My talk on coordinating organic marketing efforts across complicated global enterprises through means of SEO Centers of Excellence for Internet Summit 2018.

1. SEO for Global Enterprises:
How to Cut the Red Tape and See Results

2. About
● We make data-driven
decisions
● We provide solutions, not
services
● We build our own technology
● You will work directly with
senior team members
PR / Social
Influencer
outreach
Content
Content
marketing
Search
UX
Dev
Navigation
optimisation
Product page
content
Code
improvements
SEO

3. US Clients

4. Local Team
Global Knowledge

5. Ryan Huser
VP of Operations
○ 16 years in SEO
○ 6 years in Enterprise SEO
○ Worked with Shell, Citrix, Verizon, Travelocity
○ Currently working his way through riding all of
Raleigh’s Greenway system

6. What do I mean by Global
Enterprise?

7. Separate Brands
● With multiple domains and websites
● Offering separate yet frequently similar
products
● May involve acquired competitors or
“product creep”
Global Presence
● Operates in multiple international
markets
● Targeted to multiple languages
● Creation of unique content for each
region
Multiple Points of Contact
● Client-side Marketing or SEO
contacts for each site
● Featuring multiple layers of
stakeholders
● Involving separate development
teams and cycles

8. The Players

9. ● Points of Every Day Contact
● Best client-side
understanding of SEO
overall
● Priority: Organic KPIs
The Client Contacts

10. ● Implements your SEO
initiatives
● Good technical
understanding of SEO
recommendations
● Priority: Keeping the site
running
The Development Team

11. ● Your Points of Contact’s
Bosses - Decision/Policy
Makers
● Broad, external
understanding of SEO
● Priority: Direct Profitability of
SEO; High Visibility Head
Terms
The Stakeholders

12. ● Multiple team members,
varying experience levels
● Potentially multiple offices in
separate time zones
● Priority: Juggle the needs of
all the above
You, and your
Agency

13. Your Biggest Hurdles
Content Overlap
Inconsistent Reporting
Implementation
Organization
Duplicate content can lead to widespread keyword
cannibalization, both inter-site and cross-domain
Different analytics packages across different properties
make proper analysis difficult
Difficult to get Stakeholder buy-in for changes because of
company politics, lack of development resource or
capability
The left hand rarely knows what the right is doing. This can
occur both within your client organization and your own.

14. Hurdle 1: Organization

15. Individual Property
Meetings
Contact Dev Team
Stakeholders SEO Agency
Frequency: Weekly or Bi-Weekly
Participants: Client contact for specific property, Agency
representative for specific property

16. Dedicate Staff to Maintaining Shared Notes
No PM tool? No worries. Use Google
Docs to stay organized.
● Agency-side control
● Single Doc to house all notes for
each property
● Use of Outline for Quick
Reference
Help hold your client contact
accountable with concrete records
of all your recommendations.

17. Assigning Projects via
Google Drive
By assigning projects to people
within Google Docs, you can hold
your internal global team
accountable with clear,
unambiguous assignments.

18. Ad Hoc Development
Meetings
Frequency: As Needed
Participants: Client contact for specific property, Agency
representative for specific property, Development Team
Contact Dev Team
Stakeholders SEO Agency

19. Enterprise Wide Meetings
Frequency: Monthly or Quarterly
Participants: Client contact for each property, Agency representative
for each property, Stakeholders
Contact Dev Team
Stakeholders SEO Agency

20. Identify all tertiary
properties not covered in
your engagement

21. Pick a Centralized Location for the
agency “Hub” in the center of all
time zones
Primary Group Lead and Meeting Organization
Sidney
Australia
Raleigh
US
Paris
France
London
United
Kingdom
Vancouver
Canada

22. Identification Education
Communication
Utilize this meeting to address Inter-Enterprise
SEO Practices

23. Hurdle 2: Implementation

24. Cutting Through Red Tape
It is crucial to forge a good relationship with stakeholders, as
they can act as the gatekeepers to getting your SEO initiatives
pushed through.
Contact Dev Team
Stakeholders SEO Agency

25. Educate Importance of the
Proper KPIs
Due to their broader view of SEO,
Stakeholders tend to primarily be
concerned about short tail, high
volume keywords.
What really matters:
● Well converting Organic
Traffic
● Ranking performance for
higher intent, long tail
keywords

