Every business can benefit from an in-depth SEO audit, designed to identify vulnerabilities and to uncover opportunities for improved visibility. SEO audits can look different from business to business, with larger companies typically requiring a more extensive approach. Enterprise-level businesses often require the most intensive SEO audits, taking into account vast amounts of online content as well as different marketplaces and languages.
Enter the enterprise SEO audit. An enterprise SEO audit is a comprehensive review and evaluation of an enterprise company’s online presence, meant to identify any issues that could pertain to the business’ organic search rankings.
Conducting an enterprise-level SEO audit usually demands the resources and expertise of an enterprise SEO company, providing the tools needed to assess truly massive and complicated websites. Enterprise SEO agencies can provide advanced technical analysis, large-scale content evaluations, alignment between different marketplaces, and more.
Clarity Digital is a leading name in enterprise SEO services. In our most recent blog post, we provide insight into enterprise SEO management, typical enterprise SEO price ranges, and more. Check out the full post here.
The Ultimate Guide to Enterprise SEO Audits
Every business, no matter how vast or how small, wants to rank well in relevant online search results, ensuring a high level of visibility among potential customers, clients, investors, and employees. The work of search engine optimization (SEO) is hardly static; instead, it requires constant vigilance, including routine audits intended to expose vulnerabilities and to reveal new opportunities.
SEO audits can look a little bit different from one business to the next, with more expansive companies requiring a much more detailed, granular assessment. But what exactly sets an enterprise SEO audit apart from a conventional SEO audit? And what could enterprise-level companies expect from the auditing process? What follows is a comprehensive guide from Clarity Digital, a leading enterprise SEO agency.
What is an Enterprise SEO Audit?
An enterprise SEO audit is a thorough review and evaluation of an enterprise company’s online presence, with the purpose of identifying any issues that could pertain to the business’ organic search rankings.
While an enterprise SEO audit is heavily focused on the business’ website (or as is often the case with sprawling companies, its various websites and related assets), it may also focus on external factors that can be determinative to search visibility. Online reviews and directory listings are just two common examples. Enterprise SEO audits are both content audits and technical audits and can cover anything from keyword use to site loading times. Anything with a bearing on SEO rankings is considered fair game.
An enterprise SEO audit goes beyond traditional SEO audits, placing a significant emphasis on search analytics to optimize the website and its content for all stages of the user journey. In an enterprise setting, these audits often require specialized enterprise SEO and analytics platforms and must be conducted by experts with experience in handling large-scale, complex websites (hence, the need to enlist an enterprise SEO agency).
Enterprise SEO Audits vs. Conventional SEO Audits: What’s the Difference?
There’s much more that can be said about the distinction between SEO audits for enterprise-level businesses and for smaller-scale companies.
No matter the size or nature of the business, an SEO audit is intended to identify ranking problems and to reveal areas for improvement. The difference is largely related to the size and complexity of the business. An internationally known, enterprise-level company is naturally going to have a more expansive online footprint than a little mom and pop shop. SEO considerations are more complicated, and thus, an enterprise SEO audit is bound to be more in-depth.
For one thing, an enterprise-level website can potentially have thousands upon thousands of pages, using a complicated navigational structure. Checking all of these pages manually can be close to impossible, which is why enterprise SEO services will always involve robust data aggregation tools.
Reporting is another consideration here. An enterprise-level business can potentially have a large number of teams, divisions, or departments that have a stake in search rankings. With so many stakeholders and decision-makers, the need for comprehensive reporting is paramount. Again, enterprise SEO management tools are a must.
What’s Involved in an Enterprise SEO Audit?
The needs and requirements for an enterprise SEO audit can vary depending on the nature and needs of the client. With that said, some standard aspects of any good enterprise SEO audit include:
Advanced Technical Analysis
A good SEO audit will always cover the technical aspects of the site, which can include things like site speed, mobile responsiveness, and the complexity of the site’s architecture. All of these factors can have a direct impact on user experience and Google’s Core Web Vitals, both of which are key considerations for SEO. Again, enterprise-grade sites tend toward complexity, making it time-consuming and complicated to do a full technical analysis. High-level expertise and robust enterprise SEO management tools are imperative.
Comprehensive On-Page Analysis
Enterprise SEO teams must be diligent in reviewing on-page factors across a vast number of pages, including content quality, keyword optimization, meta tags, headers, and image. Once more, the sheer scale of enterprise sites makes this a big job, and it’s especially important to be mindful of template pages (e.g., factors that are replicated throughout a big, sprawling enterprise business site).
