I first saw this graph in a Search Engine Watch article. And it rung true, read below the graph for my reasoning.
Why content vs technical SEO matters in enterprise
Links are always important, quality content is important but becomes less so the bigger and more powerful your site is. With a large website it’s possible to publish a good enough piece of content and have it dominate SERPs with enough internal links and solid technical SEO.
Technical SEO has higher importance on a large site because there is more content where things can go wrong. You usually have teams of web editors and content creators (who often do it as a small section of their job). And chances are your tech stack is far more complex than a smaller website. These all open opportunities for something to go wrong on the technical side.
Obviously, delivering high quality at all levels is the best route. But resources are also limited.
Explaining SEO to enterprise content creators
I’ve recently found it hard to distil and explain my content analysis and SEO process to colleagues. Which is a failing on my part and something I’m internalising to then write down and formulate.
This article is part of a process to better communicate SEO.
You see, I’ve been doing this for a long time now that content creation and SEO has become instinctive. I can’t always verbalise why I’ve come to a decision or conclusion about a piece of content.
But the graphic from Anthony Palomarez, and a few chats with my manager, have helped me realise that might not matter.
Here’s why:
Most enterprise content creators don’t need to do a deep depth of analysis because first they need to implement the basics.
So if you can get a large group of people to perform the basics, even incrementally better, then that should result in an exponential improvement.
At least, that’s the hypothesis I’m going with.
Simple on-page enterprise SEO checklist
So here’s the on-page checklist I’ve set out. The guidance is very simple compared to what an SEO would do to in a full on-page audit. However, when done by up to 200 content creators across 20-40,000 pages I believe this could have impact – especially where it hasn’t been considered before.
My theory is to start with the basic steps that can scale across the whole site.
• H1 – This is the main title/header on your page. It should include the main search term/topic you’re wanting to rank for.
• First 100 words – Try and get your search term into the first 100 words.
• Subheads – Use the main search phrase and similar phrases in the subheads.
• Internal links – Link to this page from relevant locations on your website. When you link use the search term where possible.
• META Title – Include the main search term at the start of your META title.
• META Desc – Include the main search term in the META description.
In my specific case I’ve built a Search Console interface that each content creator will get access to. The interface will help them to view their page’s keyword performance in Google.
Data studio interfaces are great because you don’t have to worry about remembering which screen in Search Console has the information you want. The data studio interface displays it for you.
Let’s see if this will work, or what improvements and changes I’ll make to the plan as the months continue.
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