This document discusses technical SEO challenges for large enterprise sites and provides solutions. It addresses issues related to the scale and complexity of large sites including: conducting tactical crawls to gain insights while managing resources; prioritizing technical issues based on effort and impact; creating reporting dashboards to monitor key metrics and issues across many domains; and gaining approval for SEO initiatives in large organizations with multiple stakeholders. Tactics for addressing these challenges include segmented crawls, prioritizing recommendations, enterprise-level dashboards, and building influence within organizations.

1. Overcoming
Technical SEO Challenges
For Enterprise Sites
Sam Marsden, SEO & Content Manager, DeepCrawl
SearchLeeds - 20th June 2019
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds

4. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Why am I talking about enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is
working at the
extremes.
It is a stress test for
SEO methodologies.

5. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
How do we define
enterprise in SEO?

6. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
How do we define Enterprise SEO?

7. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Enterprise company ≠ enterprise site
5,900 pages
£3.9 billion
2,820 pages
£4.4 billion
2,450 pages
£11.8 billion

8. Key characteristic defining
Enterprise SEO is the size and
complexity of the organisation that
the SEO operates.

9. Commonly house large and complex
portfolios of digital properties and
have long chains of command to
effect change.

10. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Size & scale
Auditing & prioritisation
Reporting & monitoring
Velocity of completion
Recurring enterprise challenges:
4

11. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Key challenges &
solutions

12. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Talk about what you know
What we do every day:
Help enterprise businesses to get
insights no matter how many or how
large their sites are.

13. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
1. Scale - Issue
amplification

14. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
It isn’t time-efficient to extract
insights for the entire site.
Analysing every page
is resource intensive and costly.
Challenges with size and scale

15. In most cases we only need
enough data to validate issues.

16. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Building a bigger picture from smaller parts

17. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Techniques for tactical crawling

18. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Tactical crawling roadmap
Baseline analysis
Unrestricted initial analysis with limited no. URLs.
Design segments
Sampling and slicing. Maximum insights with minimum
resources.
Benchmark analysis
Focused and frequent ongoing analysis for monitoring.

19. Example: Large marketplace client
2m URL initial crawl
15 targeted test crawls
Ongoing benchmark crawls

20. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Learn more about tactical crawling
Podcast: bit.ly/rachel-enterprise

21. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
2. Issue detection &
prioritisation

22. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Finding issues that really need to be fixed.
Creating a hierarchy of prioritisation.
Challenges with issue detection

23. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Technical audits for enterprise sites
Executive overview
Extremely thorough
technical audit
12 core sections -
recommendations and
prioritisation.

24. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
How do we prioritise issues?
Effort x Impact = Severity score & priority level
(1-5) (1-5) (1-25) (low-high)

25. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Common issues on enterprise sites
4
Proportion of
primary pages.
Crawl depth
with >20 levels
Rendered crawl
finds iframe is
breaking head
Excessive
international page
versions

26. Example: Technology company
Ridiculous no. country language
combinations in URL path.

27. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Internationalisation gone wrong...
Pages for Kazakh speakers in Switzerland
E.g. /kk-KZ/zurich/

28. Even with validated
implementations, Google isn’t
showing right pages to right
audience...

29. Algorithm for swapping out alternates
may not work as precisely as we
expect.
OR
Google has trouble with complex
sites with many alternate versions.

30. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
3. Reporting &
monitoring

31. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Keeping on top of issues as they arise on large
scale sites.
Maintaining a top level perspective of a large
portfolio of domains.
Challenges with reporting and monitoring

32. Example: Large media publisher
Large scale migration of 300k
subdomains over 6 months.

34. GSC Monthly comparison dashboard
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Organic dashboards which display
top level trends and surface granular issues quickly.

35. Find out more...
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds
bit.ly/
gds-gsc

36. Enterprise level dashboarding using Data Studio
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds
@nickwilsdon
bit.ly/
enterprise-seo

37. Multi-domain keyword cannibalisation
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Identify duplication of
effort across domains
Filter by device,
country & query sets.
Track issues over time.

38. Unmissable keyword cannibalisation dashboard
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds
@HannahRampton
https://strategiq.co/how-to-identify-keyword-cannibalisation/

39. Keeping on top of crawl insights
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds https://strategiq.co/how-to-identify-keyword-cannibalisation/

40. Top level speed metrics from real users
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Domain or subdomain level
speed metrics from CrUX.
Free and easy to scale up
across portfolio of brands
and competitors.

41. Check out my Whiteboard Friday...
@sam_marsden PintSizedMarketing
Howdy
Moz fans!

42. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
4. Velocity of
completion

43. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Getting SEO fixes, campaigns and initiatives
actioned.
Getting a broad range of stakeholders and
gatekeepers bought in to SEO.
Challenges with reporting and monitoring

44. Soft skills are key!

45. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Winning in enterprise organisations
4
Build strong internal
and external
networks.
Prove ROI to
score budget
Be a hub of
influence between
different depts.
Lead with revenue
KPIs, not SEO KPIs
bit.ly/eli-enterprise
Eli Schwartz
@5le

46. Wrapping it
all up...

47. @sam_marsden SearchLeeds
Size & Scale
Auditing & prioritisation
Reporting & monitoring
Velocity of completion
Enterprise challenges & solutions
4
Tactical analysis
Hierarchy of
recommendations
Top level dashboards
Soft skills and influence

49. THANK YOUANY QUESTIONS?
Sam Marsden
SEO & Content Manager
@sam_marsden SearchLeeds