standards.
So it’s less a question about brand standards in terms of fonts, colors, and design, and more a question of, will you be able to secure the talent for the video you want to produce?
Did I Opt Out Of All Things Auto (& Should I Fight To Keep Some)?
Most ad platforms will, by default, opt you into expansion of placements, expansion of traffic, as well as new creatives. You, as the practitioner, will need to decide which ones to keep, if any.
In most cases, on the enterprise side, none of them will fall under compliance, so you will want to opt out of all of them.
Here Is A List Of The Most Common Pitfalls In Terms Of Automated Settings
Automated created assets: Text, image, and video creative that gets created and added to your ads based on ad rank and placement type. Opt out of this in the account settings, as well as in the asset section of your campaign menu.
Automatically applied recommendations: These can be useful and should be reviewed. but not applied. Make sure you turn them off in account settings and review them in recommendations.
URL expansion in performance max: While this is a reasonable stand-in for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), it’s important to remember that you won’t have the same level of control. This means your SEO-exclusive pages (blog, sitemap, etc) might get pulled in. Just be sure to leave that unchecked.
Setting your bidding to a bidding strategy you don’t intend: Because ad platforms want you to use conversion-based bidding, manual and automatic bidding are hidden in the drop-down menu.
Are My Budget Pacing Rules In Line With Finance’s Expectations?
It’s critical to remember that stated budgets aren’t guarantees of actual spend. Ad platforms will do their best to average out across 30.4 days of your stated daily budget.
All budgets should be able to fit enough interactions in their advertising schedule to get at least one lead/sale on paper. In practice, this translates to my bids not exceeding 10% of the daily budget rule because 10% is a really good conversion rate for non-branded.
However, starting a new campaign and account to lead to even more fluctuation. As a campaign is ramping up, you may have low- or high-spending days. This is normal but might cause finance to worry.
As a general rule, using portfolio bidding strategies is a great way to ensure bid caps and floors for all campaign types. However, if you’re using SA360, you’ll also have access to these for Performance Max campaigns (not available in “regular” Google Ads).
Whether you use portfolio bidding strategies to ensure auction price stability or not, remember that any major change to bidding strategies (including budget, goal, and type) will initiate a learning period. If a campaign is on the newer side, it might not have the conversions to quickly clear this learning period.
As a general rule, it’s a good idea to ask for about 20% more budget than you anticipate needing in the first 90 days of a campaign, which can be utilized for testing or to shore up any fluctuation in new campaigns.
Have I Set Myself Up For All Markets I Intend To Service (International/Domestic)?
Managing multiple markets is always tricky, and if you’re targeting more than just one country, it gets even more complex. Different people search and think in different ways, and if you take the same campaign that worked in one market, it may struggle in another.
Add to this the different costs of living and internet connectivity in different markets, and there’s a lot to think about before getting to translations.
As a general rule, you should not include more than one country per ad account so you can run the schedule based on that country. Additionally, if a market is a growing market, you don’t want that bad data averaging into your thriving markets.
On translating your campaigns: make sure you can service any language you’re translating into. Even though there are great deals to be had on non-English ad buys, the inability to service those customers will turn it into waste.
Make sure you know the different privacy compliance regulations for each market. Any campaigns targeting outside the US will likely need consent mode enabled.
Will I Be Able To Report On The Metrics My Stakeholders Are Expecting?
On a similar note, many are used to thinking of PPC as fast-paced and perfect reporting. This is no longer the case. It’s really important that you set out a framework from the beginning for which metrics your stakeholders will hold you accountable.
If they care about return on ad spend, conversion tracking must be set up correctly. For brands that refuse to allow third-party integrations on their sites, this may cause tracking and reporting issues.
As a general rule, getting buy-in for conversion tracking isn’t as hard as getting CRM/sales data to sync up.
However, if you can clear that hurdle, you’ll be able to report on lead quality as well as average customer value. Without that information, reports will be limited to objective CPA, conversion rate, and ad-specific metrics.
I like getting stakeholders invested in impression share and understanding how much impression share is lost due to rank or budget so they have a clear understanding of what their choices mean for the account.
Finally, try to work with the organic team to link up Search Console so you can share organic reports between teams.
Final Takeaways
Whether you’re setting up campaigns for enterprises or SMBs, there are some core focal areas for every PPC practitioner.
Hopefully, you found this a helpful start on your own enterprise PPC checklist.
More resources:
Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock
For enterprise multi-location businesses, the alignment of your SEO strategy and business strategy is crucial for success.
Whether the business is operating a franchise model, a retail chain, or multiple hubs operating as a service area business, your approach to local SEO needs to be tailored to meet your specific goals. It also needs to be scalable and efficient enough to be maintained while returning long-term ROI.
Another key requirement is that your content approach produces enough value for users, and Google, so that it falls above the indexing quality threshold.
This means going beyond the standard best practices for local SEO and creating a local SEO campaign that drives brand visibility and conversions sustainably.
While the basics of multi-location management are the same, your approach needs to work with the overall strategy and align with the overall business objectives.
For example, the strategy franchise business with multiple operators running service businesses in multiple towns, cities, and states will differ from a big-box store with hundreds of locations in multiple states.
Success metrics also vary. Typically, the KPIs for enterprise local SEO campaigns fall into one of the following categories:
To funnel local intent searches to the online store for direct delivery, or future interaction with local stores.
A combination of the two above.
Depending on what the business determines as “success” will greatly impact your approach to creating a choice architecture for users, and how you report on success.
Approaches To Bulk Local Page Creation
Over the years, our approach to describing and producing multiple area service pages has changed.
A decade ago, we’d describe low-quality versions with small amends and largely the same content as doorway pages, something Google moved to devalue over time.
In more recent years, with the increased popularity of programmatic SEO, or pSEO, this method has become a popular go-to for creating these pages at scale.
Programmatic Content Creation For Local Service Pages
For businesses that operate hundreds or thousands of locations, programmatic or partial-programmatic content creation can be an attractive option.
Programmatic SEO, or pSEO, allows you to scalably generate large volumes of content. This approach has helped a number of businesses scale, but it can also lead to problems if the pages being created don’t create enough of a unique value proposition for Google to invest resources.
