Enterprise SEO: SEO Survey Benchmarks for Enterprise Level Companies

What is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO marketing is a field that requires both high and granular level strategies to improve revenue for large organizations. These organizations are generally in the Fortune 1000 and have robust teams giving attention to different channels that align to company goals.

In these companies Enterprise SEOs don’t generally have to wear many different hats like in smaller organizations. They have the ability to look at search data and trends and be able to give actionable advice to all parts of an organization. They can assist with local campaigns for niche markets or globally where improving conversions by .1% can still mean increased traffic by hundreds of thousands.

SEO’s place in high level marketing is still new and only recently taken seriously by large “old-fashioned” companies. The yearly increase of Enterprise SEO jobs at all levels are evidence of this.

How do enterprise companies value, scale, and value SEO? Complete the form to download the full report. 

What it takes to be an Enterprise Level SEO

There are multiple people an SEO has to report to in enterprise marketing depending on a variety of factors. Their role can mean they report to their SEO marketing manager or sometimes a digital marketing director who is overseeing multiple channels. Agency SEOs have the added bonus of reporting to a client who sometimes blurs the lines between search engine marketing, web development, and search engine optimization.

Since the enterprise SEO is an important cog, they also have to integrate with a team that oversees other channels. Paid marketers can really benefit from optimized pages because on a large scale, they can save their enterprise level company millions of dollars resulting from low CPCs. Social marketers can benefit their companies by amplifying innovative messaging that comes from audience intents and their search habits.

As mentioned above, enterprise SEO agencies have their SEO’s report to their work to their management along with clients. This sometimes comes with contractual obligations to show improvement in a given time frame. In a fickle industry such as SEO and the competition level of enterprise search results, they face monumental challenges coming from both clients and their competition.

Enterprise SEO Marketing Benchmarks

Conductor partnered with Ascend2 last year in a research study. Below is a snapshot of the results that came from an enterprise seo survey.

They are finding that some of the most challenging parts of being an enterprise seo are finding peers of the same skill level along with a limited budget from their company. Today, most online purchase decisions begin with organic search. Organic traffic accounts for 94 percent of click-through rates for online browsers. That means enterprises, the largest companies in the world, have millions to lose or gain when it comes to their organic channels. Here are a couple snapshots from the research study to the right:

•  72 percent of enterprises rate SEO as successful to some degree; only 28 percent find it unsuccessful
• 57 percent of enterprises said their most challenging obstacles to achieving important SEO objectives are limited SEO in-house skills; 43 percent said limited SEO budget
• 54 percent said the most effective SEO tactic is quality content creation; 50 percent said frequent website updating. Only 2 percent said mobile search optimization is the most effective SEO tactic

Top 3 Enterprise SEO Software Features

In any field of enterprise marketing, you need tools that can assist the marketers with the immense task at hand. These enterprise tools should have features that can help with innovation, automation, and integration.

• Innovation: An enterprise SEO tool should focus on innovation in the creative ideas it gives you for future campaigns. Keywords that may not have been accounted for during content ideation are a great example. Generally themes for campaigns are decided first, but after a period of time, you may find that audiences are looking for the same content in different ways. In this way, a tool can be a great asset for coming up with great keywords that can turn searchers into customers.
• Automation is essential in enterprise level reporting. This is a must when looking for enterprise SEO software. It should be able to aggregate large data into a readable report that can be sent weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Time is saved when an SEO doesn’t have to dedicate putting together raw data into readable formats.
• Integration is necessary when an enterprise level company is using all digital marketing channels. Teams need to be able to align to their peers’ strategies and verticals. Campaigns are always more successful when there is a team goal rather than a personal one.

An enterprise seo has to choose or recommend a software fearlessly. It may be seem hopeless when asking for budget with management, but the digital marketer is committing their time to an essential piece of a large role.

Showing Results at an Enterprise Level

Generally, reporting is done at a monthly or bi-monthly cadence in collaboration with other channels as digital. An enterprise seo’s value cannot be determined by just organic search. There are many touch points a person may have on their purchase journey before actually becoming a customer. SEOs have a large influence on this journey through search engines.

Natural search has also proven to yield the highest conversion rates versus other channels. This is mainly because a searcher’s perception is that they found it online rather than companies having a hand in it through traditional advertising. Enterprises can gain thousands of customers from low-hanging fruit through simple optimizations. The role that has the highest chance of doing this is an enterprise level SEO.

Summary

The short version is that an enterprise seo has a lot to offer to a digital marketing team. They have to meet not only their own SEO goals but the company's overarching goal. They influence searchers throughout their buying journey before they convert to a customer. Given the right seo tools, they can improve their efficiencies and quality of work enormously through saving time and automation.

Download the Full Report

Conductor fielded the Search Engine Optimization Survey and completed interviews with 442 marketing, sales and business professionals. This report, Inside Enterprise SEO: SEO Survey Benchmarks for Large Companies, contains responses from respondents at organizations exclusively over 1,000 employees. Download the full report.