Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

One of the main points that many SEO advocates use is that high quality SEO can help the little guy compete with big businesses. This is a good point and is mostly true. A small company that utilizes the efforts of a good SEO, or one with a lot of internal SEO knowledge, can compete with and succeed against much larger brands. There are a many reasons for this but a few of big reasons are as follows.

• Small companies are more agile and can implement SEO projects more quickly.
• Small companies have smaller budgets so free traffic is much more important.
• Small companies are much more focused and they don’t have layers of red tape to work through.

So, what about big businesses?

I don’t see a lot of people talking about SEO for big businesses. Now I understand that many big businesses either use in-house SEO’s or simply don’t actually consider utilizing SEO. After all they get by on their name and paid search. It can also be very difficult to work with a big company on an SEO project so many SEO’s don’t want to work with them. But there is a lot to be said for working on a big businesses’ SEO project. There are some issues that need to be overcome though.

Working on a big business SEO project

So, big business SEO is much different than working with a small to medium sized business. There are some issues that need to be dealt with but if you can overcome the following issues the rewards can be huge.

1. You Must Have an Advocate: This is imperative when working on a big business SEO campaign. You must have at least one person, preferably at a high level, who believes in what you are doing and willing to push everyone to implement your recommendations. Without an advocate it will be nearly impossible to get SEO efforts implemented and all your effort will be for naught. Make sure someone within the company believes in SEO and has the authority to push SEO recommendations through.
2. Integrate all the Players: One of the biggest issues in big business SEO is that there are multiple levels within the company. You will need to deal with the owners of separate business units as well as IT, Legal, Editorial, and other departments. It is important to bring in these different business units when delivering recommendations. Make each unit feel they are part of the process and that they know what the need to do. If everyone feels they are included it will make them feel that they are part of a team and make them more willing to implement the recommendations you make. Your advocate can help with this.
3. Understand the Ultimate Goal: This is common amongst both large and small businesses but is especially important when dealing with the disparate business units of a big business. You have to control the conversation and keep on task when dealing with the different business heads. While all business units want what is best for the company each business unit also considers what is best for them. It is important to understand what the ultimate goal is and push each business unit to focus on that goal.
4. Control the Time Line: This is a huge aspect when it comes to running an SEO campaign for big businesses. Each unit has multiple projects that require their attention right now. Since SEO is a long term project it is easy for a big business to put it on the back burner. Because of this it is important to control the process and make sure everything stays on schedule. Othrwise the project will go on forever. Stay on top of everything and make sure your advocate pushes for the SEO work to stay in the forefront.
5. Deliver Implementable Recommendations: When dealing with big businesses it is difficult to get direct access to their servers. They have too much sensitive information and too many legal issues to deal with to allow vendors direct access. That means you will need to develop easily implemented recommendations. The best case scenario is to create SEO recommendations that they can simply copy and paste. Again, when the time comes to deliver recommendations it is necessary to help each unit understand what needs to be done and help them understand how to implement these recommendations. Bring in your advocate and include everyone who will need to implement the recommendations in the conversation so you are all on the same page.

Get it right

Following these recommendations will help you control the SEO process with big businesses. Get it right and you will have happy clients. Failure will lead to unhappy clients who will let others know that you did not deliver what you promised. Big businesses offer a huge opportunity if you control the engagement and succeed in achieving their goals.

Popularity: 45% [?]