If we look at two common website architectures for local service pages, we typically have either a central service page and then local service pages, or a central page that acts as a gateway to the locale service pages – such as a store locator.
Image from author, July 2024
Depending on your business type, you will likely choose one structure over the other by default, but both can come with their challenges.
With a central service page structure you can run into issues with creating unique value propositions and ensuring each page has enough differentiation and falls above Google’s quality thresholds for indexing.
The store locator page approach can cause issues with PageRank distribution and how you internally link to the different locations. Most user-friendly store location applications don’t load HTML links, so while visually linking to all the stores, Google can’t crawl the links.
A common issue with both of these approaches, however, is how you work to capture “wider” searches around the locations.
Local Content Value Propositions
Local pages are at their most helpful when they tailor best to the location.
Historically, I’ve seen companies do this by “bloating” pages with additional information about the area, such as a paragraph or two on local infrastructure, schools, and sports teams – none of which is relevant if you’re trying to get people to visit your hardware store or enquire about your home-visit security fitting services.
It’s also not enough to just change the location name in the URL, H1, Title Tag, and throughout the body copy.
When this happens, Google effectively sees near-duplicate pages with very little differentiation in the value proposition that is relevant to the user query.
A symptom of this is when pages are shown as not indexed in Search Console, and Google is either choosing to override the user-declared canonical, or they’re stuck in either the Discovered or Crawled, not currently indexed phases.
There will always be a level of duplication across local service and location pages. Google is fine with this. Just because something is duplicated on multiple pages doesn’t mean it’s low quality.
Creating Value Proposition Differentiations
This is where I tend to favor the partially programmatic approach.
Programmatic can fulfill 70%(+) of the page’s content; it can cover your service offerings, pricing, and company information for those specific locations.
The remaining percentage of the page is manual but allows you to create the value proposition differentiation against other pages.
Let’s say you’re a multi-state courier service, and you have many routes to market, and your main distribution hubs in Texas are in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, and you want to target potential customers in Euless.
The services you offer for Euless are the same as what you offer customers in Pflugerville, Kyle, and Leander – so those parts of each location page will be the same on all of them.
But Euless is served by the Dallas hub and the others by the Austin hub – this is your first content differentiation point to highlight.
You can then use data from within the business, and keyword research, to flesh out these pages with travel time data.
Customers looking for courier services in Euless might be looking for Euless to Austin, or Euless to Houston services – so building this into the local page and having a time estimation to popular locations from the destination shows local specialism and helps customers better understand the service and plan.
Your business data will also help you identify the customer types. For example, many jobs booked in Euless might be for university students moving out to live on campus, so this is again more localized targeting to the customer base that can be included on the page.
Internal Linking
When it comes to internal linking, the use of pseudo-HTML sitemaps can help with this and not only act as clean internal links through the pages, but also be beneficial to users and allow you to create other landing pages to target county or area level searches.
Ten years ago on a property finder page, the team I worked with built out a page structure pattern of County > Town/City whilst pulling through relevant locations into the landing pages along the way.
Screenshot from author, July 2024
Visually, this just acted as a more “manual” method for users to filter from the non-location specific pages towards their local areas.
I come across a number of multinationals and nationals who link back to their company homepage, sometimes with a parameter to highlight which GBP the user has clicked through from – but this is both poor web architecture and poor user choice architecture.
If a user is looking for a service/store in XYZ, they don’t want a homepage or generic information page if they click on the website link.
In terms of user-choice architecture, from here a user could navigate to a different store or page and miss key information relevant to them, that otherwise could have driven a sale or enquiry.
Google’s Local Algorithms
In addition to Google’s core algorithm and more general Search ranking signals, Google has released updates specifically targeting local queries. The two main ones are:
Pigeon 2014: This update aimed to provide more relevant and accurate local search results by tying local search results more closely to general Search ranking signals. User proximity (as a signal) also received a boost.
Possum 2016: This update aimed to enhance the ranking of businesses located just outside city limits, making search results more location-specific to the user’s proximity to the business. Address-based filtering was also introduced to avoid duplicate listings for businesses sharing the same address (such as virtual offices).
These updates make it harder for businesses to spoof being present in a local market, and potentially not offering a value proposition that matches or meets the needs of the searcher.
Anecdotally, Google seems to prioritize ranking businesses that provide the most comprehensive information.
This includes opening dates, onsite dining options (if applicable), special opening hours, business categories, service listings, and defining the service area and service types.
Google Business Profile Importance
Following the guidelines is a must, but even then, you can fall foul of Google’s auto-detection checks.
Working with an international software company, that has multiple offices across Asia, a number are rented floors in shared offices.
We assume that occasionally, Google detects the shared addresses and mistakes them as being a virtual office/fake address, which is something the Possum algorithm update looked to reduce.
When you’re working with an enterprise organization with a large number of physical locations, the approach to Google Business Profile management can become more complex through internal stakeholder management and understanding how GBPs fit into, and contribute, to the overall objectives and ecosystem.
Reporting GBP Data
Depending on your objectives, how you report success will vary between campaigns.
From the Google API, you can access listing-level data for your Impressions, and a breakdown of different user interactions (infer impressions and clicks from GSC mirror metrics).
Atypical Google Business Profile reporting dashboard. (Screenshot from author, July 2024)
In my opinion, any business operating across multiple towns, cities, counties, or states needs to have some form of GBP monitoring and reporting visibility outside of tracking parameterized URLs in Google Search Console and other analytics platforms (assuming you’re using parameters on your GBP website links).
That’s where Ahrefs’ in-built AI translator may be a better fit for your project, solving both problems in one go:
GIF from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, July 2024
It offers automatic translations for 40+ languages and dialects in 180+ countries, with more coming soon.
However, the biggest benefit is that you’ll get a handful of alternative translations to select from, giving you greater insight into the nuances of how people search in local markets.
For example, there are over a dozen ways to say ‘popcorn’ across all Spanish-speaking countries and dialects. The AI translator is able to detect the most popular variation in each country.