Large-Scale Content Strategy Review
Enterprise-level audits also involve evaluating the quality, relevance, and structure of extensive content repositories, ensuring they align with search intent and business objectives. This is another massive undertaking, as there can be hundreds, if not thousands of blog posts and individual web pages that must be assessed for things like spelling and grammar, best-practice copywriting, natural and judicious keyword use, messaging, optimization for voice search, and much more.
In-Depth Backlink Profile Analysis
Managing and understanding the intricacies of a large-scale backlink profile, including the quality and sources of inbound links, is another key component of enterprise SEO. Often, enterprise SEO agencies devote a lot of time to evaluating and maintaining relationships with backlining websites. Facilitating relationships with credible and authoritative sites is an important way to boost enterprise SEO.
Enterprise-Scale Competitor Benchmarking
Enterprise SEO never happens in a vacuum. It’s crucial to consider the online activity of all competitors, ascertaining SERP strengths and weaknesses in the context of the broader industry and marketplace. This is a bread-and-butter issue for any good enterprise SEO company. Enterprise SEO audits will always consider the position of competitors, gauging search market share relative to the rest of the industry.
International Factors
For global enterprises, addressing multi-language and multi-regional SEO factors is crucial. In some cases, content and messaging strategies may need to be radically altered from one locality to the next. When conducting an enterprise SEO audit, it’s imperative to account for performance in different markets or cultures.
Integration with Wider Digital Marketing Campaigns
SEO is just one among many disciplines that helps shape marketing success. A robust digital marketing strategy closely integrates SEO with public relations, social media, PPC, and countless other concepts. There should be some give-and-take here: SEO metrics can be used to guide PPC efforts, for example, while social media interactions may provide insight into how to fine-tune SEO.
Compliance and Regulatory Review
SEO practices are bound by state, federal, and international laws, including ordinances related to data collection and advertising ethics. Regulatory compliance can be an important consideration for businesses of all sizes, but the stakes are higher (and the level of scrutiny more intense) for enterprise-level businesses.
Scalability and Future-Proofing Analysis
SEO for enterprise businesses is never a static, one-and-done kind of thing. On the contrary, SEO strategies must evolve and adapt according to shifts in the marketplace, changes in consumer preferences, or big leaps forward in search technology. An important part of any enterprise-level audit is determining whether the SEO strategy can adapt and scale with evolving market trends and shifting search engine algorithms.
Custom Enterprise SEO Metrics and Reporting
A critical component of an enterprise SEO audit is a deep focus on analytics. This involves not just evaluating current performance but also setting up advanced tracking systems to monitor user behavior, conversion paths, and interactions across the site. This data-driven approach is essential for understanding the effectiveness of SEO strategies at every step of the user journey. A good enterprise SEO agency will provide custom dashboards that account for the specific analytic and reporting needs of each client.
Stakeholder Involvement and Training
Sustaining SEO momentum requires all hands on deck. An audit will often encompass some basic training, or at least awareness-raising, for stakeholders from across different companies. This helps prevent siloing and allows enterprise businesses to avoid treating SEO like it’s just a concern for the marketing team.
Actionable, Prioritized Recommendations
Ultimately, an enterprise SEO audit should result in comprehensive, actionable recommendations, ranked by priority, supported by SEO metrics, and directly tied to revenue generation. These recommendations may come as part of the more comprehensive audit report, and should be tied to the client’s own custom metrics.
Enterprise SEO Audit Checklist: What Do Auditors Look For?
The categories mentioned above provide some good insight into what enterprise SEO auditors are looking for, but the specifics can vary depending on the client’s stated needs and goals. What follows is a sample enterprise SEO audit, demonstrating just a few of the most common factors that auditors might have on their radar.
- Keyword targeting. A key consideration in any SEO audit is keyword targeting. It’s important to confirm that keyword rankings align with broader strategy, something that can be challenging given the huge and complex content libraries of the average enterprise-level company. Of special importance are keyword positioning and keyword cannibalization.
- Site duplication. Having multiple, identical versions of your site can harm overall SEO performance. Simply put, Google needs to know which version of the site they should consider in their rankings. It is not uncommon for enterprise-level companies to have various versions of their site floating across the Web, and an audit should uncover and aggregate those sites.
