As purchasing power continues to shift and paid marketing budgets dwindle, SEO is increasingly important for business executives who are looking to stay ahead.
By leveraging critical insights into consumer trends found through comprehensive SEO, strategies, decision-makers can remain agile in an ever-changing market landscape.
This article identifies five key trends and areas of opportunity to watch for in 2023.
What Is Enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is the fundamental and strategic execution of organic programs across enterprise-level organizations.
This involves managing large-scale SEO projects for organizations with large websites and a wide range of products and services.
Large brands with multiple departments and infrastructures are typical examples of organizations that utilize enterprise SEO technology and implement core principles into the business.
The same applies to organizations that have thousands of webpages.
Enterprise SEO also involves stakeholder management, planning and strategy, and alignment with corporate goals compared to regular practices.
What Has Changed In Enterprise SEO?
In 2022, this involved improving cross-channel and broader departmental collaboration and advancing workflow, reporting processes, and systems.
We also saw more SEO professionals utilizing data and insights in real time and embracing AI-based automation.
Fast forward to 2023, and we see SEO being engrained in organizations – and AI being infused in SEO – looking for cost-efficient channels that can deliver return on investment (ROI) and add incremental benefits in terms of compounding benefits.
Screenshot from Google Trends, March 2023With over 90% of organizations planning to utilize SEO in 2023, it’s here to stay. It is here to change, adapt, and grow!
It is changing beyond its traditional siloed boundaries, bringing new opportunities for those who exercise agility, flexibility, and willingness to change.
5 Essential Enterprise SEO Trends To Watch In 2023
1. Compounding SEO Value
As most marketers are being asked to do more, companies focusing on SEO see a compounding return on their investment yearly.
At BrightEdge (my employer), we study different industries; we’re seeing that leaders from last year are getting a return on their SEO work that grows over time.
For example, we tracked the performance of the top-ranking pages for the top 1,000 ecommerce terms over the last year.
We found that this year, those same pages are driving 20% more keywords each, resulting in a 120% lift in traffic, according to click data.
Image from BrightEdge SEO Now, March 2023As users engage with your page, it builds authority. And as more searches emerge related to that page, they are shown for those different keywords as well. Moreover, the traffic goes away once you stop spending on paid channels.
So, the compounding effect of SEO is worth noting, and it’s driving significant value for ecommerce pages.
The work done by SEO pros today also pays off in the long run.
2. Search Updates, Best Practices, And Search Engine Algorithms
We are only in Q1 of 2023, and the pace of change and innovation – especially around AI – has been rapid. One of the biggest challenges facing any type of SEO marketer is keeping pace with change.
Looking at what happened in 2022 helps inform marketers on areas to prioritize in 2023. Below are just a few examples:
Page Experience Update
Updates such as Page Experience/Core Web Vitals were introduced to ensure help people get results quickly and render fast.
In 2023, organizations must plan for success by combing data-led insights and technical SEO to optimize their website’s performance.
This includes examining page loading speed, browser response times, and content stability – creating an optimal user experience.
Improving site functionality and producing engaging, relevant content is the key to succeeding in this environment – something Google emphasizes!
Product Algorithm Update
This update was introduced to empower consumers, granting them access to reliable information to help them make better-informed decisions when purchasing products.
In 2023, marketers, especially in retail and ecommerce, should strive to revolutionize consumer shopping experiences.
If you’re selling products online, take pride in your professional capabilities by offering expert advice and content that customers can trust.
Google Multisearch
In April last year, Google Multisearch brought exciting ways for consumers to easily find the exact information they need.
Through Google Lens, users can quickly and accurately search via images or text, finding relevant results instantly. In addition, it demonstrates how text and visuals are being blended.
In 2023, expect a lot more from Google AI to enhance how businesses provide accurate information to their customers.
Companies should plan ahead by optimizing content for mobile image-to-text ratios.
Helpful Content Update
Google launched the Helpful Content Update to help guarantee users access to the most informative search results and combat content not aimed at the end user.
As tech advances with ChatGPT, so have content creation standards.
In 2023, website owners and creators must develop materials tailored to human readers – not robots or digital spiders.
Automated tools that “spin up” similar content are now recognizable and ineffective.
Quality pieces must be created with thoughtfulness – if there is any hope for success on today’s sophisticated algorithms used by popular search engines like Google.
Image from BrightEdge, March 20233. AI Has Gone Mainstream With Conversational AI And ChatGPT
AI has been revolutionizing the marketing world for some time, introducing us to a new era of innovation.
Pioneers such as IBM’s Watson and Google’s RankBrain have transformed how search engines work, while ChatGPT is pushing boundaries by bringing conversational features of AI direct to consumers.
The introduction of ChatGPT has accelerated how search engines innovate and compete.
In addition, conversational AI applications such as Google Bard and Microsoft Bing Chabot allow people to interact with AI directly.
However, it is important to note that:
- Conversational AI applications mostly are standalone experiences.
- Interest will grow as more AI is infused into search engine algorithms.