Screenshot from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, July 2024
This, my friends, is quality international SEO on steroids.
2. Identify The Dominant Search Intent Of Any Keyword
Search intent is the internal motivator that leads someone to look for something online. It’s the reason why they’re looking and the expectations they have about what they’d like to find.
The intent behind many keywords is often obvious. For example, it’s not rocket science to infer that people expect to purchase a product when searching any of these terms:
Screenshot from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, July 2024
However, there are many keywords where the intent isn’t quite so clear-cut.
For instance, take the keyword “waterbed.” We could try to guess its intent, or we could use AI to analyze the top-ranking pages and give us a breakdown of the type of content most users seem to be looking for.
Gif from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, July 2024
For this particular keyword, 89% of results skew toward purchase intent. So, it makes sense to create or optimize a product page for this term.
For the keyword “arrow fletchings,” there is a mix of different types of content ranking, like informational posts, product pages, and how-to guides.
Screenshot from Ahrefs Identify Intents, July 2024
If your brand or product lent itself to one of the popular content types, that’s what you could plan in your content calendar.
Or, you could use the data here to outline a piece of content that covers all the dominant intents in a similar proportion to what’s already ranking:
~40% providing information and answers to common questions.
~30% providing information on fletching products and where to buy them.
~20% providing a process for a reader to make their own fletchings.
And so on.
For enterprises, the value of outsourcing this to AI is simple. If you guess and get it wrong, you’ll have to allocate your limited SEO funds toward fixing the mistake instead of working on new content.
It’s better to have data on your side confirming the intent of any keyword before you publish content with an intent misalignment, let alone rolling it out over multiple websites or languages!
3. Easily Identify Missing Topics Within Your Content
Topical gap analysis is very important in modern SEO. We’ve evolved well beyond the times when simply adding keywords to your content was enough to make it rank.
However, it’s not always quick or easy to identify missing topics within your content. Generative AI can help plug gaps beyond what most content-scoring tools can identify.
For example, ChatGPT can analyze your text against competitors’ to find missing topics you can include. You could prompt it to do something like the following:
Screenshot from ChatGPT, July 2024
SIDENOTE. You’ll need to add your content and competitors’ content to complete the prompt.
Here’s an example of the list of topics it identifies:
Screenshot from ChatGPT, July 2024
And the scores and analysis it can provide for your content:
Screenshot from ChatGPT, July 2024
This goes well beyond adding words and entities, like what most content scoring tools suggest.
The scores on many of these tools can easily be manipulated, providing higher scores the more you add certain terms; even if, from a conceptual standpoint, your content doesn’t do a good job of covering a topic.
If you want the detailed analysis offered by ChatGPT but available in bulk and near-instantly… then good news. We’re working on Content Master, a content grading solution that automates topic gap analysis.
I can’t reveal too much about this yet, but it has a big USP compared to most existing content optimization tools: its content score is based on topic coverage—not just keywords.
Screenshot from Ahrefs Content Master, July 2024
You can’t just lazily copy and paste related keywords or entities into the content to improve the score.
If you rely on a pool of freelancers to create content at scale for your enterprise company, this tool will provide you with peace of mind that they aren’t taking any shortcuts.
4. Update Search Engines With Changes On Your Website As They Happen
Have you ever made a critical change on your website, but search engines haven’t picked up on it for ages? There’s now a fix for that.
If you aren’t already aware of IndexNow, it’s time to check it out.
It tells participating search engines when a change, any change, has been made on a website. If you add, update, remove, or redirect pages, participating search engines can pick up on the changes faster.
Not all search engines have adopted this yet, including Google. However, Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, and Yep all have. Once one partner is pinged, all the information is shared with the other partners making it very valuable for international organizations:
Most content management systems and delivery networks already use IndexNow and will ping search engines automatically for you. However, since many enterprise websites are built on custom ERP platforms or tech stacks, it’s worth looking into whether this is happening for the website you’re managing or not.
You could partner with the dev team to implement the free IndexNow API. Ask them to try these steps as shared by Bing if your website tech stack doesn’t already use IndexNow:
Get your free IndexNow API key
Place the key in your site’s root directory as a .txt file
Submit your key as a URL parameter
Track URL discoveries by search engines
You could also use Ahrefs instead of involving developers. You can easily connect your IndexNow API directly within Site Audit and configure your desired settings.
Here’s a quick snapshot of how IndexNow works with Ahrefs:
In short, it’s an actual real-time monitoring and alerting system, a dream come true for technical SEOs worldwide. Check out Patrick Stox’s update for all the details.
Paired with our always-on crawler, no matter what changes you’re making, you can trust search engines will be notified of any changes you want, automatically. It’s the indexing shortcut you’ve been looking for.
5. Automatically Fix Common Technical SEO Issues
Creative SEO professionals get stuff done with or without support from other departments. Unfortunately, in many enterprise organizations, relationships between the SEO team and devs can be tenuous, affecting how many technical fixes are implemented on a website.
If you’re a savvy in-house SEO, you’ll love this new enterprise feature we’re about to drop. It’s called Patches.
It’s designed to automatically fix common technical issues with the click of a button. You will be able to launch these fixes directly from our platform using Cloudflare workers or JavaScript snippets.
Picture this:
You run a technical SEO crawl.
You identify key issues to fix across one page, a subset of pages, or all affected pages.
With the click of a button, you fix the issue across your selected pages.
Then you instantly re-crawl these pages to check the fixes are working as expected.
For example, you can make page-level fixes for pesky issues like re-writing page titles, descriptions, and headings:
Screenshot from Ahrefs Site Audit, July 2024
You can also make site-wide fixes. For example, fixing internal links to broken pages can be challenging without support from developers on large sites. With Patches, you’ll be able to roll out automatic fixes for issues like this yourself:
Screenshot from Ahrefs Site Audit, July 2024
As we grow this tool, we plan to automate over 95% of technical fixes via JavaScript snippets or Cloudflare workers, so you don’t have to rely on developers as much as you may right now. We’re also integrating AI to help you speed up the process of fixing fiddly tasks even more.
