Site structure is crucial for any enterprise SEO service to implement, but the essential optimizations go well beyond the scope of what’s seen in traditional corporate SEO.
An enterprise site must adopt a digital marketing strategy that looks at all of the fine points of a site, usability, and elements in your organization’s control.
Here are tips you can use for any enterprise site to create a structure that will work today and in the future.
1. Put SEO Governance In Place
An enterprise SEO strategy can be massive.
Marketing teams are handling hundreds of campaigns, content marketing adds countless pages to a site, and even social media may be handled by an enterprise SEO agency, internal team, or mixture of both.
So, what can you do to keep everything in order and running smoothly?
Implement SEO Governance
Governance helps in a variety of ways, both in the B2B and B2C worlds, and will provide processes that help:
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- Enterprises launch in multiple countries without conflicting issues.
- Provide controls over certain URLs so that not everyone can create or change vital pages.
- Reduce the risk of multiple teams working against each other to rank for the same keywords or services.
- Provide consistency across multiple sites.
Every enterprise SEO strategy should start with a governance plan so that there are rules and processes in place that all teams can access and follow.
Policies, standards, and processes ensure that digital marketing strategies don’t conflict, reduce errors and help enterprises maintain consistency.
2. Create A Foundation For WCAG 502 And ADA Compliance
An enterprise site must take website accessibility into account as part of its overall SEO strategy. Large companies, such as hotel chains, are being sued for not being compliant.
Even outside of that risk, being compliant should be part of your overall site structure strategy.
Why?
It’s good practice. Anyone doing SEO work today should put a major focus on making their website WCAG and ADA compliant.
Since this is a massive topic, see this guide for more: How to Avoid Costly WCAG, ADA & 508 Accessibility Penalties.
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3. Add Site Search
Internal search is so important, even in traditional SEO, because users have a very low attention span. Unfortunately, people don’t want to click three or four links to find the page or product that they’re interested in on your site.
One simple addition to your site structure is adding an internal search.
The search should:
- Search all internal files.
- Include search suggestions.
As part of your internal linking and content strategy, you should add search suggestions to guide your website’s users in the right direction.
4. Create URL Guidelines
Creating URL guidelines is essential and while it’s part of governance, it must be explained a little further to fully understand.
One of the SEO fixes no one wants to make is to go back and have to redirect hundreds of pages because cross teams created the same content and used
