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4 Signs Your Agency Is Ready To Take On Enterprise SEO

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4 Signs Your Agency Is Ready To Take On Enterprise SEO

In your SEO career, there may come a time when you feel you’re doing a lot more coasting than you once did.

What made you start thinking that?

Was it optimizing your 600th local client and realizing it wasn’t that challenging anymore?

Or maybe you feel that your freelance business or agency has grown, hired, and matured to a point where you are no longer exercising your full potential.

If that’s you, then it just may be time to move upstream.

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It might be time to move from traditional to enterprise SEO.

This is not a light decision by any means. It’s challenging stuff, to put it bluntly.

You had better have the staff, the skills, the sales ability, and the confidence in place to go out there and present yourself as a search optimizer for some of the largest brands on the Internet.

But let’s back up for a minute on that.

As I said, transitioning into enterprise SEO is a huge decision.

How will you know it’s really the right time for you?

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Let me share some benchmarks you should be looking for to determine it’s time to shift your strategy upward.

But first, let’s be clear about the SEO differences that I’m discussing.

How Is Enterprise SEO Different?

Enterprise SEO strategies differ from traditional SEO primarily in their size and scale.

Whatever you do for a small SEO client, you do bigger for an enterprise client.

That’s painting enterprise SEO in pretty broad strokes, but for the most part, it proves true.

Let’s unpack this idea.

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Say, for a traditional SEO account, you and your team need to crawl and optimize 200 URLs.

Depending on the size of your team, that isn’t too bad.

You’ll see what Screaming Frog has to show about the site and then divide up the work among your staff and get it done.

Think about an enterprise-level website, though.

How many URLs does it have?

100,000? 500,000?

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A million?

The Challenges of Scale

If we hold to the idea that enterprise SEO is traditional SEO but larger, then those one million pages need the same SEO optimizations that a website of 100 pages would.

The difference will be in having the staff to implement them, knowing the site infrastructure well enough not to cause other site issues when you implement, and working with the client’s in-house SEO team to ensure everything goes smoothly.

For instance, I have worked in small Shopify stores where the theme caused category and collection pages to duplicate title tags.

When this happens on an ecommerce website of more than a million pages, you need a solution right away, whether that’s related to adding canonical tags or different custom coding.

That’s just how it rolls in enterprise SEO.

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Big clients equal big responsibilities, and you need the know-how, the personnel, the tools, and the sheer ability to deliver on what these websites need.

Recommended reading:

Reporting & Communicating at the Enterprise Level

On that last point, you can also expect many more check-ins from your enterprise clients than your smaller accounts.

The healthier retainers you can charge for large-scale SEO work come at the cost of providing your clients with more regular progress reports.

Say you need to implement a smart internal linking strategy on a 600,000-page ecommerce website.

You know it’s a colossal undertaking, and so does your client.

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All they ask is that you update them with the work you’ve done over the last two weeks.

Be sure you have the staff to deliver that ongoing workflow and the ability to prove it biweekly.

Enterprise SEO, then, presents SEO agencies with issues of operations, staffing, morale, organization, time management, and reporting.

You have to think about how you approach all of these things before fully committing yourself to the enterprise route.

Recommended reading:

So, how will you know it’s time to move from traditional SEO to enterprise SEO?

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1. When You Can Handle The Page Volume

You’ll know you can transition to enterprise SEO when you can handle a significantly increased volume of pages to optimize.

As you can imagine, fixing duplicate title tags, meta descriptions, H1s, and content on a local lawyer’s website is quite different from doing it for the number two or three online shoe retailer in the country.

And I’m not just talking about having knowledgeable personnel to do the work physically.

If you’re scaling up, there is also the issue of the automation tools you’ll probably need to upgrade to crawl everything.

Sure, Screaming Frog has just the free version and one paid version, but if you use Semrush or Ahrefs, you may need to upgrade to the biggest and best plans.

That’s because, depending on the size of the client, you’ll need to be able to track 10,000 keywords rather than 5,000 and run more site audits every month.

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If you look at pricing for those upper plans and determine you can afford them based on what you’ll be making, you may be in a good spot to make the changeover.

2. When Your Agency Is Mature Enough

The next benchmark to meet if you want to take on enterprise SEO clients is to be a mature agency.

Now, I mean that in both ways – that of acting mature and having developed efficient and effective work processes.

Let’s focus on the latter one.

To say that a company is mature is to say that it has all its pieces in place to continue growing at a steady pace and become a real heavy hitter in its industry.

If your agency came out of the startup phase, you might remember how things were different.

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You probably had a skeleton crew with more than enough work to handle.

Your processes from day to day might have been pretty scattered, with no preferred practices explicitly defined or followed.

You got things done, but maybe only after working 60 or more hours a week.

Mature companies have moved beyond that, though.

They have stabilized and accrued enough retained earnings to hire managers and teams and define processes for everything.

Everyone is doing what they are best at.

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The company can forecast its finances and reasonably meet them in the time set.

And, perhaps most importantly, the staff at a mature company wants to be at the office (or home computer) every single day, doing this work, using their skills to satisfy and impress the company’s clients.

That can only come from client-focused and forward-thinking messaging from the top leadership.

That’s the type of environment where enterprise-level SEO success may happen.

Recommended reading:

3. When You Have The Organizational Structure

You’ll know you’re ready to move into enterprise SEO when you have the organizational structure to handle the biggest clients.

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I don’t just mean the number of bodies you have in seats.

That’s absolutely crucial, but whether you have 60 employees or 80 doesn’t matter as much to me as making sure every one of those employees is in the right seat and has subscribed to the overall company vision.