Get More Buy-In For Enterprise SEO With These Workflows
Now, as exciting and helpful as these workflows may be for you, the key is to get your boss and your boss’ boss on board.
If you’re ever having trouble getting buy-in for SEO projects or budgets for new initiatives, try using the cost savings you can pass as leverage.
For instance, you can show how, usually, three engineers would dedicate five sprints to fixing a particular issue, costing the company illions of dollars—millions, billions, bajillions, whatever it is. But with your proposed solution, you can reduce costs and free up the engineers’ time to work on high-value tasks.
You can also share the Ultimate Enterprise SEO Playbook with them. It’s designed to show executives how your team is strategically valuable and can solve many other challenges within the organization.
This post was sponsored by JetOctopus. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
If you manage a large website with over 10,000 pages, you can likely appreciate the unique SEO challenges that come with such scale.
Sure, the traditional tools and tactics — keyword optimization, link building, etc. — are important to establish a strong foundation and maintain basic SEO hygiene.
However, they may not fully address the technical complexities of Site Visibility for Searchbots and the dynamic needs of a large enterprise website.
This is where log analyzers become crucial. An SEO log analyzer monitors and analyzes server access logs to give you real insights into how search engines interact with your website. It allows you to take strategic action that satisfies both search crawlers and users, leading to stronger returns on your efforts.
In this post, you’ll learn what a log analyzer is and how it can enable your enterprise SEO strategy to achieve sustained success. But first, let’s take a quick look at what makes SEO tricky for big websites with thousands of pages.
The Unique SEO Challenges For Large Websites
Managing SEO for a website with over 10,000 pages isn’t just a step up in scale; it’s a whole different ball game.
Relying on traditional SEO tactics limits your site’s potential for organic growth. You can have the best titles and content on your pages, but if Googlebot can’t crawl them effectively, those pages will be ignored and may not get ranked ever.
Image created by JetOctopus, May 2024
For big websites, the sheer volume of content and pages makes it difficult to ensure every (important) page is optimized for visibility to Googlebot. Then, the added complexity of an elaborate site architecture often leads to significant crawl budget issues. This means Googlebot is missing crucial pages during its crawls.
Image created by JetOctopus, May 2024
Furthermore, big websites are more vulnerable to technical glitches — such as unexpected tweaks in the code from the dev team — that can impact SEO. This often exacerbates other issues like slow page speeds due to heavy content, broken links in bulk, or redundant pages that compete for the same keywords (keyword cannibalization).
All in all, these issues that come with size necessitate a more robust approach to SEO. One that can adapt to the dynamic nature of big websites and ensure that every optimization effort is more meaningful toward the ultimate goal of improving visibility and driving traffic.
This strategic shift is where the power of an SEO log analyzer becomes evident, providing granular insights that help prioritize high-impact actions. The primary action being to better understand Googlebot like it’s your website’s main user — until your important pages are accessed by Googlebot, they won’t rank and drive traffic.
What Is An SEO Log Analyzer?
An SEO log analyzer is essentially a tool that processes and analyzes the data generated by web servers every time a page is requested. It tracks how search engine crawlers interact with a website, providing crucial insights into what happens behind the scenes. A log analyzer can identify which pages are crawled, how often, and whether any crawl issues occur, such as Googlebot being unable to access important pages.
By analyzing these server logs, log analyzers help SEO teams understand how a website is actually seen by search engines. This enables them to make precise adjustments to enhance site performance, boost crawl efficiency, and ultimately improve SERP visibility.
Put simply, a deep dive into the logs data helps discover opportunities and pinpoint issues that might otherwise go unnoticed in large websites.
But why exactly should you focus your efforts on treating Googlebot as your most important visitor?
Why is crawl budget a big deal?
Let’s look into this.
Optimizing Crawl Budget For Maximum SEO Impact
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine bot — like Googlebot — will crawl on your site within a given timeframe. Once a site’s budget is used up, the bot will stop crawling and move on to other websites.
Crawl budgets vary for every website and your site’s budget is determined by Google itself, by considering a range of factors such as the site’s size, performance, frequency of updates, and links. When you focus on optimizing these factors strategically, you can increase your crawl budget and speed up ranking for new website pages and content.
As you’d expect, making the most of this budget ensures that your most important pages are frequently visited and indexed by Googlebot. This typically translates into better rankings (provided your content and user experience are solid).
And here’s where a log analyzer tool makes itself particularly useful by providing detailed insights into how crawlers interact with your site. As mentioned earlier, it allows you to see which pages are being crawled and how often, helping identify and resolve inefficiencies such as low-value or irrelevant pages that are wasting valuable crawl resources.
An advanced log analyzer like JetOctopus offers a complete view of all the stages from crawling and indexation to getting organic clicks. Its SEO Funnel covers all the main stages, from your website being visited by Googlebot to being ranked in the top 10 and bringing in organic traffic.
Image created by JetOctopus, May 2024
As you can see above, the tabular view shows how many pages are open to indexation versus those closed from indexation. Understanding this ratio is crucial because if commercially important pages are closed from indexation, they will not appear in subsequent funnel stages.
The next stage examines the number of pages crawled by Googlebot, with “green pages” representing those crawled and within the structure, and “gray pages” indicating potential crawl budget waste because they are visited by Googlebot but not within the structure, possibly orphan pages or accidentally excluded from the structure. Hence, it’s vital to analyze this part of your crawl budget for optimization.
The later stages include analyzing what percentage of pages are ranked in Google SERPs, how many of these rankings are in the top 10 or top three, and, finally, the number of pages receiving organic clicks.
Overall, the SEO funnel gives you concrete numbers, with links to lists of URLs for further analysis, such as indexable vs. non-indexable pages and how crawl budget waste is occurring. It is an excellent starting point for crawl budget analysis, allowing a way to visualize the big picture and get insights for an impactful optimization plan that drives tangible SEO growth.
Put simply, by prioritizing high-value pages — ensuring they are free from errors and easily accessible to search bots — you can greatly improve your site’s visibility and ranking.
