On-Site, Off-Site, & Enterprise SEO: The Ultimate Guide

Research indicates that more than half of all organic web traffic is generated by search engine queries. This isn’t surprising — when you need to find a specific product or reach out to a local business, you likely turn to Google. The results you’ll see at the top of the first page didn’t land there by accident.

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In most cases, these high-ranking results require the implementation of a specific strategy. This strategy is called search engine optimization, or SEO — and enterprise SEO is an essential investment for bigger businesses.

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Search engine optimization is not a monolith, though — nor is it a one-size-fits-all endeavor. On the contrary, there are many ways to implement SEO, including the three most common approaches — on-site, off-site, and enterprise SEO.

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Learn below how each of these strategies works and see why enterprise SEO is likely the top strategy for your business:

Understanding On-site SEO vs Enterprise SEO

On-site SEO is often the origin point for a fully fleshed-out SEO plan. Indeed, you can’t build an effective off-site or enterprise SEO plan without first mastering your on-site SEO plan.

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This SEO approach involves tailoring a site’s content and coding to achieve a higher ranking in search results — typically by using a combination of the following five components:

1. High-Quality Content

There’s a phrase that you’ll hear often in SEO circles — “content is king.” Indeed, these three words indicate just how vital content is, but all content is not created equal. An effective on-site SEO strategy demands content that’s useful, engaging, and relevant to readers’ search. This is the best way to attract organic traffic and keep visitors on your site for longer.

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A decade ago, these criteria weren’t so important. Websites could rely on generic content that was packed with the right keywords to achieve a favorable ranking. This changed in 2011, though, when Google rolled out the Panda algorithm for search result rankings.

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One of Panda’s major changes was an increased emphasis on the quality of web content. This update proved to be a game changer as low-quality blogs generated by content farms were no longer a viable strategy. Panda was programmed to flag and demote the rankings of sites with subpar, formulaic content.

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High-quality content has since become the standard for SEO. This content can come in many forms, but blogs are one of the most popular applications. If a prospective customer searches for a specific question — for example, “What are the 3 types of SEO?” — you can rise to the top of the results with a blog that answers this question. In addition to garnering traffic, this strategy demonstrates your value to visitors and establishes the authority of your business’s website.

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Defining the term “high-quality content” might be tricky, though. You can recognize great content when you see it, but it’s hard to articulate what features set it apart. Some of the characteristics that can distinguish your content include:

In-depth information about the subject.
Content that competitors don’t have.
Well-written prose that’s easy to read.
Natural, unforced use of keywords.

These traits will make your on-site content highly attractive to readers, which is particularly important in a post-Panda world.

2. Title Tags

Title tags are yet another aspect of an on-site SEO and enterprise SEO strategy that businesses must use to improve rankings. Title tags are the snippet of text that appears as a page’s title in search engine results.

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Contrary to popular belief, this text is not automatically generated, unless you fail to specify your title tags — and if you do this, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to boost your site’s rankings.

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Indeed, title tags are one of the simplest ways to tell users what a page on your website is about. More importantly, this text tells a search engine what your page is about, so if the title tag aligns with a specific keyword, the page is more likely to rank higher. This makes them one of the most vital components of an on-site SEO strategy.

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Simply using keywords in the title tag isn’t enough to boost your results, though. Businesses must optimize title tabs the same way the rest of the site’s content is optimized. This means keeping title tags to a short, manageable length — typically between 65 and 75 characters. You should also prioritize your top keywords by positioning them at the beginning of the title tag.

3. Internal Links

A high bounce rate is one of the biggest battles that many business websites face. This phrase refers to site visitors who land on a website and depart without navigating to any other pages.

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In most cases, this means that they did not initiate a transaction, so a high bounce rate typically correlates to the loss of potential revenue. Internal links are one of the best ways to combat this problem, support an on-site SEO strategy, and build the foundation for enterprise SEO platforms.

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Internal links are exactly what they sound like — links on a website page that direct users to other pages on the same site. Sprinkling internal links throughout content can encourage users to continue exploring your site, and in turn, this will increase the likelihood of a sale or contact. To use internal links effectively, though, your website must have enough pages to sustain an extensive link network.

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The easiest way to achieve this is — once again — a wealth of great content. When you regularly post high-quality blogs, you’ll always have enough content to draw on for internal links.

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You can further optimize the impact this has on your rankings by using strategic anchor text. Anchor text that contains keywords can further signal to search engines that your content is relevant and useful to users who are searching for these terms.

