Implementing SEO in a Large Organization

Small businesses face completely different challenges than larger ones when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). This has given rise to two very different types of consultants. Today, we’ll take a look at the challenges a large organization faces and how to tackle them—without necessarily needing the other kind of consultant.

A large organization with a well-known brand can reach impressive positions in search engines with minimal effort. The reason is simple: they almost always already have the authority that Google and other search engines value. The main problem is usually just to stop making mistakes.

While a newly launched shop must fight tooth and nail for every position, a larger organization can often reach the top simply by fixing existing errors on their site. This may sound easy, but it often meets significant internal resistance. That’s why a specific type of SEO consultant has emerged—those who specialize in working with large brands.

The Challenge Is Making It Happen

The point is, with big brands, you can go a long way just by stopping the mistakes. You don’t need cutting-edge SEO tactics. With proper titles, a decent site structure, and well-optimized landing pages, you’re already halfway there. Once those are in place, the next step is reviewing headers, metadata, and ensuring no links point to 404 pages. It’s not that difficult; you need keyword research skills and solid SEO fundamentals. The real challenge lies in getting it implemented.

At that point, the work begins to resemble that of a tech or management consultant more than a traditional SEO problem. That’s partly why consultants with this niche focus have emerged. Personally, however, I think many of these consultants deliver poorly—they often prioritize producing decks and spreadsheets each month over actually solving the site’s real SEO problems. Instead of realizing that the site’s structure needs an overhaul, they focus on fixing individual page titles. Sure, this helps, but if you addressed the root issue first and then tackled individual pages, you’d see far greater results.

If you can get your own organization to understand search engines at even a basic level, you’ll be able to achieve far more.

The Challenges Big Brands Face

The first problem, naturally, is not knowing where to start—and struggling to recruit someone who truly understands. The truth is that it’s quite difficult to hire an SEO who can grasp the complexities of a large-scale website. There are very few of them, and those that exist are often already well taken care of. At Brath, we’re fortunate to have three highly senior SEO professionals, which is a rarity even among agencies. That’s how scarce they are.

So instead, companies often settle for someone who’s worked on a handful of projects and has maybe two years of experience. But ask yourself: would you settle for someone with just two years of experience and no formal training in any other senior role in your organization?

This is where a good consultant becomes useful. By setting a roadmap to bring your organization up to speed, a skilled consultant can modernize your company’s SEO approach. Unfortunately, that’s rarely what happens. What usually gets delivered are quick fixes: titles, meta descriptions, more content, and so on. These do yield fast results for big brands—but once done, the core problem remains.

A much better solution would be to bring in a more experienced SEO professional and focus on implementing knowledge throughout the organization, into every part that needs it.

Where does the knowledge need to be applied?

Of course, you’ll need someone who owns the problem, but SEO is a bit like communication or environmental thinking – it needs to be integrated into many areas of the organization to work. Personally, I’d like the leadership to drive this from as high a level as possible in the organization, buy-in from the management team and the CEO is necessary for maximum effect. Then you start with the marketing department.

Marketing Department

Everyone working with marketing, at least online, needs to understand the basics of SEO. A lot of good opportunities are missed otherwise, such as campaign sites being built and forgotten, content being moved without notifying Google, and so on. It’s also important because SEO (along with SEM) should reasonably be considered one of the best channels for marketing and sales in a fairly modern company. The marketing team needs to understand this. You need buy-in from the marketers.

Everyone working with content

Next, everyone working with online content in some form – web editors and communicators – needs to understand how they contribute to SEO. This is almost entirely about not complicating things for search engines, but ensuring that all text is understandable by a spider. Usually, only a basic education is needed, provided the organization offers support and the site(s) are well-built from an SEO perspective. Everyone working with text needs a fundamental understanding of SEO.

Developers

Your developers hold great power when it comes to SEO, and strangely enough, this is not often prioritized in traditional education. Rather, my experience is that SEO is often dismissed.

Often, you’ll face technical problems that arise because the developer(s) haven’t understood the issue at hand. There are a long list of best practices within development that are directly harmful to SEO. There are frameworks that are a disaster for anyone wanting to be visible in search engines but are still very popular. You’ll often find yourself in a standoff where SEO is pitted against user-friendliness, a stance you could have entirely avoided if the right framework had been chosen from the start.

Finally, you need a budget

Just like you wouldn’t hire a marketing manager and expect them to market without any money for it, you can’t expect an SEO specialist to optimize without a budget. Ten years ago, this might have been possible, but the competition in search results has increased dramatically since then. The cost of SEO is no longer just the time it takes to write a 58-character title. To get your SEO moving, you need to reach outside your own site, just like any other form of marketing. This can no longer be done for free.

Key takeaways

• Find the right person with solid SEO knowledge. Don’t settle for a junior.
• Spread the knowledge across marketing, content, and development.
• Invest money.