Using an SEO log analyzer, you can understand exactly what should be optimized on pages that are being ignored by crawlers, work on them, and thus attract Googlebot visits. A log analyzer benefits in optimizing other crucial aspects of your website:
Image created by JetOctopus, May 2024
Detailed Analysis of Bot Behavior: Log analyzers allow you to dissect how search bots interact with your site by examining factors like the depth of their crawl, the number of internal links on a page, and the word count per page. This detailed analysis provides you with the exact to-do items for optimizing your site’s SEO performance.
Improves Internal Linking and Technical Performance: Log analyzers provide detailed insights into the structure and health of your site. They help identify underperforming pages and optimize the internal links placement, ensuring a smoother user and crawler navigation. They also facilitate the fine-tuning of content to better meet SEO standards, while highlighting technical issues that may affect site speed and accessibility.
Aids in Troubleshooting JavaScript and Indexation Challenges: Big websites, especially eCommerce, often rely heavily on JavaScript for dynamic content. In the case of JS websites, the crawling process is lengthy. A log analyzer can track how well search engine bots are able to render and index JavaScript-dependent content, underlining potential pitfalls in real-time. It also identifies pages that are not being indexed as intended, allowing for timely corrections to ensure all relevant content can rank.
Helps Optimize Distance from Index (DFI): The concept of Distance from Index (DFI) refers to the number of clicks required to reach any given page from the home page. A lower DFI is generally better for SEO as it means important content is easier to find, both by users and search engine crawlers. Log analyzers help map out the navigational structure of your site, suggesting changes that can reduce DFI and improve the overall accessibility of key content and product pages.
Besides, historical log data offered by a log analyzer can be invaluable. It helps make your SEO performance not only understandable but also predictable. Analyzing past interactions allows you to spot trends, anticipate future hiccups, and plan more effective SEO strategies.
With JetOctopus, you benefit from no volume limits on logs, enabling comprehensive analysis without the fear of missing out on crucial data. This approach is fundamental in continually refining your strategy and securing your site’s top spot in the fast-evolving landscape of search.
Real-World Wins Using Log Analyzer
Big websites in various industries have leveraged log analyzers to attain and maintain top spots on Google for profitable keywords, which has significantly contributed to their business growth.
For example, Skroutz, Greece’s biggest marketplace website with over 1 million sessions daily, set up a real-time crawl and log analyzer tool that helped them know things like:
Does Googlebot crawl pages that have more than two filters activated?
How extensively does Googlebot crawl a particularly popular category?
What are the main URL parameters that Googlebot crawls?
Does Googlebot visit pages with filters like “Size,” which are typically marked as nofollow?
This ability to see real-time visualization tables and historical log data spanning over ten months for monitoring Googlebot crawls effectively enabled Skroutz to find crawling loopholes and decrease index size, thus optimizing its crawl budget.
Eventually, they also saw a reduced time for new URLs to be indexed and ranked — instead of taking 2-3 months to index and rank new URLs, the indexing and ranking phase took only a few days.
This strategic approach to technical SEO using log files has helped Skroutz cement its position as one of the top 1000 websites globally according to SimilarWeb, and the fourth most visited website in Greece (after Google, Facebook, and Youtube) with over 70% share of its traffic from organic search.
Image created by JetOctopus, May 2024
Another case in point is DOM.RIA, Ukraine’s popular real estate and rental listing website, which doubled the Googlebot visits by optimizing their website’s crawl efficiency. As their site structure is huge and elaborate, they needed to optimize the crawl efficiency for Googlebot to ensure the freshness and relevance of content appearing in Google.
Initially, they implemented a new sitemap to improve the indexing of deeper directories. Despite these efforts, Googlebot visits remained low.
By using the JetOctopus to analyze their log files, DOM.RIA identified and addressed issues with their internal linking and DFI. They then created mini-sitemaps for poorly scanned directories (such as for the city, including URLs for streets, districts, metro, etc.) while assigning meta tags with links to pages that Googlebot often visits. This strategic change resulted in a more than twofold increase in Googlebot activity on these crucial pages within two weeks.
Image created by JetOctopus, May 2024
Getting Started With An SEO Log Analyzer
Now that you know what a log analyzer is and what it can do for big websites, let’s take a quick look at the steps involved in logs analysis.
Here is an overview of using an SEO log analyzer like JetOctopus for your website:
Integrate Your Logs: Begin by integrating your server logs with a log analysis tool. This step is crucial for capturing all data related to site visits, which includes every request made to the server.
Identify Key Issues: Use the log analyzer to uncover significant issues such as server errors (5xx), slow load times, and other anomalies that could be affecting user experience and site performance. This step involves filtering and sorting through large volumes of data to focus on high-impact problems.
Fix the Issues: Once problems are identified, prioritize and address these issues to improve site reliability and performance. This might involve fixing broken links, optimizing slow-loading pages, and correcting server errors.
Combine with Crawl Analysis: Merge log analysis data with crawl data. This integration allows for a deeper dive into crawl budget analysis and optimization. Analyze how search engines crawl your site and adjust your SEO strategy to ensure that your most valuable pages receive adequate attention from search bots.
And that’s how you can ensure that search engines are efficiently indexing your most important content.
Conclusion
As you can see, the strategic use of log analyzers is more than just a technical necessity for large-scale websites. Optimizing your site’s crawl efficiency with a log analyzer can immensely impact your SERP visibility.
For CMOs managing large-scale websites, embracing a log analyzer and crawler toolkit like JetOctopus is like getting an extra tech SEO analyst that bridges the gap between SEO data integration and organic traffic growth.
SEO has undergone many transitions and disruptions in a short time.
Enterprise SEO has been at the center of some fundamental transformations over the past year.
Adapting to the ever-changing needs and demands of consumers, integrating AI into search engines, and the influx of new generative AI SEO and content tools have forced organizations to adapt and evolve their marketing strategies.
In this article, I will delve deeper into five key enterprise SEO trends for 2024 with tips to help you keep pace with change and prepare for future success accordingly.
What Is Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is typically associated with implementing SEO strategies within large-scale organizations.
It predominantly applies to sizable brands with multiple departments and complex infrastructures. This can include large – and multiple – websites that offer a diverse array of products and services.
