Maxing Enterprise SEO :
Enterprise Optimization Topics
A web footprint is magnified at the enterprise level, especially for
the important search considerations. On the positive side, enterprise
SEO brings to bear some awesome firepower. You have expansive critical
mass, an automated implementation, and resources supported by revenue
or investors. You can advance in competitive fields simply by
allocating resources effectively across content and link builds, and if
you run into trouble, you can buy expertise... Your sites should be
dominating!
Achieving high level enterprise SEO is a hugely painstaking effort,
because every issue is connected to others, and the number of ducks
needed to be lined up can be staggering. And while most enterprise SEOs
can push ranks in Google, most are not paying attention to basic search
compliance. But you've learned your lesson from that last penalty, and
search compliance is now high on the redesign list.
Of
course, as a knowledgeable enterprise seo, you've used automation to
ensure search compliance. So you know that those guys in marketing will
never be able to inadvertently create an issue for the sites - post an
accidental redundancy, or create an attribution problem by copying
content from one of your other sites, etc. You've got that covered.
And the Italian site is clear to run a translation of the US site,
as long as no other Italian version goes live. But what about
development going on in the London office? You're aware of these issues
faced by a Global enterprise with foreign language sites, and because this is a second English language site, you initiated a compliance review, so all's well.
Still, you keep nervously checking your ranks. Because you know that
when the enterprise websites stop performing in the natural search, the
heat is not just on, it's white hot, whether it's a Google penalty or
just rank loss...
If you've been paying attention, and your enterprise seo program
includes some automated compliance checks, you know you can rule out
some issues immediately. And if you're really lucky, your automation
quickly shows you what is wrong with the search - whether it's the
site, the db, the server, or even Google - the problem is known,
addressed, fixed...
Any organization propagating multiple sites puts the natural search
rank of all at risk if search compliance is not being addressed with a
central strategy, early on. Because you have to work at compliance.
Enterprise web implementations are complex animals. Not paying
attention to compliance oversight encourages invisible, incremental
non-compliance, which eventually becomes large scale anarchy as
automation and lack of accountability multiply the problem.
This may seem a radical thing to state, but without search
compliance oversight, a large organization with many sites is
guaranteed to crash and burn in the search. We see the detritus and
help pick up the pieces. And it's from that point on that they
understand that enterprise seo means first paying strict attention to
search compliance. Then you optimize.
The fact is that no one can really be prepared for the disaster that
a large scale search issue can bring to bear. But prevention and
preemption is something rarely focused on, even though it becomes the
#1 issue after the fact. Search compliance is something that needs to
be addressed before the rank loss happens.
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Rank Preservation
When the structure of a large implementation is altered, it can create
severe ranking problems, especially if the link pathways need to be
disrupted. For this reason, whenever changes to the website structure
occur, rank preservation comes front and center, as one of the primary
concerns.
The premise is the same for both small and large sites. The main difference is the role played by automation and other consequences of scale. On a commerce site, the change could
be initiated by a new product line. This often requires the creation of
new pages and the removal of old ones.
But what happens to the old ranks held by the old products? Rank
preservation is often handled by 301 permanent redirects, pushing the
visitors from the old pages to the new ones, and passing rank along as
well. The concept is simple, but how do you implement a thousand page
changes all at once? Small sites often use meta redirects, page by
page. While that may sometimes be useful to a large enterprise,
handling large numbers of redirects is better handled by robust data
management, where the redirection occurs automatically because it's
built into the rules set.
When you purchase a successful business and the accompanying web
implementation, how do you integrate the new with the old and preserve
or improve the most productive ranks? Again, this is a problem unlikely
to be encountered by the small site, but is very frequently a
consequence of standard business strategies of large enterprises. And
whether the enterprise keeps all sites live, or integrates them all
into one, enterprise website, the notion of rank preservation is
central to good web planning.
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When SEO Fails
Even the most conscientious web developer will eventually discover a
website environment that does not respond to traditional seo efforts.
When seo fails, when legitimate efforts and good intentions are not
good enough, where do you turn? Whether the site is lacking robustness,
or is penalized, a site that is not performing is only a stress
inducing liability.
At the enterprise level, when seo fails, you have a black hole sucking
resources and time, and very possibly putting the enterprise itself at
risk. When the productive. natural search ranks are stripped away from
a business that is reliant on them, nothing is more important than a
solution.
A large implementation spanning many countries and languages has search
compliance considerations that no small site will ever encounter.
