Trying to find the best way to attract qualified consumer traffic for your company's website? Let's understand the operational differences between Enterprise SEO and small business SEO strategies before making a choice!
As we prepare to jump into the quagmire of SEO let’s get one thing straight for the ease of our understanding, when we think of SEO we think that enterprise SEO might be something that is for an enterprise business and normal SEO for the smaller businesses. That is not always the case, enterprise SEO is used in cases where the website works with more than 1000 pages and a small business SEO for websites with lesser pages or information/ content.
What is SEO?
SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization; this is an organic method for increasing the traffic that is driven to a site by using keywords relating to a company’s services when researched. This is used to achieve enhanced visibility and involves site optimization by making sure a company has some presence pertaining to keywords that are searched. This strategy seeks to establish a long-term customer base by providing a significant foundation for a company on SERP [search engine results page].
Cloud-hosted software has contributed to equalizing opportunities for businesses of varying scales. However, businesses with differing website sizes must still adopt distinct approaches, such as SEO strategies, to address specific needs.
Fundamental Differences between Small Business and Large Enterprise SEO
There are a bunch of different aspects that come together to form a fully strategized and operating SEO, depending upon the needs of a business or a website these are designed to work optimally for that specific business, let's explore how these differences work out:
Scaling
Probably the biggest and the most easily interpreted difference between Enterprise SEO and the SMB [Small Business SEO] is that whilst all of the SEO tools work for SMB if administered with strategic care, for the same tools to work for an enterprise SEO, they need to happen at a considerably larger and noticeable scale to have a significant impact on the ranking of the website on SERP. Want more information on the topic? Learn all about how To Scale Your Enterprise SEO Program here!
Pivot Audience
Each website needs a target audience. It clearly defines who you’re selling your products and services to and will in turn shape your marketing efforts accordingly.
For an enterprise SEO, the research pertaining to this is not really time savvy and explores multiple target markets. For small businesses, though, this process is extremely straightforward to determine, specifically if it caters to local customers.
Keywording
For enterprises that have larger websites, keywording is obviously more time and resource-consuming. Choosing keywords is not easy, it is a calculated process that involves choosing words that are specific enough to what each page, product, service, or article regarding the company is about, there is also a need for them to be weighed carefully against the competition.
For instance, in the case of a small business, something generic like “Online Shopping for Electronics and Computer hardware” which could ideally work for an enterprise like Amazon is not going to work. Such businesses thus require long-tail keywords eg: “plus size women’s clothing in Kansas” which might prove to be more effective. It goes a long way if you think about the way you type out your own online searches for a better understanding.
Small business websites should consider including other brands or company names in their content. Consumers who are familiar with that brand and are specifically looking for it might end up looking at your site and you could benefit from the association. Let’s say you created a shopping site similar to Amazon, but your business is brand new. Mentioning how similar your interface is to Amazon could preferably bring you the quality of traffic you desire and benefit by association (till your site becomes an equal rival of Amazon).
Upholding Multitudes
Enterprise SEO as already discussed operates on a much higher level of functioning providing multiple products/services; this means there arises a need for companies to create multiple domains to support the multitude of such services, each sub-domain then also requires its own SEO strategy to rank highly among its peers for continued relevance.
On the contrary, SMBs provide a limited amount of services making it easier to implement SEO strategies to a handful of sub-domains so their relevance can be easily arranged.
Design
It's an unspoken rule today, that if a website looks like it's straight out of the 2000s you can probably do without it! So, one must mind the spelling errors and non-functioning or dead-end links. Not only do websites with these let their customers down, they also dig their own graves when search engines notice this incompetence and penalize them by burying them in search rankings.
Enterprises need to hire in-house designers and coders to take care of this because everything is forever happening at an immense scale for them.
Alternatively, Small businesses can outsource this task to digital marketing firms or content management systems so they could compete with the companies that pay huge sums of money and capital to developers.
Ease of Navigation
An added clause to a well-designed website is how easy it is to navigate, when you think of enhanced approachability you think of ease. When a person ends up on a 1000-page website they should be able to reach the page which offers services relevant to them, a guide or virtual assistant or a simple set of prompt instructions is advisable in such a case. While doing this might be easier for small businesses, enterprise SEOs may encounter immense technical difficulty paving the way to this ease because of bulk products and domains.
Images + Voice Searches
Images are key to user experience on a website and let's be honest, with thousands of pages of information, products, and services, certain enterprises are gonna need them! Not only do they provide attractive visual aid but they also break chunks of text to make them more approachable. Depending on the budget of the company, it can hire photographers and videographers for unique and original visual content for its site. But in today’s day and age everyone has a high-resolution camera on their phone and can do the same on their own so there is no reason small businesses should lag behind the enterprises in putting their best foot forward. As we all know image searches drive a hard bargain as opposed to the generic way to obtain information.
The same goes for voice searches, these are conducted audibly and provide a modern touch to a website and prove to create a more inclusive user interface.
Collectively, these help a company’s website reach a wider audience and help drive a larger range of traffic for both kinds of SEO strategies.
Geography/ Location
Unless a business fully functions online, geography should be considered as an integral part of the SEO efforts. Why, you ask? Because, more often than not, you’re trying to reach a global audience through these efforts.
Thus for large enterprises that target a global or multi-national audience, having an open-ended set of search optimizations might help the difficult road to establishing an SEO.
Such open-endedness does nothing to help small businesses and moreover might hurt their detailed efforts towards an appropriate SEO strategy. The trick then is to focus on using local-specific keywords. This means that if a company is located in a specific city or provides services to a certain region, the name of its location or any other specification of the region should be included in the site’s keyword list.
What’s the verdict?
Since three-quarters of the population never make it past the first SERP result, SEO is a sure-shot aspect of marketing that must be given utmost monetary and strategic importance. For any business to achieve this there is a need to devote time and company resources to ardently understand their audience’s unique set of needs and expectations and concoct a strategy that will ensure they fare better than their competition.
SEO is a quagmire, right? We warned you in the beginning now, didn’t we? Are all the intricacies of SEOs just too complex? Let’s take a step back and take things into perspective, what is our goal through establishing competent SEOs? It involves ranking relevant keywords to attract meaningful traffic to the website traffic which converts readers/visitors into consumers of the services provided by the company. Thus, increasing the rate of interest of the said business.
Thinking about which SEO strategy from the above two would be of merit to your business? Need expert opinion so you can excel at this prime decision and attract the best-qualified traffic to your website? Contact our team of digital marketing specialists a Continuum Digital, with their help you can make informed decisions to customize an SEO strategy that best fits your needs. Moreover, our dedication doesn't end there. If you require additional assistance, particularly in implementing these SEO strategies for your business, rest assured that our adept team of SEO consultants in Toronto is resolute in taking extra steps to secure your position as the foremost competitor in the market.