One of the key differences between standard SEO and enterprise SEO is the need for the workflow management of stakeholders, strategic planning, and ensuring strategies align with an organization’s broader – and, in many cases, multiple – objectives.
How Enterprise SEO Has Changed
In 2024, enterprise SEO trends will be shaped by technological advancements, changing user behaviors, and the evolving search landscape.
It’s no secret that the way search engines utilize generative AI to create new user experiences is changing how enterprises look at, and understand, what is happening in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
This includes shifting from pure keyword research leveraging data-led insights to understanding conversational intent that triggers search results.
Whether you are searching via traditional results or in Google SGE labs, results now contain more sources and multiple content formats. As a result, enterprises must become more innovative and proactive in their SEO and content marketing approaches.
The great thing to see is that the role of SEO is growing and expanding in this new AI era.
Image from author, February 2024
5 Essential Enterprise SEO Trends To Watch In 2024
1. Understanding Market Shift And Ever-Evolving Consumer Preferences
SEO is such a dynamic and intense discipline that, for the majority, it can be a ‘heads down,’ laser-focused, task-by-task approach.
However, especially when we look at enterprise SEO and large-scale projects, it is essential to take a step back and ensure you have a pulse on what is happening at a macro level.
For enterprise SEO experts, it is crucial to stay on top of the latest trends and developments in consumer behavior, especially during economic shifts. These shifts can significantly impact how businesses align their more extensive SEO and content strategies to match business objectives.
For example, the pandemic saw rapid shifts in shopping preferences for products related to staying at home.
In any era-changing economic conditions, the importance of SEO reaches an all-time high due to its cost efficiencies and compounding returns, such as branding and data-driven insights into products and all major digital strategies such as paid search, email, and social.
Market conditions can force organizations to prioritize specific competitor strategies.
Search algorithm updates may prioritize credibility and authoritative sources, which means content should be optimized accordingly. I will share more on this later in this article.
Economic changes can also accelerate the use of new technologies, requiring businesses to be flexible and adaptable, and exercise caution in adoption.
Enterprise SEO pros must liaise with key management stakeholders monthly to ensure their strategies align with key business priorities to avoid going down unproductive pathways.
You must use data analytics effectively to understand target audiences and what is changing.
As enterprise SEO is a multi-stakeholder discipline, insights must be fed into organizational strategies to create more holistic, not just channel-agnostic, individualized experiences.
These can range from lead magnets that take the form of tailored marketing communications to customized product content and campaigns.
2. Using Generative AI For SEO And Content: Managing Risk Vs. Reward
According to Bloomberg Intelligence, by 2032, generative AI will be worth $1.3 trillion. Additionally, Gartner research shows that SEO and content marketing are two of the highest areas of increased investment.
Numbers vary depending on the source, but if you drill down, well over 2,000 generative content AI tools are flooding the market. No doubt you hear about a new one in the news every week!
The challenge for enterprise SEO pros who want to boost content productivity and performance lies in balancing the risk versus reward of using these tools.
Risk: Some of the content generative tools focus on velocity over quality. This is challenging for the consumer and search engines and limits the chance of your brand being discovered in a sea of nonsense.
This is because they are based on single-source, low-quality data sources that are not trained to understand your audience’s needs and wants. They have no understanding of what works in content & SEO.
For brands, this means the content can get buried below irrelevant, low-quality spam-like articles. Over time, I expect Google to solve this.
In addition, as a result, we are seeing more and more government and organization institutions building ethical AI and content creation guidelines and standards related to data use, regulation, and governance.
Always remember the risks.
Generative AI has severe limitations and liabilities, including the tendency to “hallucinate” by fabricating information when it doesn’t have an answer.
It can state misinformation so convincingly a reader new to the topic may believe it to be fact.
It lacks creativity and produces output that tends to be generic and formulaic.
The content produced is only as good as the input (prompts) and oversight (editorial process) –garbage in, garbage out.
Reward: On the flip side, if correctly used, generative AI tools can help improve content productivity and scale content for SEO campaigns.
Help give valuable insights and inspiration: The cornerstone of successful campaign development is the strategic generation of ideas. Marketers can create compelling content by using generative AI to uncover popular search terms, monitor social media trends, and discover unique angles and ideas.
Accelerate content production creation efficiency: Generative AI can also help segment audiences based on demographics, preferences, and behaviors, enabling you to tailor personalization strategies and unique experiences. It can also assist in timely (short-from) email marketing and crafting specific messages for each key target audience.
Scale productivity and performance: For enterprise SEO pros who use platforms rather than multiple tools with disparate data sources, AI-generated content can be created in one platform that also helps you streamline workflows. Due to built-in privacy considerations and guardrails, platform-specific generative AI tools are likely safer to use. They can create content based on your existing assets and utilize high-fidelity and secure data based on search and content patterns. These are helpful for efficient content discovery and distribution, allowing you to focus on strategy and creation.
Recommendations from all-in-one platforms also act as a content and SEO best practice assistant.
3. Preparing For Search Generative Experiences: Your Content And Your Brand
The transition to Search Generative Experiences (SGE) marks the most substantial transformation in the history of search engines – and a seismic shift that will impact all industries, affecting every company and marketer globally.
SGE represents a paradigm shift in SEO, moving beyond traditional keyword-based tactics to embrace the power of generative AI.
As AI emerges and becomes almost a “mediator” between a company’s content and its users, one search can produce results that would have previously taken five separate searches.
Take retail shopping as an instance: AI will start to recommend a complete shopping experience that gives consumers an experience that contains many channels and sources and multiple forms of media.
For consumers, this promises deeper and more interactive experiences, leading to increased engagement and time spent on Google.
For brands, it means higher value clicks once a consumer is ready to visit your website.
I have been monitoring this (at BrightEdge) for a long time. I see experiments in critical areas that you should keep an eye on! For example:
Testing of over 22 new content formats in SGE results.
There are many warnings in the healthcare and YMVL industries, as Google is exercising caution.
New visual content formats are used in industries such as e-commerce.
More reviews are being added to results in areas like entertainment.
There is a big focus on places (local) being integrated into results.