Automation is a requirement to address the numerous issues. For
example, keeping track and control of content redundancies with either
disallows or nofollows across a huge number of domains and pages would
be impossible without automation.
But sometimes the automation is the problem. When seo fails via automation, it fails big. Sometimes REALLY BIG.
Unseen consequences, lack of full consideration when first
implementing, automation not taking into account compliance
considerations, all are the explanations for this disaster. But what
you'll be looking at is lost ranks and a lot of questions. The
complexities of an issue triggered by existing (and previously working)
automation are impossible to diagnose without enterprise level
optimization expertise.
Are you prepared for the inevitable - when seo fails? Sounds so
provocative to ask, but lower level penalties, or rank weaknesses
caused by minor compliance issues, plague many, many sites. Whether
it's human error, weak cms, no accountability, etc. these issues can
ramp up any problems exponentially via your automation. And it might be
already happening, going unnoticed. Except for those ranking
difficulties.
When building relevant, targeted content or posting links with target
anchors no longer impacts ranks, it's going to feel like your seo is
failing. And it is. But the issue may be a compliance failure. At the
enterprise level, this kind of failure often involves an automation
miscue on a simple but critical attribute. Many search marketers
believe they can seo themselves out of any bad rank. But if the posting
protocols are not held to appropriate standards, there's a high
probability that the system will eventually become non-compliant. And
trying to seo a non-compliant website will not only fail, it may
trigger the failure, and that failure may be a penalized site.
Sometimes, when seo fails, the real issue is search compliance.
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Search Compliance Is Not A Choice
There is nothing more necessary for the large enterprise than an active
program to ensure the web implementations are search compliant.
That means that (1) no one is able to create issues by accident,
because all posts are prevetted for compliance either by an accountable
party or automation.
That means (2) the automation has active redundancy discovery and redundancy handling, preventing automation errors and dupes.
And it means (3) periodic vetting of inbound links to pre-empt 3rd party interference.
If you don't have a robust strategy to address these 3 issues, your
search positions are at risk, no matter how high your current ranks.
Large systems requiring multiple access and posting capabilities
need to consider the search issues created by those capabilities.
Beyond mere scale, unique functionality and content management
protocols contribute complexities to the implementation that can
directly impact the site's ability to rank.
Developers can very easily create systems that generate content or
structures that can be seen as deceptive, redundant, or otherwise
harmful to search positions. And many structures that work fine for
small sites self destruct when scaled large. Very frequently we find
huge sites with massive amount of redundancy, often across multiple
sites and subdomains.
And if your Singapore office is posting the exact same boilerplate
as your people in New York, is the inherent system redundancy being
addressed by your automation? Or is the enterprise falling into deeper
risk?
Many large enterprises have sites about to suffer in the natural
search as a result of penalties triggered by legacy, non-compliant web
implementations. Just because you're flying under the radar right now
doesn't mean you're ok. In fact, putting off a compliance check is a
bad idea. The last thing you need is to discover your systems are
non-compliant by having a penalty imposed on your natural search
positions.
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Google Penalty Solutions
Loss of rank due to a Google penalty is not an uncommon experience
for any size site. And whether it's due to redundancies, bad
neighborhoods, multiple sites, or whatever, pain is pain, regardless of
business size.
But Google penalties often scale along with other factors, so if
there's a problem with the natural search ranks of a large web entity,
chances are it's not a small one. Many troublesome Google penalty
issues arise because automation protocols did not take search compliance into consideration. Systems
are designed for the convenience of the users. But if search compliance
was not considered during development, the automation itself can be the
culprit.
he
two most common Google penalty related automation issues involve the
inadvertent creation of redundancies at the content and domain level,
and filename redundancies across multiple directories.
For example, the null set redundancy exists when a page gets created
even when there is no data. If more than one empty page is created, you
have pages that are redundant by virtue of having no data - perhaps
only header, footer, and nav. Create enough of these pages, and it can
trigger a Google penalty because it can appear to be a deceptive
strategy by virtue of the numbers.
Sometimes
the implementation choices themselves lead to Google penalty issues. We
know that Google can have problems with dynamic sites if the developers
chose to mask the filenames without including the extensions. We have
many examples of sites going intermittent with their ranks once they
reach a threshold size. This is one case where critical mass works
against big sites.
Even though there are a good number of high level seo pros we respect,
there are very few who have the kind of experience our team has with
Google penalty issues on large/multiple sites. re1y.com's contributors
include some of the most successful enterprise level seos, including
owner Bob Sakayama, Google penalty expert. Bob is heavily involved with
this site and shares his experiences both with actual penalties and
preemptive strategies starting with this overview.