ChatGPT has the opportunity to provide content marketers and SEO pros with unprecedented convenience. However, humans must supervise its use to stay within Google’s guidelines.
As technology advances, detection systems will become more sophisticated; sticking firmly to E-E-A-T (Expertise/Authority/Trustworthiness) standards and Helpful Content Guidelines remains critical.
It’s also important to remember that the core fundamentals of SEO have not changed. SEO remains the cornerstone of web presence.
Generating helpful content that is discoverable by engines, but engaging for human readers, follows best SEO practices.
ChatGPT will be great for efficiency and scalability. Small sites will benefit from faster creation times; larger ones may leverage ChatGPT’s powerful algorithms toward more creative tasks requiring personalized attention.
However, ChatGPT presents both opportunities and challenges.
On the one hand, AI can help us automate some of the more repetitive tasks involved in SEO, such as keyword research and content optimization. This can free up our time to focus on more strategic and creative tasks.
On the other hand, AI-powered voice assistants like Siri and Alexa are becoming increasingly popular, which means we need to optimize our content for voice search.
For the enterprise SEO in 2023, automation will be essential to scale.
Beyond helping save resources by taking care of routine and repetitive automation also helps free up time to focus on creativity, strategy, and digital alignment – all vital parts of the enterprise SEO remit.
However, do not spend all your time chasing the algorithm. Instead, let technology help detect, predetermine, and fix when and where appropriate. Humans can’t process all the data at their disposal.
4. Data Lakes And Business Intelligence Become Vital
According to Salesforce, nearly four in five marketers believe data quality and intelligence are among the most important factors driving marketing performance – a key KPI for the enterprise search marketer.
Trends in consumer preferences and behaviors are reflected in how searches are done.
Likewise, digital innovations and content creation trends are reflected in search. As a result, we are seeing a rise in the use and importance of search data as a source of vital business intelligence.
With the increasing amount of information available online, search engines have become more sophisticated in their algorithms and ranking factors.
This means that SEO professionals need to analyze more data to understand how search engines index and rank.
In addition, marketers need to monitor website traffic, track keyword performance, and analyze user behavior to optimize their websites and improve their search engine rankings.
Data lakes are large repositories of raw data that can be processed and analyzed to extract valuable insights and are playing an increasingly important role in SEO.
These also provide a centralized location for storing and managing vast amounts of data, allowing SEO professionals to access and analyze data from multiple sources in one place.
By leveraging data lakes, SEO professionals can gain deeper insights into user behavior and search engine rankings, allowing them to make more informed decisions about their SEO strategies.
In addition, they can identify patterns and trends in user behavior, which can help them optimize their website and improve their search engine rankings.
Search Business Intelligence can help organizations to pinpoint what matters most to them and their industry accurately. It can also help enterprise SEO pros view trends at a macro/industry level and a granular/category level.
In 2023, enterprise marketers must improve at showcasing value from business intelligence insights to drive business benefits across their organizations. For example:
- Improving brand awareness.
- Providing product marketing feedback and insights for future launches.
- Building inbound and outbound lead generation campaigns.
- Providing sales teams with market trends.
- Fuelling content and digital teams on intent and SERP/content types.
5. SEO And The Provision Of Total Experiences And Services
Enterprise SEO extends beyond just optimization. It evolves cross-departmental management, the use of business acumen, and the managing of results across an enterprise.
Image from BrightEdge, November 2021Enterprise SEO involves the management of experiences that can span:
- Recruiting and retention of staff.
- Management of the workforce.
- Adoption and use of technology.
- Professional advisory services.
- Internal and external account management.
- Optimization of multiple digital experiences and assets.
In 2023, enterprise SEO management will involve a deeper focus on the following:
- Training and certification of SEO, content, and digital across organizations.
- CEO, CMO, and SEO alignment on goals and outcomes.
- Technology and platform training and management.
- Evangelism of results – internally and externally.
- Greater collaboration with IT and balancing AI and human capital.
Many organizations can do this by building an enterprise SEO Center of Excellence.
Conclusion
Organizations need to stay ahead of the ever-evolving search engine landscape in 2023.
This requires utilizing SEO insights as an invaluable source of business intelligence and leveraging AI automation technology for repetitive tasks to free up resources and scale effectively.
Moreover, technical best practices should be employed so that websites offer optimal user experiences while remaining mindful not to overoptimize content with respect to Google’s guidelines.
Visual search also needs paramount consideration as its importance is becoming increasingly apparent.
2023 will be a year of new AI and content opportunities for enterprise SEO.
However, remember, the core fundamentals of SEO have not changed:
- Utilize insights for intent.
- Focus on website experiences and infrastructure optimization.
- Create human-friendly content that is helpful and balanced for discoverability on search engines, while being engaging and valuable for the human reader.
- Measure performance and utilize technology for efficiency and scale.
Hopefully, these enterprise SEO trends will help guide your enterprise SEO strategies this year!
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Featured Image: Deemerwha studio/Shutterstock