To help SEJ readers and the whole community, you can view for free (ungated) the data behind all these findings and a step-by-step guide to understanding this Ultimate Guide to SGE.
Note: This is still in Google Labs and has not been rolled yet. However, from the above, I firmly predict this is a matter of when, where, and how it will proceed.
4. Understanding And Adapting To New Search Behaviours: Data And Conversational Intent
Utilizing data to grasp user behavior and the underlying intent in conversations will be crucial for SEO success in both traditional and AI-driven search results.
Search is becoming conversational, and marketers must focus on user intent, advancing their understanding of their audience from simple keyword optimization to grasping conversational intent and extended phrases.
For users, this translates into more captivating and immersive experiences, leading to increased time spent on Google. This optimizes their search, guiding them swiftly to the most pertinent websites that cater to their unique needs.
For marketers, navigating your search presence becomes more intricate yet more fruitful. Anticipate reduced but higher-quality web traffic. Identifying key searches that activate various types of results is essential.
Clicks will carry greater monetary value due to enhanced conversion rates. This is because consumers are more ready to act after being informed and influenced by prior interactions and data from Google.
Marketers need to guarantee that their content strategy not only answers the specific query but also considers the broader context in which the query is made. This will help ensure targeted and effective engagement with users.
However, the core fundamentals of technical and website SEO remain the same. They will become more critical as marketers shift to optimizing their sites for higher-value traffic and clicks.
Ensure your site is fast and responsive, it is structured, and the content is optimized for human readers. It should be structured to answer their questions in the most engaging and user-friendly way.
Ensure your content assets are primed for conversion with clear CTAs.
Focusing on contextual signals will be vital for content marketers who want to maximize performance.
For example, schema markup,E-E-A-T, and HCU (even though not regarded as ranking factors) are vital, so search engines and users send signals so they can understand the context behind your site and content.
Leverage data to decode user behavior and the intent behind conversations, using this insight as a catalyst for generative AI outcomes.
Develop and refine various content types, such as videos and images, to enhance engagement.
Coordinate marketing efforts across paid media, social platforms, and public relations to create a unified content campaign strategy.
Concentrate on tracking metrics like traffic and converting high-quality down-funnel traffic as consumers spend more time on Google before making informed decisions and visiting your website.
And, as I know, you are now thinking. Yes, SGE could mean slightly less but more qualified traffic.
5. Managing Omnichannel Marketing: Managing SEO And Multiple Marketing Disinclines
SEO has long shifted from being a siloed channel, but enterprises must make changes now as consumers and search engine demands drive the need for even closer collaboration.
Given that the SERPs and AI-generated SGE results encompass a variety of media types and formats – including social media, reviews, and news sources – content marketers will need to get closer than ever to their SEO, digital branding, design, social media, and PR teams.
Screenshot for search for [food delivery near me], Google, February 2024
Consumers are no longer consuming media in silos, and that means marketers cannot operate SEO and digital marketing in silos. More than managing PPC and SEO campaigns with a bit of social media will be required in 2024.
This is especially true as AI-powered results contain multiple formats and sources. Whether you are a big brand or not, whoever provides the best experience will win in 2024 – so expect some curveballs from your competition.
This means the relationships between people, processes, and technology must change.
Make sure you are aligning your teams and managing workflows across:
Design – Images and video.
Branding and PR – Messaging and company reputation.
Content – From text to design to social.
SEO – PPC and Website teams.
Customer Service teams – For reviews.
Sales teams for advice on down-funnel CTAs on your site.
For enterprise SEO pros, platforms are the only way you can do this.
Key Takeaways For Enterprise SEO Success In 2024
SEO today is going to be different than SEO tomorrow. SEO tomorrow will be different than the search in March.
Image from author, February 2024
Change is the core constant we all share in this industry. Time has shown us that those who keep up with trends and adapt quickly survive and thrive.
Never forget many of the core principles of SEO still apply, but be ready to help your organization become more agile so your success in enterprise SEO and AI is guaranteed.
In 2024, regardless of the search source, once a consumer clicks, brands that give them the best experience win.
More resources:
Featured Image: Sutthiphong Chandaeng/Shutterstock
We’re hosting an exclusive deep dive into the evolving world of search – and you’re invited!
On November 29, join our live, roundtable discussion on the evolution of search, and learn how to navigate the changes that will shape your SEO journey next year.
This webinar features a panel of SEJ experts, led by editor-in-chief Amanda Zantal-Wiener. You’ll get insights directly from our very own SEO content strategist, as well as our senior news writer and editor.
Our team has combed through the year’s most substantial SEO developments and they’re ready to unpack what they mean for your strategies.
Shelley Walsh, SEO Content Strategist: Shelley is a distinguished digital consultant with over 20 years of creative, marketing, and tech experience. In addition to her work at SEJ, she’s also been published by Moz, Econsultancy, Smashing Magazine, and State of Digital.
Matt G. Southern, Senior News Writer: Matt oversees strategy development for SEJ’s news department. He specializes in gathering details, checking facts, and making complex subjects easy to understand.
Ben Steele, Senior Editor: Ben has over six years of experience in crafting and refining SEO content. As a pivotal member of the editorial team, he spearheads the creation and development of SEJ ebooks.
Amanda Zantal-Wiener, Editor-in-Chief: Amanda is a versatile professional with a diverse skill set in writing, editing, and marketing. Joining the SEJ team from HubSpot, she has a proven track record with bylines featured in Thrillist, EcoSalon, and Fast Company.
Key Discussion Topics:
The biggest changes to the world of search in the past year, and where they’re leading: 2023 saw some significant shifts in the search landscape. From algorithm updates to user behavior changes, understanding these changes can provide crucial insights into the future of search, helping you adapt your strategies accordingly.
The fundamentals to focus on for next year, from the impact of SGE’s evolution on SERPs to addressing challenges with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines: As search engine algorithms continue to evolve, a renewed focus on SEO fundamentals is essential for the upcoming year. Find out how updated search engine guidelines are redefining SEO success and learn how to align with these evolutions to boost your website ranking and visibility.