4. Responsive Design

A great on-site SEO strategy demands a responsive design. Research indicates that 60% to 70% of all web searches are conducted from a mobile device. This figure is a sharp increase from a few years ago, and it continues to rise. Businesses must respond by offering responsive design elements to users, ensuring that their website is compatible with any kind of device.

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Search engines have further reinforced the importance of responsive design by prioritizing results from mobile-friendly websites. This is true even for searches that originate from a desktop or laptop. How can a business craft a truly responsive design, then, and achieve a higher ranking? There are a few elements of this strategy that every website should employ:

Interactive elements that automatically resize.
Fluid CSS management of media integration.
User-friendly navigation on any device.
Maintenance of white space for comfortable browsing.

These features can ensure that your website is accessible and navigable no matter what kind of device your site’s traffic originates from.

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The most important benefit of responsive design, though, is the boost in conversions that it can provide. When users log onto a device-compatible site that’s engaging, fast-loading, and relevant to their search, they are far more likely to continue browsing and eventually follow through on a call to action.

5. Keywords

The keywords that you use on your website are vital to the success of your on-site SEO campaign. They’re equally important for off-site and enterprise SEO platform approaches, too. You need to use keywords that are specific, engaging, and aligned with your target audience’s search queries. Using keyword research to pinpoint these and using them naturally is often a challenge, though — especially for larger companies that need to target the most competitive keywords in their market.

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Consider, too, the fact that a typical search query is just three words long. Leveraging keywords that are so brief is difficult and makes the pursuit of high rankings even more competitive. Luckily, though, there are ways to use keywords strategically in your site’s content and achieve a great ranking in the process. In addition to boosting your site’s placement, this is the precursor to any effective enterprise search engine marketing campaign.

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To optimize the impact of your on-site keywords, you should focus on the context in which they appear. Outdated SEO tactics often advise businesses to bold or underline their target keywords to signal relevancy to search engines. Unsurprisingly, these strategies backfired as algorithms detected this as an attempt to boost rankings rather than a legitimate indicator of the page’s content.

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Establishing context — like many other aspects of an SEO strategy — relies on great content. Search engine algorithms can detect whether the text surrounding a keyword appears to be natural. If so, the page will likely achieve a better ranking.

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Conversely, if an algorithm detects that a keyword may appear in an unnatural context — for example, if it is repeatedly shoe-horned into a blog about an unrelated topic — the keyword won’t yield the desired results.

Understanding Off-Site SEO & Its Requirements

Off-site SEO shares many of the same principles that enterprise SEO and on-site SEO employ. As the name suggests, though, these principles appear on other websites rather than a business’s website.

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Though off-site SEO strategies are often not customer-facing, these five elements prove that it’s no less important than on-site tactics and enterprise SEO tactics:

1. Backlinks

Backlinks are an essential ingredient in any website’s SEO formula. This word refers to the placement of links to your website on other websites. These may also be called “incoming links” or “inbound links,” indicating that the link in question directs users to your website. In most cases, the more backlinks a page has, the higher its search engine ranking will be. This is because search engine algorithms interpret a high number of backlinks as an indication of authority.

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Investing in high-quality content is one of the best ways to organically generate backlinks. When your website produces reliable, engaging, and genuinely useful content, users are likely to share it across the web and thus generate backlinks. This includes sharing on social media, which can be a huge source of traffic for business sites — and yet another way to improve SEO ranking.

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Of course, relying on organic backlinks may not generate sufficient results. Partnering with an SEO strategist can help your business develop a strategic backlinking plan to build your site’s authority and boost its search engine ranking. Remember, too, that backlinks can serve as an organic traffic source so that your website is visible to users interested in your business’s products or services.

2. Off-Site Promotion

Google’s aforementioned Panda update threw a wrench in many websites’ SEO strategies. In addition to cracking down on low-quality content, the new algorithm targeted so-called “black hat SEO” practices. These practices include any strategy that violates a search engine’s official guidelines to boost the site’s ranking in search results. While such tactics might initially achieve a boost, most search engine algorithms are adept enough to eventually detect these violations and penalize the offending website.

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Some examples of black hat SEO include keyword stuffing, private link purchases, cloaking, and comment spamming. The latter of these is a technique that became popular as automated web bots could easily publish hundreds or thousands of links in mere minutes.

