Enterprise SEO: Don’t Walk Before You Can Crawl
Konrad Szymaniak
Posted 27 January, 2025 by Konrad Szymaniak in SEO
Enterprise SEO: Don’t Walk Before You Can Crawl
In enterprise SEO, effective collaboration across departments such as Development, Content, and PPC is essential to achieving business objectives. A key challenge is securing stakeholder buy-in, which can be addressed by aligning SEO goals with broader business outcomes, such as revenue growth or customer retention.
Leveraging data-driven insights, such as organic traffic trends and their impact on revenue, helps build credibility and demonstrates the tangible value of SEO initiatives. Simplifying technical concepts into clear, accessible language ensures non-technical stakeholders understand their relevance to business performance.
Early stakeholder involvement fosters collaboration, while regular updates on progress and results build trust and transparency. By adopting these strategies, SEO teams can overcome common challenges and deliver measurable improvements in search visibility and overall business success.
This article is a guest contribution from Konrad Szymaniak, an independent enterprise SEO Consultant.
A Deeper Dive Into Enterprise SEO
In enterprise SEO, teams are often required to pivot from one priority to another in rapid succession – from redirect mapping thousands of URLs at scale to presenting year-on-year organic performance in the same afternoon.

Keeping Things Simple
Success relies on clear communication and smart prioritisation. But how can Development, Content, PR, Paid Social, CRM, CRO, and Leadership departments align to work simultaneously towards shared goals? Where does SEO fit in?
It can be as ‘simple’ as communicating to your content team or dev team (if the corporation has a custom-made CMS with tickets needed in place… yes, good luck on getting anything implemented) about the standard operating procedures for our URL structures across the 10 different domains we manage, as suggested by Google.
Why Things Are Difficult in Enterprise SEO
It could also be as difficult as communicating to your PPC team why they are bidding on our ‘branded’ terms (stealing our traffic) when we rank first and there’s no competition present. Ever tried attributing the effects of paid ads SERP cannibalisation for 15,000 keywords? There’s no one way to do things, so keeping things simple, moving fast, and getting everyone informed is a must.
Oh, and did I forget to tell you about that Chief Marketing Officer cutting the SEO budget by half next month?
What Are the 3 Biggest Enterprise SEO Difficulties I Have Encountered?
Working Across Multiple Time Zones, Languages & Domains
Leading SEO across global markets is a core challenge in enterprise environments. When we operate across various time zones, it becomes complex to align teams and ensure consistent communication. This coordination difficulty can lead to delays in content updates, technical changes, and even the launch of SEO campaigns, all of which impact a site’s performance in search.

Furthermore, optimising for multiple regional markets means adapting not only translated keywords but also ensuring culturally relevant content and UX, which often requires a deep understanding of local search patterns.
Where things get really tricky is when the .com domain is drastically losing traffic because of the other international domains overlapping our ‘English’ queries. This isn’t the case for one category with 2,000 URLs, but for 10 different categories across 4 different language domain variations.
One of my favourite tools to double and triple check my hreflang before raising a beautifully crafted Dev ticket is via the Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It is perfect for crawling the things I need quickly, in real-time.
Getting the Buy-in From the Rest of the Company
Securing support from other departments and stakeholders is critical but often challenging. Since SEO touches many departments, its success depends heavily on buy-in from these cross-functional teams. However, enterprise SEO can be viewed as highly technical or as secondary to other marketing initiatives, making it difficult to acquire needed attention and resources.
To Help Mitigate This Difficulty, Consider These Strategies
Align SEO Goals with Business Objectives
Clearly demonstrate how SEO efforts contribute to larger business goals, such as increasing revenue, market share, or customer retention. Use relevant KPIs that resonate with stakeholders, such as lead generation or sales conversions.
Use Data-Driven Insights
Present data that showcases past SEO successes, trends, and potential opportunities. Create dashboards or reports that highlight organic traffic growth, ranking improvements, and their impact on revenue.
Communicate Value Proposition
Demonstrate the unique value of SEO compared to other marketing channels. Show how organic traffic is cost-effective over the long term compared to paid search advertising.
Involve Stakeholders Early
Engage stakeholders from the start of the SEO process. Encourage input during the planning stages to make them feel invested in the project and its outcomes.
Create a Stakeholder Map
Identify key stakeholders and their interests in SEO. Tailor your messaging and strategies to address their specific concerns and priorities.
Simplify Complex Concepts
Use clear, straightforward language when discussing technical SEO concepts. Avoid jargon and focus on how these elements impact business results, making it easier for non-technical stakeholders to understand.
Leverage Case Studies
Share success stories from similar companies or industries that have successfully implemented SEO strategies. Highlight tangible results they achieved to create a sense of urgency and possibility.
Provide Regular Updates
Keep stakeholders informed about progress, results, and challenges through regular updates. Transparency builds trust and helps stakeholders feel more involved in the SEO process.
Highlight Competitive Advantages
Discuss how SEO initiatives can help the company stay ahead of competitors. Use competitor analysis to demonstrate areas where SEO can provide a significant edge.
Encourage Collaboration
Foster a collaborative environment by encouraging departments to work together on SEO initiatives. Show how cross-departmental collaboration can lead to better results and a more cohesive marketing strategy.
To take a deeper dive on the above, at a previous company I was involved in, the SEO team faced resistance from the PPC team, who were concerned that SEO efforts might undermine their campaigns. To address this, the SEO lead organised a joint workshop that included both teams. During the workshop, they presented data illustrating how organic traffic had increased following SEO improvements, leading to a reduction in PPC costs. They demonstrated how a strong organic presence could enhance the performance of paid ads by providing additional visibility for branded searches.
By aligning both teams’ objectives and sharing success stories of how SEO can complement PPC efforts, the teams were able to collaborate on campaigns. This led to a unified approach where SEO and PPC strategies worked together, ultimately improving overall search visibility and driving more conversions. Regular follow-ups after the workshop ensured that both teams stayed aligned, fostering a collaborative environment.
Implementation, Communication, Prioritisation, and Testing
The path from SEO strategy to implementation can be a long and very nasty place. In my experiences, I’ve seen people never getting out of the circle, and that’s usually how enterprises work… you don’t get everything you want, so you need to decide on the ‘money-moving’ SEO activities.
With many projects competing for developer time and resources, it’s common for SEO initiatives to be delayed or deprioritised. Effective communication is key, as is the ability to clearly define and communicate SEO priorities so that stakeholders understand the potential impact of these efforts.
Continuous testing is another pillar in enterprise SEO, as it provides data to refine and optimise strategies. However, testing in a dynamic and highly competitive environment can be challenging without the proper resources and processes, making it important for SEO teams to establish protocols that enable regular testing, analysis, and iteration.
I have used tools like Search Pilot to test things at scale. One of the many things I am doing right now is seeing how my efforts drive revenue for the organisations I work with. How much revenue did my 4 days of internal linking work using n-grams in the Screaming Frog SEO Spider bring to the company?
Conclusion
Well, as you can gather from above, working in-house or as an external partner (in my case), enterprise SEO can be complex, with loads of buy-in needed to get things done. But there’s always hope at the end of the dark tunnel. When things start going in the right direction, you can see the effect of your work.
Fantastic insights on enterprise SEO! The emphasis on simplifying technical concepts for cross-department collaboration resonates with me. It’s often a challenge to communicate the value of SEO in clear, measurable terms. Still, your approach to aligning SEO goals with business objectives makes it much easier to gain stakeholder buy-in. I especially appreciated the strategies for overcoming challenges, like working across multiple time zones and securing the necessary support. This is a great roadmap for any SEO team looking to make a real business impact!