The leading Google ranking signals to focus on right now: In the realm of SEO, several ranking signals play a pivotal role in determining a website’s position on SERPs. Understanding the most influential Google ranking signals is key to optimizing strategies. We’ll provide valuable insights into which ranking signals and systems deserve the bulk of your attention in 2024.
How to integrate new AI technologies into content marketing and SEO (and where to avoid it): As AI continues to shape the digital landscape, it’s important to know how it can be used to your advantage. We’ll explore the practical applications of AI tools and technologies, and how they can significantly enhance content creation and optimization. We’ll also delve into the limitations and areas where AI might not be as effective.
Sign up now and secure your spot for this essential exploration of the evolving search landscape.
Whether you’re a seasoned SEO pro or new to the game, this session is your gateway to understanding what it takes to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving world of search.
The first of its kind, NESS is a live online event dedicated to everything news publishers need to know to grow their organic search traffic.
On October 11 & 12, you’ll get a unique opportunity to access top-notch news and SEO experts, who will be sharing their invaluable insights and experience.
You’ll discover:
The most effective strategies for news articles and commercial content.
What drives Google’s quality-based algorithms in News and Discover.
The latest on technical SEO for publishers.
How to propel your news SEO career to the next level.
And much more!
Brought to you by NewsSEO.io, one of the most engaged news SEO communities on the web, this event provides you with crucial information about organic search strategies that will help maximize your traffic.
So, What’s New For NESS This Year?
“There is a lot of new stuff this year,” says NESS Founder, John Shehata. “For a start, we have more sessions and more speakers. Also, we have two full hours of Q&A, where attendees can ask questions to all the speakers around their sessions or questions about anything.”
This year’s event will also feature longer break sessions, where attendees can network and chat with each other.
“We have heard amazing feedback from attendees over the last two years,” Shehata says.
“We did a survey last year and we found that 92% of all attendees are returning back to the conference this year – it’s an amazing approval rating, which keeps us motivated.”
NESS 2023 Speakers
NESS 2023 will feature speakers from established publications as well as some of the top experts in search today.
Get new, current SEO information, content, tips, and tricks from the greatest SEO minds in the news industry:
Wil Reynolds, CEO at Seer Interactive.
Glenn Gabe, SEO Consultant at G-Squared Interactive.
Jes Scholz, Marketing Consultant, Formerly CMO at Ringer.
Claudio Cabrera, VP Audience and Newsroom Strategy, The Athletic.
Lily Ray, Senior Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research, Amsive Digital.
Richard Nazarewicz, Global SEO & Discovery Lead, BBC Studios.
Anna Sbuttoni, Deputy Audience Editor, The Times & Sunday Times.
Kevin Indig, Growth Advisor.
John Shehata, CEO & Founder at Newzdash.
Barry Adams, Specialized SEO Consultant for News Publishers.
NESS 2023 Sessions
There will be 10 individual summit events, as well as two growth-oriented panel discussions, where you can ask your more specific news SEO questions.
“Our speakers this year are presenting on a lot of timely subjects that news SEOs are concerned about,” says Shehata.
Session topics for the 2023 event include:
Winning in Google Discover (Without Losing in Organic Search)
Taking Newsroom SEO Priorities Through to Product and Tech Roadmaps
How Audience and News SEO can Influence a Newsroom
Major Google Algorithm Updates and Their Impact on News Publishers
Technical SEO for Publishing Sites in 2023
How SEO Is Reshaping ‘Classic’ Newsrooms
The Need for Speed: SEO Strategies for Rapid Crawling
Elevating Your Enterprise SEO Game: Scaling Tactics for Massive Websites
AI won’t replace writers. It will make them 10x better. This is how.
Plus, you’ll be hearing from this year’s keynote speaker, Wil Reynolds about the future of SEO, specifically in this new era of AI.
After attending this event, you will be able to apply what you’ve learned to your websites to boost your organic traffic.
Make sure your on-page and technical SEO knowledge is up to date. With all the layoffs and surprise algorithm updates, upskilling and networking is now more critical than ever.
Ask Your News SEO Questions: Entirely Online & Live
All sessions are going to be live, and recordings will be available only to ticket holders after the event.
We will be mimicking an actual live event where you get great opportunities to hang out with the experts, talk to them one-on-one, and power up your connections and knowledge with networking in the booths!
With a single ticket, you will get full access to all talks over both days and have the opportunity to ask your questions directly to our speaker panel at the closing of the event.
What Is The News & Editorial SEO Summit?
Even though there are many SEO communities and summits, there hasn’t been an event dedicated to news publishers or SEO professionals who work with news sites.
“For many years, I reached out to so many event organizers and big conferences for SEO, and I pitched the idea that news SEO is a big branch of SEO,” Shehata reveals.
“Unfortunately, no one was interested, or maybe it was not the right fit for them. So I decided to create NESS (News & Editorial SEO Summit) myself. I reached out to Barry Adams and I said ‘Hey, you want to be part of this?’ – he said yes without hesitation.”
Visibility in Google’s ecosystem is a crucial source of readers for all online publishers, and information about how to maximize this can be hard to find.
“Last year, we got almost 800 people from 56 countries,” says Shehata.
“I knew news SEO was big, but I didn’t know it was that big in all these countries. I get a chance to see how different countries are doing news SEO – you learn a lot from meeting and talking with other news SEOs.”
This third annual, live online event will provide expert insights, direction, and priceless networking opportunities with the best minds in publishing and SEO.
From Google News to Discover, from Top Stories to news apps, you will learn what it takes to grow your presence in all organic locations where news is shown.
The conference expands beyond 2 days into a NEWS SEO slack community where 1000+ members help each other and discuss the latest SEO updates.
A Summit Made For News Publishers
NESS is perfect for:
Journalists and editors involved with the day-to-day writing and publishing of news content, who want to make sure their stories get the best chance of ranking in Top Stories and Google News.
Web developers who want to make sure their websites adhere to Google’s latest technical requirements and follow best SEO practices for crawling and indexing.
SEO professionals working with publishers who want to upgrade their knowledge and learn from experts in the field.
Audience growth strategists looking for ways to maximize traffic and find new avenues for organic search visits.
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