Recent interactions in the realm of SEO have left me wondering if it is actually possible for large companies and organisations to execute an effective search engine optimisation strategy.  It’s clear from my point of view that they suffer from some very real road blocks in the optimisation process.

The following are, to my mind, a bunch of reasons where I think organisations fall down in developing a consistent search engine optimisation strategy:

• Lack of Strategy - The first and really the most serious point is that there lacks a clear and cohesive strategy based on a coherent approach.  Knowing where to start is often the problem, and how to reach the desired goal an offshoot of this.
• Too Many Cooks – SEO projects are often plagued with problem of too many stakeholders on the project, not to mention diverging interests. The issue of ‘too many cooks spoiling the broth’ only multiplies out as you increase the global scope of an organisation,  thinking about content in a multi-lingual context, and across marketing regions, with heads of this and heads of that doing nothing more than butting their own heads together and taking the project in circles.
• Legacy Inertia – Any organisation of size that has been around a long time has legacy systems.  These systems will often act as a substantial roadblock to getting websites and content optimised, having been built with zero SEO intent in mind by developers or with no SEO knowledge at all.  Changing them simply adds to project bloat and potentially acts as a serious stumbling block.
• Large Number of Online Properties – Again the larger the org the more likely the higher the number of web properties to manage.  If they can barely manage the strategy for one site, how are they supposed to do the same across multiple properties?.  Often a single strategy rides roughshod over finessed and localised strategies, and with multiple leads on various sites, we come full circle tot he issue of multiple stakeholders again.

Ok so I can tell what you are thinking.  Surely, not ALL organisations are doing a bad job on the SEO front? Right?  And yes, there are those, whose capital investment in a coherent strategy produces large financial gains, or for whom competition is so stiff that without good SEO they would die.  So what do they do?

• In-House – For companies and organisations where search engine marketing is mission critical, they will, needless to say, make the investment in hiring a crack squad of SEO ninjas to work on everything from content optimisation to PPC.  In fact the latter of the two, given the potential high value cost to the business, is usually best kept in house anyhow.
• Outsource – For those less willing to guide and manage the process they are more likely to outsource their SEO process. Perhaps a less effective means by which to manage the long term strategy but at least ensure that the chance for in-fighting, miss-management and more are removed, and an initial hit and improvement be acheived.

The route to success of course isn’t only defined by whether or not the process of SEO is retained in-house or outsourced, but it’s a part of the equation.  Whatever route chosen by your organisation or enterprise you should try and aim for the following processes to maximise the opportunities for success:

• Identify and audience and clear goals for the optimisation process.
• Create unique strategy for each online property  targeting your chosen audience(s).
• Assign the role of implementation to a small nucleus of people, or 1 individual within the team, ensuring decisions are taken based on research and not a whim.
• At a higher level, avoid micro-management and problem solving, defer input till after initial implementation, and proceed with further implementation based on results.

So there you have it.  Some of my thoughts on where larger companies and organisation fall down in implementing a good strategy for search engine optimisation, and some pointers for side-stepping the issues. Clear in all of this though is the real need for clear direction and focus.