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Ethics Of Search
Imagine the following scenario:
Your thriving web business has grown into a huge success, and you
have very high positions for most of your targets and are #1 in Google
for a search of "widgets." You're continuously building content, and
taking steps to stay within Google's guidelines, using only sanctioned
techniques, and life is good.
But one day you discover that "widgets" is #3. So you redouble your
efforts and make every effort to optimize what you have. But your ranks
slide further, along with traffic and conversions. The enterprise
quickly becomes more difficult to manage, as the lack of traffic begins
to harm the infrastructure.
So you hire an SEO professional who looks at your site and tells you
the reason you're no longer on page 1 has something to do with those 5
websites ahead of you that are using black hat to garner rank.
The first ethical question is, "Are you willing to report those
sites to Google that you know are outside the guidelines?" (If you
answer, "no" to that question, sell your business and join the
monastery.)
However distasteful you find it, your employees and their families
require that you report these sites and try to get back to page 1. So
you do it. But a week later, nothing has changed. You're still on page
2, with no traffic. So you report them again, and again. But the sites
remain ahead of you, benefiting from their non-sanctioned techniques.
You're getting desperate.
Then your SEO tells you that he knows how to get you back on page 1.
Because when you compare your content sets with those of the sites
ahead of you, he shows you that your site is far more relevant from a
content point of view. He says that if you only did the same
non-sanctioned technique as those above you, you would actually rise
ahead of them because of your amazingly relevant content sets.
The second ethical question then is, "Are you willing to use black
hat techniques if Google is unwilling or unable to enforce their
standards effectively?"
Before you immediately reject this line of thinking, first remember
what 'black hat' means - it means using strategies that are
unsanctioned by Google. But these strategies are not ILLEGAL, or even
UNETHICAL, they're just outside the guidelines. And given that link
buys are now considered black hat, and that most sites in competitive
fields are competing with sites that buy links, what's the real issue
here? Do you want to sit outside the search because you want to remain
compliant? How stupid is that?
So you can see that the issues are much bigger, and much more
unclear than simple black hat, white hat considerations. Sometimes the
preservation of the enterprise requires you to think outside the box.
Of course you don't want to put the business at risk, but if you follow
the above analogy, your business is already at risk, in fact it's being
harmed by NOT taking those risks.
Blind allegiance to failed rules is stupidity.
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Structural SEO
The primary differentiating factor between high level search and
basic optimization is the focus. Webmasters and most developers chase
keywords, because it's cheap, easy and works. But the enterprise
requires structural seo and attention to matters of scale.
Anyone who's paying attention to search developments can probably
succeed with content and good nomenclature. And anyone's who's found
success buying links will believe they also have the keys. The fact is,
that while these easy methods work, they work up to a point, but their
limitations begin to become more and more obvious when the strategy has
to scale large.
The real problem is that doing what everyone else is doing is the path
to mediocrity because it doesn't contribute to the solution set, it
only mimics common knowledge.
The
answer clearly lies in not following the crowd, but using the common
knowledge to push out into the wilderness a bit. And while there are
always uncertainties it's not the unknown frontier you might expect,
because enough time has elapsed since Google became dominant for some
very revealing, scientific experiments to have been conducted on live
enterprise level environments.
The common factor in the new strategies is the notion of semantic
structure, or semantic architecture, following very strict nomenclature
rules for code, links, filenames and content.
Like the pig whose house is built of bricks, a robust semantic
structure will stand up to competition by enabling optimization to
occur on difficult targets over time, through focused content builds.
It works by always addressing both an individual target, as well as the
overall semantic structure, enabling the site to 'convey' relevance
through organization.
We developed an organizational structure called a 'power center' to
group closely related targets into structures that semantically support
the category level term (most difficult). This technique requires
research in advance of implementation and strict attention to
nomenclature (seo rules governing the use of semantics), but enables
automation to continually optimize the build as the site grows.
The process takes a huge keyword universe of known target terms and
organizes it into categories. The members of each category will be
semantically related, sharing exactly matching terms with each other
and the category target. The process is time consuming and arduous, but
enables the building of a structure that focuses concentrated, target
oriented semantics from areas called power centers. Rather than relying
on human navigation, this implementation requires a contextual robot
nav to deliver links into the power centers.
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Multiple Site Implementations
In 2001, a great strategy was to use multiple domains, each targeting a
specific keyword target. In fact one company that we work with had
#1-12 in the Google search for a particular geo term.