26. Tailor your Strategies to
Get Results Quickly
Gain momentum quickly by pushing for
“quick wins” first, like:
● KW Optimization of High Value
Landing Pages
● Broken Link Reclamation
● Hreflang for International
Targeting (be careful)

27. Be Completely Honest
and Upfront
Explain your reasoning for
recommendations to Stakeholders and
your Client Contact, utilizing:
● Previous experience with similar
(if not identical) situations
● Case Studies
● Statements from Google (be
careful)

28. Becoming the Dev Team’s
Best Friend
It is equally crucial to maintain good relationships with the
development team, as they are the ones actually implementing
your SEO initiatives.
Contact Dev Team
Stakeholders SEO Agency

29. Understand Platform
Difficulties
Familiarize yourself with the CMS or
platform on which the site is running.
Learn all the prevalent SEO issues
each has.
For example, Demandware does not
officially support HTTPS (out of the
box).
Make the Developer's life easier by
anticipating the potential
difficulties of implementing your
recommendations.

30. Alternative
Implementation Plans
Find alternate SEO solutions to give
the Developers some options.
For Example: Dev can’t do a 301? Use a
canonical tag. Can’t put a canonical
tag in the head? Use a canonical tag
in the header response.

31. Ultimate Workarounds
Tag Injectors and Specialized
Software can be utilized in powerful
ways, but make it clear it is to help
the Developers - not bypass them.

32. Hurdle 3: Inconsistent Reporting

33. Trying to Compare Apples
to Oranges
It’s crucial when doing analysis
between sites that analytics data is
not provided from mixed sources.
Even two sites utilizing the same
platform may have been set up
completely differently, or contain their
own distinct tracking errors.

34. Begin by Creating a
Common Ground
The solution? Baby steps - start with
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is:
● Free
● Painless to setup
● Exportable via API
● Provides SEO insights unavailable
elsewhere
Shared analytics issues will take time to
diagnose and solve - in the meantime,
rely on GSC for shared reporting.

35. Hurdle 4: Content Overlap

36. What is Keyword
Cannibalization?
Traditionally speaking, keyword
cannibalization occurs when Google has
difficulty determining which page on a
site should rank for a search query.
This can result in the multiple URLs
alternating in and out of SERPs for a
specific query, and/or decreased
ranking performance of the strongest
URL.

37. Classic Internal Cannibalization Example
The ranking data here demonstrates
what happens when new URLs of a
similar keyword focus becomes
eligible for indexation, and what
happens when this content is
NOINDEX’d.
Traditional KW Cannibalization is a
classic problem that should be
avoided regardless of client setup.

38. Inter-Enterprise
Cannibalization
Similar complications can occur when
a large, global company has the same
content represented across multiple
sites.
Inter-Enterprise cannibalization is
more complicated, but can be just
as destructive.

39. Owning The SERP
Ranking Multiple Sites for a single
query is not always a bad thing.
In scenarios where competition is
lower, “Owning the SERP” or claiming
multiple listings via your different
sites and brands can be beneficial.

40. Best Foot Forward
Even if your client “Owns the SERP”, you
need to ensure that the proper sites are
ranking over less ideal ones.
With CTRs significantly higher in the first
few results, having the optimal result in
rank position 5-10 can be detrimental to
conversion efforts.
Make sure to test how different sites’
pages perform in different positions
when you have multiple listings.

41. Your Own Worst Enemy
Combining link value by consolidating
overlapping pages will give each of
the “canon” pages stronger ranking
performance, and eliminate any
inter-Enterprise organic competition.
When dealing with high
competition SERPs, you’re usually
better off eliminating Content
Overlap. But always Test first!

42. Internationalization
Issues
Hreflang indicates which regional version
of Google you wish to serve your content.
It does not consolidate link
equity/ranking strength.
Implementing hreflang is not always the
right move. For example, let’s say your US
site has a significant link equity and
strong performance in the UK. You could
lose traffic and conversions by
implementing.

43. Putting it all Together

44. Import GSC
Search Analytics
into Report for
two sites
This report provides an
overlap analysis
between queries driving
traffic to both sites
Can run this report over
multiple time periods in
order to determine
changes
Insights include an easy
to reference scoring
system and the Top 10
Overlapping Keywords
Free Cross-Site Content Overlap Analysis Tool

45. Download at:
http://ayi.ma/sr656

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47. Questions?
ryan@ayima.com
@TheBigGuyRy