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To achieve this, bots would scan the web for pages with public comment sections and spam the comments with links to the target website. This tactic falsely inflated the concentration of backlinks for a page, but it also littered countless websites with disruptive spam comments. Google and other search engines began discouraging this practice by demoting the ranking of pages that do this.

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Despite this, off-site promotion is a valuable tool for any SEO strategy. There is nothing unethical about promoting your brand and linking to your site — especially if you’re doing so when engaging with content that is relevant to your business.

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Rather than relying on spambots to spread links, then, you should seek out opportunities to organically promote your site. This means commenting on posts that are relevant to your business and providing useful information along with any links you may include.

3. Authority

Many words and phrases recur in conversations about SEO. One of these is the word “authority.” Authority refers to a website’s perceived reputation and prominence in its industry. Target, for example, is one of the most authoritative websites for general retail searches. Increasing your website’s authority will rely heavily on the on-site techniques that you use, but it also depends on an effective off-site strategy to succeed.

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You can boost your website’s authority through backlinks and brand promotion, but you can also do this by intentionally positioning your brand as an expert. If your business is in the automotive industry, you can conduct research via customer surveys about how often they drive or how frequently they perform car maintenance. You can then publish the results of this survey on your site’s blog. As a publisher of an original consumer study, you have now successfully established your authority in the field.

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Though this is an example of an on-site strategy, boosting your authority can be an off-site strategy, too. When you produce original research, for example, you can invite other websites and sources to quote your findings. In addition to organically incentivizing backlinks, this increases your website’s visibility and establishes your company’s reputation.

4. Social Media

The importance of social media cannot be overstated when it comes to crafting your brand’s marketing campaign. Did you know that social media also plays a big role in your website’s search engine ranking?

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It’s true — in 2015, Google and Twitter entered an agreement that allowed the search engine to index all of the social media platform’s content. As a result, links and content that appear on the site may have an impact on Google’s rankings.

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Few details were given about this deal, and it’s unclear whether the agreement is still in effect. It’s also unclear whether other social media platforms may have similar agreements with search engines. Given how ubiquitous social media is, though, it’s unlikely that the top platforms are excluded from search engine calculations.

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Businesses should thus view social media as an important component of an off-site SEO strategy. Sharing content on sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook is a great place to start.

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In addition to promoting your business and increasing traffic, a social media campaign can encourage users to share your website’s content. This, in turn, will generate organic backlinks and improve your website’s ranking.

5. Guest Content

If you haven’t already realized the importance of content in your SEO strategy, the role of guest content should convince you. Guest content is the practice of creating content that’s published on another website. A business that specializes in baking accessories might create a guest post that gets published on a popular cooking blog, for example.

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This gets your brand in front of your target audience, and it also produces high-quality backlinks. When you are producing guest content, it’s important to keep a few key principles in mind:

Tailor content to the website’s readers.
Create content that aligns with both brands.
Incorporate a natural call to action.
Include links to various pages on your site.

Following these guidelines will increase your chances of landing lucrative, high-quality guest content spots. Remember that other websites want quality content, too, and providing guest content can be mutually beneficial.

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As is true of every other aspect of SEO, though, this strategy can backfire if you don’t abide by industry best practices. To this end, your guest content must stay on-topic, avoid keyword stuffing, and provide engaging ideas to readers.

Understanding the Power of Enterprise SEO

The third type of SEO — enterprise SEO — is arguably the most important. This strategy is designed to help enterprise businesses and organizations by strategically targeting the most competitive keywords.

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It involves a combination of on-site and off-site tactics as well as the use of a dedicated search engine optimization team:

Competition

Competition is the most important aspect of enterprise SEO. While most SEO occurs at the Little League level, enterprise-level SEO is akin to the World Series. This is because it focuses on grabbing the most highly sought-after traffic by targeting the most commonly used keywords. While many businesses might shy away from this challenge, you know it’s the key to achieving optimal revenue and growth for your business.

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A successful enterprise SEO plan thus demands that you assess your competition thoroughly. You need to know exactly what keywords and customers they are targeting so that you can target them, too.

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Edging ahead of the competition is difficult when multiple large enterprise sites are fighting for the top spot in specific search results, but when you implement a strategy for your content and SEO, you can hold your own against the competition — in rankings and revenue alike.

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The best way to assess your web competitors is to search with the keywords that you believe customers will use. See what results appear and assess whether they are indeed competitors against your business. If so, you must conduct a thorough inventory of their website, noting any content or design elements that could contribute to its ranking.

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Strategize ways to replicate this success without mimicking the website too closely or duplicating any of its content.