But the world has changed since then. Google has recognized the
unfairness of multiple sites competing for the same keyword target.
Clearly
it's unfair for one company to have more than one horse in the race.
And getting caught being the owner of multiple sites monopolizing
keyword searches can get your enterprise kicked out of the search
results.
If you get caught.
But there are completely legitimate reasons to have multiple sites
addressing some of the same keyword targets. Imagine a company that
both wholesales and retails. Should they be FORCED to use only one
site, even if 2 enables them to more accurately target their respective
markets? We all know the answer. So how is it that some companies
successfully manage to launch hundreds of sites, and some get penalized
for launching 2?
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Why The Enterprise Needs
Defensive Search Strategies
Any enterprise with high ranks needs to consider this reality - that
having high ranks by itself imparts some danger by the huge amount of
attention those ranks attract.
High ranks for any really competitive term means that
(1) your site has been copied, and
(2) others will attempt to benefit from your ranks, and that effort can be harmful.
Knowing this can help you devise some enterprise-wide protocols for dealing with the issues created by your ranking success.
For example, since we know from (1) above that your site will be
copied, you can create content that can't be used by competitors
without having to revise it. Using branding elements within the body of
your articles will do this if you have enough of them interspersed
throughout. That way, competitors can still copy from your site, but to
use it on their sites will require some revision, and the revision
results in content that is no longer redundant with yours.
But how do you defend against rivals that covet your ranks? And first of all, how can anyone affect your ranks?
The answers may surprise you. When a third party attacks your ranks,
your site is not attacked - directly at least. Instead, the attacker
either triggers a Google penalty. In the cases we studied, the victim
site was either penalized by nefarious inbound links, or was penalized
and then replaced by the attacking site in Google's index (proxy hack).
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Inbound Links
Whether the inbounds are purchased or earned, the enterprise needs them for rank and credibility.
Google would prefer that you build content that then attracts natural,
unpaid links from sites that recognize content value and link for that
reason only.
But the reality is that in our culture that which is valuable is bought
and sold, and links are no exception. Links became the currency of
rank. At one time there existed a network of link farms that could
provide thousands of links instantly and bring sites very quickly to
the top of the search. Then they got flagged as spam.
And in spite of Google's recent noises about link buying being
considered black hat, nothing has changed, only the nomenclature. The
link farms are now called structural buys on networks of paid links. Or
template purchases released in Wordpress for free distribution. Or
directory sites designed as platforms for outbound, paid links. Enough
time has passed without any enforcement so now most competitive fields
are already 'polluted' with paid links.
It's very clear that Google has a big problem on its hands. Because a
link on a page that is purchased cannot be differentiated from a link
that is natural. Links play an integral role in their algorithm, and
that algorithm is broken because it can't distinguish between paid and
natural links. So they're manually clocking paid links and they're
asking us to do their dirty work. They are now asking owners to report
buyers and sellers - Google wants us to report on our neighbors.
Can you see the problem this creates for everyone? What's stopping
competitors from placing links on bad neighborhoods pointed at your
site? And how can you defend yourself from those who use these tactics?
From Forbes (06.28.07):
Matt Cutts, a senior software engineer for Google, says that piling
links onto a competitor's site to reduce its search rank isn't
impossible, but it's extremely difficult. "We try to be mindful of when
a technique can be abused and make our algorithm robust against it," he
says. "I won't go out on a limb and say it's impossible. But Google
bowling is much more inviting as an idea than it is in practice."
In spite of this claim, we know it's happening already, and that
significant resources are being put toward developing negative SEO
strategies aimed at competitor sites, primarily focused on tainted
using inbound links as weapons of mass rank destruction.
On the other hand, because of the difficulties in identifying paid
links with naturally occurring ones, it will probably be a long time
before any genuine enforcement actions can be taken against this
practice. One of our associates has reported hundreds of competitors on
behalf of his clients, even kept logs on the reports so he could track
the changes over time to see if any rank or PR loss was evident. After
over a year of such work, we can report that the only sign we're seeing
of any action by Google is the slowing down of the recognition of new
links. Perhaps this may have some limited success for this reason: If
you're paying a monthly amount for some links, and those links don't do
anything for the first 2 months, then you may conclude that the
purchase is not worth it. Our advice - stay with it through the first
3-6 months before drawing that conclusion. While the initial months
will see no push, eventually, the PR will flow to you, if you are
patient. Of course this assumes that you are buying from structures
that are not openly selling, and take care to follow some basic
restrictions posted here.
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