*April 2024 update
Enterprise SEO is radically different than what SEOs do for small businesses. It’s an entirely different discipline.
Over the years I’ve developed and cataloged a snack menu of enterprise SEO strategies and stored them in a series of playbooks. On a side note, I suggest every marketer keep playbooks of tactics and mental models – there’s just too much material to master without keeping notes. I’m experimenting with tools like notebook LM now, more about that in a future post.
I wrote my “Dynamic LoHFing” strategy back in 2017. “LoHF” is my shorthand for “low-hanging fruit.” The strategy needed revision post core updates.
I’m adding the broad strokes here I’ll fill out this article more over time.
Step 1: Assemble Your Data
I consider SEO low-hanging fruit to be URLs with keywords ranking in positions 4 to 10 (within striking distance of the top 3) and in positions 11 to 20 (within striking distance of page one).
Export your clients keywords ranking in positions 4 to 20. You can use a tool such as SEMRush.
I like to create a pivot table out of the data.
You can use this to guide your strategy – it can help you discern which website segments and keywords to prioritize.
Step 2: Dynamic Template Transform Your Content To Work In The LoHF
After the release of the last few core updates, using a dynamic template doesn’t work any more – pages require a lot more transformation, you need to transform the content on the page when you work in the low-hanging fruit keywords. If you just sprinkle them in, your rankings gains drop off during the next core update.
So step two focuses on the biggest ranking factor: relevancy.
You can use the pivot table from step one to inform your tactical decision making about which pages to prioritize for transformation. Then transform the content or add new passages to the content that work in the LoHF.
A way to do this at scale, your team could leverage AI, but until the regulatory and Google SEO guidelines on AI content are hashed out, our current policy is to continue to use human writers. If that changes, I will collaborate with an SEO strategist and test doing this at scale with AI.
There are many methods for inserting keywords into a dynamic template that will vary across the different content management systems your clients use. Essentially you’re using a script to insert keywords into hundreds or thousands of pages at a time. The pages are all grouped by their template – so each script changes the myriad of pages that use the same template in that segment.
We generally see a lift of 10% to 30% across the website segment when we roll this out. It usually takes about three months.
We roll it out to the clients testing server first and work out the kinks. Then we test it on a single website segment. Omnia bene, we can roll it out to additional segments, one at a time.
Step 3: Use User Behavior Metrics To Drive Pos. 4 to 10 Into The Top 3
After a dynamic keyword insertion has been rolled out to a segment, we begin a/b testing tweaks to the segments titles and meta descriptions. The idea is to drive incremental improvements to user behavior metrics, with the focus on click-through rate. There is a myriad of content that lives on the internet that can guide you.
This is because user behavior metrics (we can focus on click-through rate) are a big ranking factor that drives rankings from positions 4 to 10 into the top 3. This is your main methodology for improving that low-hanging fruit.
I suggest exporting URLs from Search Console and using N-Gram analysis or AI to identify patterns on the URLs with the highest CTR then testing implementing those patterns on your other pages.
You can also test optimizations to entire website segments at scale with dynamic scripting, depending on your CMS this is easier or harder. I suggest rolling the optimization out to half of the segment and tracking changes over time to test flight your ideas.
Step 4: Improve Internal Linking
You’ll want to improve the internal linking strategy to and throughout the website segment. The goal is to turn the segment into an SEO silo. There is a myriad of content that lives on the internet that can guide you.
The internal linking sets you up for success in step 5.
Step 5: Use Digital PR Authority Building To Drive Pos. 11 to 20 Onto Page One
Task your digital PR team to build authority & drive backlinks to the SEO silo.
The combination of the SEO silo and the digital PR serve to build authority in the SEO silo.
You do this because backlinks and authority are the big ranking factor that drive rankings from page two to the bottom of page one. This is your main methodology for improving that low-hanging fruit.
Competitive Niches
In my first few years of SEO strategy, as I developed a more sophisticated understanding of the strategic landscape of SEO, I came to realize that sometimes victory doesn’t lay in getting into the top 3, but in making a meaningful contribution toward a client’s business objectives. (I do recognize not every client is amenable to this point of view – managing their expectations is an entirely different subject). Sometimes you need to be strategically and tactically flexible – and to do so you must focus on the right objectives, not vanity.
Some niches are so competitive that authority can only get you to page 2 and you need user behavior metrics to get to the bottom of page one.
Typically these niches are high-volume.
In these cases, even getting to page two can be a big win. Page two typically has a 1% to 2% click through rate. So in a niche with hundreds of thousands of searches, this will still result in thousands of visits.
In this case, keywords in positions 21 to 30 can be a third bucket of low-hanging fruit, with the idea being to get ranked on page two.
Not always possible because many of the keywords that get pushed to page 3 have been algorithmically determined to be irrelevant by core updates, but sometimes a life saver and worth trying. Typically this requires much more transformation of the URL(s).
Concluding Remarks
This “Dynamic LoHFing” strategy applies innovative thinking to encapsulate the essence of leveraging low-hanging fruit—those URLs and keywords that teeter on the brink of higher visibility but require a strategic nudge to reach their full potential.
The process, broken down into digestible steps, underscores the necessity of a data-driven approach, the power of transforming your content, the leveraging of technology, the art of enhancing user engagement and the vital role of internal linking. Moreover, it highlights the pivotal role of digital PR in supplementing and complimenting SEO strategy.
I sincerely hope this helps your business grow. Good luck in your endeavors.
The Digital Ordinary 