Hot Keywords

To target the top keywords, you must first identify what those keywords are. SEO for enterprises relies on accurate data regarding consumers' search behavior. If you target subprime keywords, your strategy will fall flat. Using keyword research to identify the hottest keywords is thus a top priority for any enterprise-level SEO campaign, and you can do this by conducting market research in your industry.

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There are many online tools available that will help you. Google Trends, for example, offers incredible insights into the performance and popularity of specific search terms. You can use this tool and other similar applications to identify the search queries that your target audience is the most likely to use. Remember that short and simple keywords are typically the most popular across all industries.

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You should also keep in mind that keyword queries fluctuate frequently. The basis of a successful enterprise SEO campaign is adaptability. You must stay on top of the various keywords that align with your brand and ensure that you’re targeting the best ones.

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An enterprise SEO audit can help you detect any discrepancy between your website’s SEO targets and your business’s optimal keywords.

Dedicated Team

How is enterprise SEO different from other SEO? There are many answers to this question, but one important difference emerges — enterprise SEO demands the presence of a dedicated team.

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Smaller SEO campaigns can typically be managed in-house by a business’s owner or webmaster. For bigger companies that need bigger results, though, it’s essential to scale your resources to match your expectations.

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You need a team of experts on your side who can supercharge your ranking, monitor top keywords, and adapt your strategy in real time.

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A dedicated enterprise SEO team offers plenty of other benefits, too. When you enter the world of enterprise-level SEO, a team of strategists will offer the following:

Substantial traffic growth
Increased organic revenue growth.
Increased page one keyword results.
Constant supervision of performance.
Collaboration to establish clear goals.

These advantages can provide the edge you need to rank higher than competitors and win the business of coveted customers. The right enterprise SEO team is one of the best investments you can make for the growth of your website, your company, and your revenue.

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When you’re searching for an enterprise SEO partner, consider one that offers a free enterprise SEO audit. This can help you see the weak spots in your website as well as the potential for future growth.

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A great team of SEO experts can also use this audit to formulate a plan of action to address your weak spots, improve your keyword usage, and boost your ranking.

Automation

Human insight is an indispensable element of your enterprise SEO plan, but automation can be, too. Indeed, there are many tasks that a computer can do to streamline your SEO processes and improve your results. Some of the SEO-related tasks that you can automate include:

Competition analysis and monitoring.
Tracking your rank across search engines.
Tracking and analyzing backlinks.
Monitoring your website and its traffic.

A human SEO expert should oversee these tasks, but in most cases, they can be outsourced to an algorithm to generate automatic reports and data.

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Automation is one of the most important enterprise SEO tools because it allows businesses to maintain focus on what matters the most — serving the influx of users that an SEO strategy prompts and converting those users to customers. Automation often produces high-quality data, too, that is more accurate than what human research may produce.

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Dedicated enterprise SEO teams can help your business automate essential SEO tasks and apply the findings of the research effectively.

Website Architecture

Finally, effective website architecture is an essential component of an enterprise SEO strategy. The architecture of your website is the internal hierarchy that guides users’ navigation and is reinforced with internal links. Architecture is important to enterprise SEO because it determines how easily a search engine’s algorithm can identify the information on your website.

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A campaign that aims for the most competitive ranking must have an expertly crafted internal architecture to support this ranking. This helps search engines and your site’s visitors understand the navigational logic between different pages on your site.

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You can improve your website’s architecture — and your enterprise SEO campaign — by creating user-friendly URLs. A URL that ends with a jumbled mix of numbers and letters doesn’t offer any information about the content of the page. This can hurt your website’s ranking.

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A URL that indicates the title of the page, though, will likely rank higher thanks to this element of its architecture. Enterprise SEO is all about details. You’re competing against big brands and major companies to snag a top spot on the first page of search results.

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Optimizing your website’s architecture is an effective way to set it apart from competitors and get closer to the top of search results.

Leverage the Power of Enterprise SEO Services

leveraging the power of enterprise seo services

On-site and off-site SEO strategies are both important, but they’re only part of the picture when you’re crafting an enterprise SEO strategy. You also need a dedicated team of search engine optimization experts to help you optimize your site and successfully target the top keywords.

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elk Marketing specializes in providing these services to clients who require competitive management. We can guide your business to a top ranking through collaboration and strategy.

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Find out what your website needs by Contacting Us and scheduling a free enterprise SEO audit with one of our experts. Trust the best enterprise for SEO experts in the market.