- Crawlability and indexability. For the best search rankings, it’s imperative to have a website that Google’s algorithms can easily crawl and index. This usually boils down to having an intuitive site hierarchy, one in which new pages are clearly linked and easy to find.
- Title tags. For the best SEO results, every page within a given website should have its own meta title, indicating to the algorithms what the page’s content is about. Title tags must be around 50-60 characters for best results. The problem that many enterprise sites face is duplication and redundancy between page titles; uniqueness is key!
- Meta descriptions. In much the same way, every page of an enterprise site needs to have a meta description that’s accurate, relevant, and unique from other pages on the site. The best meta descriptions are no more than 120 characters, and they are optimized for target keywords.
- Mobile friendliness. By now it goes without saying that a majority of search traffic comes from mobile devices. As such, it’s imperative for enterprise websites to be built from a mobile-first standpoint, emphasizing accessibility across all browser and device types.
- Site speed. One of the most critical technical concerns is loading time. For best SEO results, a site should load within two or three seconds, no matter the browser or deceive type. For especially complex enterprise websites, it’s helpful to perform regular speed and performance audits.
- Content quality. Content quality may seem like a more subjective metric, but there are some important questions enterprise auditors can ask: What’s the relevance of the content to search intent? Are primary and secondary keywords being used properly? Are images and links deployed in a way that enhances the on-page experience?
- Backlinks. Again, it’s important for enterprise websites to receive backlinks from relevant, authoritative websites that are in the same or a related industry. This is a major enterprise SEO consideration.
- Engagement Metrics. Enterprise SEO audits also look at user engagement metrics as they indirectly influence SEO by providing insights into user behavior and satisfaction. Metrics such as time on site, pages per session, goal conversions and general content engagement relevant metrics reveal how engaging and relevant your content is to users. Search engines use these signals to gauge the quality of your site which will eventually impact your SEO, and that’s why enteprrise SEO audits should include those data points.
These are just a few examples of the types of considerations that might rise to the surface during an SEO audit for an enterprise-level company.
Who Needs an Enterprise SEO Audit?
By now it should go without saying that not every business requires an SEO audit this extensive (though to be sure, even the most modestly sized business can benefit from a regular SEO checkup).
Enterprise-level SEO audits are specifically recommended for very large companies that have vast, sprawling, and often international online infrastructures.
Specifically, enterprise SEO audits are recommended for the following types of organizations.
Large Corporations and Multinational Companies
Any business that has a global operation, or that maintains websites in different regions and across various languages, can benefit from enterprise SEO services, including large-scale audits. Remember that the larger the company, the more complex the SEO audit tends to be.
E-Commerce Giants
Enterprise SEO audits are extremely well-suited to large-scale e-commerce sites with thousands of product listings. High-level SEO expertise is imperative for optimizing content and ensuring strategic alignment across all these different pages.
Media and Publishing Companies
Organizations with large digital content libraries, such as news sites, online magazines, and content publishers, need to ensure their content is optimized for search engines to attract and retain readership. Enterprise SEO services are a must.
Colleges and Universities
Large educational institutions with extensive online course catalogs and resources can use enterprise SEO audits to improve the visibility and accessibility of their offerings. Large-scale SEO services are needed to account for the sheer volume of course pages and other digital assets.
Government Agencies and Non-Profit Organizations
Government agencies and non-profits tend to have large, information-heavy websites that need to be easily navigable and findable for the public. This requires the kind of actionable insight that only an enterprise SEO audit can provide.
Healthcare Organizations and Hospitals
These websites tend to have quite a bit of medical information housed online, requiring specialized SEO strategies to ensure the right information reaches the intended audience.
Financial Institutions and Banks
Again, these are organizations that tend to put huge treasure troves of information online. All of this content must be carefully scrutinized for quality as well as data security and legal compliance, all of which falls under the umbrella of an enterprise SEO audit.
Technology and Software Companies
Enterprise SEO is needed for tech companies, particularly those that boast a wide range of products and services. Tech companies often need to target multiple audiences, too (for example, both B2C and B2B clients), furthering the complexity of the SEO audit experience.
B2B Service Providers
Speaking of B2B, companies that offer a range of services to other businesses need to ensure that their solutions are easily findable and rank well in search engine results. SEO can be especially competitive in the B2B space, making it imperative to work from robust and up-to-date information. Enterprise SEO audits can provide it.
