SES SF 2010 : Enterprise Level SEO by Guillaume Bouchard

LEADING BRAND VS RUNNER-UP SEO Business Cases

SIZE IMPACTS SEO STRATEGIES
Impact of corporate structure & # of departments involved
Aversion to risk & key objectives (catching up vs staying #1)
Access to key decision-makers / impact on momentum
Amount of power / linkjuice available within the company
LEADER vs RUNNER-UP Leading Brand vs Runner-up

Smaller corporate structures & fewer departments involved
 Agile development, faster release cycles, business model flexibility
Less aversion to risk (need to catch up with the leader)
More open to make room for SEO to bridge gaps between them and the leading brand
Faster access & bigger impact on board / key decision makers
SEO represents a bigger chunk of the company’s overall budget
With the board’s involvement, less risk of losing momentum
Not a lot of other properties available to leverage existing linkjuice
Team up with other runner-ups & relevant verticals to compensate
Smart crowdsourcing in order to compete in terms of content
RUNNER-UP INSIGHTS Leading Brand vs Runner-up

Larger corporate structure & several departments involved
Rigid development, emphasis on security, slower release cycles
Legacy products implies less business model flexibility
Heavy aversion to risk (can’t afford big mistakes)
Short-term management: can’t wait 6 to 12 months to see results
Usually focused on keeping the pace vs bridging gaps
Difficult access and near irrelevancy towards board members
SEO represents only a small chunk of the company budget
SEO can be a one VP matter, rarely ends up on the C-level table
Several existing properties to spread existing linkjuice
Need to create a global strategy to maximize each property
Biggest competitive advantage to leverage against runner-ups
LEADER INSIGHTS Leading Brand vs Runner-up

With similar SEO budgets in absolute dollars, my opinion is:
The runner-up will have the better deployed strategy (but might get bought out)
The leader will lose momentum somewhere along the way as stakeholders change and the past history gets lost or forgotten
Both companies can reach similar results online, but in most cases a smart runner-up will generate better results over a few years
Best advice for runner-up: leverage agility / flexibility and use crowdsourcing
Best advice for leader: keep momentum at all cost, ensure ideal transitions
BOTTOM LINE Leading Brand vs Runner-up

RUNNER-UP – 2007 & 2008
Business Cases
Key factors
Direct access to internal dev team
Direct access to C / VPs
Participate in the company retreats
Fast development process
Steady budget, same gatekeepers
Great momemtum over 18 months
Results
Organic Traffic increased from 30,000 to 3,000,000 per month in organic visits (from late 2007 to early 2009).
Canpages became instantly a major player in their niche, helping them raise the company value. They ended up being bought out in 2010.

LEADER – 2009 & 2010
Business Cases
Key factors
Web Dev = with a external 3rd party
Less onsite SEO elements implemented per month
Access only to the VP Digital
Had to hire a SEO director to accelerate implementations
Took longer to build momentum as many transitions occured
Results
Organic Traffic increased from approximately 3.00M to 4.5M organic visits per month (from mid-2009 to mid 2010).
The company still has to implement several recommendations

SES SF 2010 : Enterprise Level SEO by Guillaume Bouchard

by NVI on Aug 19, 2010

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SES SF 2010 : Enterprise Level SEO by Guillaume Bouchard — Presentation Transcript