Happy Holidays, Enterprise SEOs!

And no, I don’t mean Valentine’s Day. Much love to my fellow search enthusiasts on this lovely holiday, of course, but for those of us who work at helping large companies become more visible in search engines, mid-February is also a time to focus on the future. Getting projects in the queue today is the only way for large organizations—especially online retailers—to prepare for big natural search results in Q4.

SEOs for small business have their own problems when it comes to natural search, including the lack of link popularity that led to the paid link controversy of 2007, but there’s no question that small businesses have the advantage when it comes to creating, optimizing and posting content quickly. While SEOs with small to medium-size businesses may be able to create content in a matter of hours, it might take a larger organization several months to get the same content in front of and approved by all the necessary departments (legal, branding, etc), created by marketing, and developed and pushed by IT. So while it might be acceptable for small businesses to wait until Q2 or Q3 for large-scale Q4 content creation, it’s necessary for optimizers of the Fortune 500 to start working today.

Where to start? There are many silos to break down, so start identifying yours now. Who are the decision makers within the organization who need to sign off on your project, and which of them ultimately makes the decision to implement it? Enterprise SEOs, whether in-house or agency, need to understand the influencers within an organization, and communicate to all of them in their terms. Identifying these influencers, getting on their calendars, communicating why the status quo is harmful to search engine visibility, convincing them why your point of view is ultimately best for their department and the company, formulating a plan to implement change within that organization and then implementing that change doesn’t happen overnight. Enterprise SEOs need to take steps to start the conversation today.

With the understanding that it can take a while to implement change within an organization, some SEOs may be tempted to wait until summer to start planning for Q4. Don’t fall into this overly optimistic trap. Even with enterprise SEO it can take six months to show significant gains in the search engine results pages. Give yourself enough time to plan, implement, and achieve the success in Q4 you need. Plan for your happy SEO holidays today.

Posted by: Bryson Meunier, Product Champion, Natural Search