Large Retailers and Chain Stores
Retailers often balance digital and e-commerce sales with brick-and-mortar stores, potentially including a number of different outlets of franchise in different marketplaces. Enterprise SEO management can balance local and global visibility.
How Much Do Enterprise SEO Audits & Services Cost?
Before embarking on any kind of enterprise SEO audit, it’s natural to wonder about the price point. Needless to say, a service so extensive can require a significant investment, yet the bottom-line results can make it worthwhile indeed.
Of course, the cost of enterprise SEO services can vary widely based on several factors. These factors include:
- The size and complexity of the website.
- The scope of the project (e.g., custom reporting, etc.).
- The specific needs and goals of the business.
- The enterprise SEO agency’s level of experience.
While it is impossible to provide a one-size-fits-all quote, there are some general price ranges to keep in mind when shopping for enterprise SEO services.
Cost for A Simple Yet Enterprise SEO Audit
For companies with relatively modest needs, including smaller companies that fit under the enterprise label or companies that are looking for a more routine service, the actual enterprise SEO audit costs start from $5,000 to $10,000 and up. In some cases, they may exceed this window, particularly when dealing with truly proficient and well-regarded agencies. This pricing range typically covers the actual SEO audit and including keyword research, content topic recommendations, and technical SEO roadmap. The price point increases for more sophisticated SEO needs and goals.
Mid-Tier Enterprise SEO Audits
For larger businesses with larger websites more complex needs, such as those requiring detailed content strategies or extensive technical SEO audit, prices can range from $10,000 to $50,000 plus per audit. This category also includes businesses looking for more robust or sophisticated custom dashboards and more granular enterprise SEO metrics.
Comprehensive Enterprise SEO Audit & Services
For really large and complex enterprise-level companies with are truly massive in scope especially those companies in highly competitive industries, the price of an enterprise SEO audit and roadmap can be in 6 figures where in particularly for very large or global companies, it’s not uncommon for rates to exceed $100,000. Of course, this higher price point encompasses a much more elevated range and data points, including advanced technical audit, extensive content audit and strategies, international SEO considerations, in-depth analytics, user experience, and integration with other platforms and even considering and auditing other digital marketing channels as SEO is often a key player as a multi channel digital marketing strategy that caters content and substance to users in all stages of the funnel.
What Enterprise SEO Audits Have in Common? An Enterprise SEO Roadmap
Enterprise SEO audits share a unique characteristic: they go beyond mere auditing to offer a viable SEO strategy, complete with a detailed and actionable enterprise SEO roadmap. Typically, enterprise SEO consultants or agencies collaborate closely with a company’s in-house marketing teams to fulfill the objectives outlined in these roadmaps. They also continuously refine the strategy and roadmap, adapting to new data and insights.
A Final Word About Enterprise SEO Audits Pricing
Again, it’s crucial to keep in mind that these prices are rough estimates, and that actual pricing can be very fluid. Furthermore, the cost of enterprise SEO audits and consulting services should always be considered in the context of broader Return on Investment (ROI). A higher cost usually means a better and more comprehensive audit, which can potentially unlock a lot of new opportunities to gain a competitive advantage. This, in turn, may be linked to revenue growth and an improved bottom line, making it a worthwhile investment for the enterprise in question.
Choosing the Right Enterprise SEO Agency
To summarize, it’s critical to understand that enterprise-level SEO requires extensive knowledge and a diverse set of tools. While it can something that can be done successfully on an in-house by your marketing team, but often not practical because it requires extreme focus, time and resources on SEO coupled with a experienced enterprise SEO team in place. And also the scale of an enterprise-level SEO project is simply too vast for many in-house marketing teams to be able to do it alone, hence reaching out to a reliable enterprise SEO agency with a solid track record is very vital. In other words, for a real ROI, it’s imperative to choose a trusted enterprise SEO company, like Clarity Digital.
At Clarity Digital, we have decades of experience specializing in enterprise SEO services. Our team of experts is equipped with the latest tools, plus up-to-date subject-matter expertise in conducting comprehensive enterprise-level audits. We focus on analytics-driven strategies to enhance your website’s performance at every step of the user journey, including custom dashboards that include meaningful enterprise SEO metrics. Contact Clarity Digital to learn more about our enterprise SEO audits, and how we can help you achieve your digital marketing goals.