Everyone at your company should be doing what they are best at and following the goals set by the team leads and the executive management.

Since we are talking about team leads – middle managers, if you like – the best things they can do for the members of their teams are to:

  • define goals clearly,
  • empower them to help themselves,
  • encourage their success,
  • let them know they care about them,
  • and always be there to help when necessary.

When employees feel appreciated and valued as a part of the overall undertaking, they tend to be happier in their roles.

And employees happy in their roles are more likely to be all-in on the company’s mission statement and give their best to delivering the best-darned enterprise SEO product on the planet.

4. When You Have The Revenue To Cover Further Growth Periods

Finally, let’s talk about revenue and how you’ll need it to grow into the enterprise SEO agency you want.

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Say you’re a small to mid-sized SEO agency that wants to get into the enterprise game.

That period where you position yourself as an entity that can handle the big fish will probably have some bumps.

It won’t happen overnight, and while your sales team or subject-matter experts are working on closing leads, you will need more short-term gains to finance the comparative slowness of your enterprise growth.

But don’t minimize the importance of that other revenue.

Breaking into a new game takes time.

If you drop everything to focus on landing one or two big clients, you’re not going to have the resources to do anything that I have laid out here; certainly not to hire and grow your teams and processes.

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While signing new clients will matter during this time, your top leadership should also be concerned with keeping attrition, or churn, to a relatively survivable 3% to 5%.

Hey, you’ve heard it for years: Retaining clients is as important as signing new ones, and it rings true here.

You’ve seen how much planning, work, and coordination are involved in executing enterprise SEO strategies for your clients.

You can’t afford to jeopardize any of your past successes now.

Define the vision and processes that will lead your client services managers to show real value to your clients, and they will want to stay with you for the duration.

See Through The Bumps In The Road

You probably already know that plans are one thing; doing what you planned is entirely different.

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You’re going to hit some bumps in the road to becoming an enterprise SEO guru.

But I feel that you will know when it’s time to make the attempt.

It will probably be when you hit the benchmarks I laid out above.

The future is open and waiting for you to arrive.

All you need to do is take that first step.

More resources:

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Featured Image: Alexander Supertramp/Shutterstock




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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

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8 Free SEO Reporting Tools

There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?

In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.

Price: Free

Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.

Most common reporting use case

GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.

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As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:

  • Total Impressions
  • Average CTR
  • Average Position
gsc-performance-overviewgsc-performance-overview

Tip

If you’ve signed up for AWT using Google Search Console, you can view your GSC performance data in Ahrefs by clicking “GSC Performance” from the main dashboard.

But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.

organic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-yearorganic-traffic-graph-showing-clicks-year-over-year

Favorite feature

One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.

google-search-console-indexed-pages-reportgoogle-search-console-indexed-pages-report

If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.

Price: Free

Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.

Most common reporting use case

Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.

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Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.

Such as:

  • Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
  • Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
  • Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
  • Social media platformsFacebook, Reddit, and Twitter
  • Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage

Sidenote.

If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks

google-looker-studio-partner-connectorsgoogle-looker-studio-partner-connectors

Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:

ahrefs-seo-audit-dashboardahrefs-seo-audit-dashboard
Ahrefs Google Looker Studio integration

With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.

Favorite feature

The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.

Price: Free for 500 URLs

Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.

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Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.

screaming-frog-user-interface-screenshotscreaming-frog-user-interface-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.

Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.

Favorite feature

Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs. 

If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.

screaming-frog-api-accessscreaming-frog-api-access

Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.

Price: Free

Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.

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when-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustrationwhen-to-use-ahrefs-free-tools-across-the-seo-process-illustration

For example, you could use our:

Most common reporting use case

One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.

With AWT, you can:

  • Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
  • See the performance of your website
  • Check all known backlinks for your website
ahrefs-overviewahrefs-overview

Favorite feature

Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.

If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).

Price: Free

Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.

Most common reporting use case

For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.

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ahrefs-seo-toolbar-overviewahrefs-seo-toolbar-overview

With the free version, you get the following features:

  • On-page SEO report
  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
  • SERP positions
  • Country changer for SERP

The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.

If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.

severity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbarseverity-highlight-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Favorite feature

The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.

indexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbarindexability-tab-ahrefs-seo-toolbar

Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.

Price: Free

Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.

google-analytics-screenshotgoogle-analytics-screenshot

Most common reporting use case

GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.

Favorite feature

You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.

Price: Free

Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.

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Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.

google-slides-screenshotgoogle-slides-screenshot

Most common reporting use cases

The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.

Favorite feature

One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.

share-video-chat-google-slidesshare-video-chat-google-slides

This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.

Price: Free

Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.

Most common reporting use cases

Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.

Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.

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Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.

bbq-google-trends-graphbbq-google-trends-graph

Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.

Favorite feature

Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.

google-trends-comparison-examplegoogle-trends-comparison-example

Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.

You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.

regional-trends-via-google-trendsregional-trends-via-google-trends

Final thoughts

These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.

The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.

Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

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Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO

A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.

These findings include:

  • When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
  • 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
  • Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.

Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.

As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.

High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects

The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.

The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.

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The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.

This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.

The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.

Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results

With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.

When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.

Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.

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New Competition From Unexpected Sources

The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.

On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.

An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.

Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search

The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.

Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:

“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”

Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.

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Methodology & Limitations

To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.

The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.

While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.

Why We Care

The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.

Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.

SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.

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As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.

How This Could Help You

While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.

Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:

  • As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
  • Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
  • Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
  • Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
  • Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.

Looking Ahead

While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.

By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.


Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

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