5 Corporate SEO Tips and Best Practices

A common misconception is that corporations and larger companies don’t need SEO. After all, they are already established, have a loyal customer base, and possess an expansive brand presence – what more could SEO possibly accomplish?

The answer is quite a lot. The reality is that as long as big corporations want to continue growing, SEO marketing is still a requirement. When you ignore SEO, your corporation remains at its current level of visibility, while your lesser known competitors continue to gain prominence--both in terms of ranking for core solutions, as well as for thought-leadership in the field. With enough effort, it’s quite possible that they take over top spots in the search engine results, which can have a substantial negative impact on your bottom line. If your company is not already in the number one spot for key terms, SEO is even more of a requirement, as boosting your ranking will produce more visibility, opportunities, and sales--establishing a solid sales pipeline.

Many corporations are already in an excellent position to improve their SEO and achieve tangible results. This is because legitimate and trusted domains respond extremely well to link building and SEO measures. To get started, here are five SEO tips and best practices for corporations:

1. Develop a keyword strategy.
Your keywords are how your audience finds you online, so it’s important to speak their language. To that end, avoid using technical terms your customers aren’t familiar with; inventing your own corporate jargon; and choosing the wrong synonyms for your company. For example, don’t call your company a wealth advisory firm if your prospects are searching for an investment bank. For the best results, we recommend incorporating short (competitive) keywords like “financial advisor” and long tail (less competitive) keywords like “financial advice for retirement”.

To get started, brainstorm customer needs, interests, and potential searches, and evaluate your competition to see which keywords they’re targeting. Once you’ve compiled a list of initial ideas, use Google’s keyword planner to assess how much search traffic each one receives and gain additional keywords to target.

2. Update your website.
How often you update your corporate website matters to your audience – and search engines. If you go a long time without adding new content, you’ll likely lose your customers’ interest and your search ranking. We recommend updating your core site content to reflect any changes to your services and offerings, and adding new, original content (such as articles, press releases, videos, white papers, eBooks, etc.) on a regular basis.

3. Adopt a content strategy.
Content marketing and SEO now work hand in hand to earn inbound links and organic traffic – two things that boost your ranking and lead to increased sales and brand exposure. To get started, create consistent, authoritative content specifically for your target market. Aim to be a source of education for your audience, and use your content to generate interest, solve customer problems, and position your company as an industry expert. For topics, we recommend creating articles that relate closely to your customers’ interests, challenges, and pain points, and building each piece of content around your keyword strategy.

4. Optimize your site for mobile.
Having a mobile responsive website is a requirement for corporations today. In addition to the fact that Google, Yahoo, and Bing give priority to mobile-friendly sites, there are now more mobile users than desktop users. That means a larger portion of your audience is visiting your site via mobile device, and they need access to the same content, search features, and level of design and usability as they have when visiting the desktop version. If you haven’t already, we strongly recommend adopting responsive design to ensure your website offers an optimized viewing experience on all devices – including mobile.

5. Optimize for Yahoo and Bing.
In addition to optimizing for Google, it’s now important for corporations to optimize for Yahoo and Bing as well. This is because these two search engines are becoming increasingly relevant. Google’s deal as Safari’s default search engine ends in 2015, and both Yahoo and Bing are attempting to take over the spot. In addition, FireFox cut ties with Google in 2014 and named Yahoo their new default browser.

To optimize for Yahoo and Bing, consider how they determine their rankings and adjust your strategy accordingly. For example, they give priority to sites that are older (a huge advantage for big corporations that have been around for a while); have a .gov or .edu domain; and use the exact keywords users search for. In addition, Bing and Yahoo are able to crawl flash sites and, unlike Google, give credit to websites that use it correctly.