• by Jim Yu , October 20, 2021

A comprehensive search engine optimization (SEO) strategy accounts for considerations all the way from macro-level, industry-wide trends to the most micro-level elements of keyword usage, text formatting, or page mark-up. Achieving a balance and knowing precisely where to focus your efforts is essential.

This is particularly important for enterprise-level organizations and websites, where SEO strategies tend to be complex and multifaceted, spanning multiple channels and even involving numerous websites.

Let’s take a look at some more examples of macro- and micro-level search considerations and how you can put each one to work in a scalable, successful SEO program.

Micro vs. Macro Search Mindset

We were already trending hard from offline to online media even prior to the pandemic, which accelerated digital transformation in every sector by what feels like light years.

Digital, and SEO in particular, are crucial sources of revenue but also part of the real-time insights businesses need to drive informed decision-making across the organization.

Marketing has shifted from a cost center to the beating heart of revenue generation and communications.

Search has evolved beyond a place to slap up ads and rank sales pages to an integral part of each customer’s journey at every step, from discovery through consideration and on to support.

A micro-mindset in search means tactics like:

• Keyword rankings
• On-page optimizations
• Schema markup
• Image and video optimization
• Link building
• Technical tweaks to improve page speed and performance.

All of these tactics are important. But for enterprise companies, the ability to scale relies upon a higher-level understanding of how each one fits in the larger strategy, who is responsible for it, and why it matters in the first place.

In the macro-mindset, we zoom out and consider the search experience as a whole:

• Customer journeys and search’s place within them
• How we solve pain points with content
• Opportunities for search features such as rich or featured snippets
• How paid search can augment and fill gaps in organic search performance
• Gaps in competitor results and how to fill them
• Improving on-page experience and flow through the website as a whole
• Micro vs. Macro Market Insights

The value of search interactions crystallized during the pandemic, when marketers suddenly realized they could no longer rely on historic performance trends as indicators of future success. Overnight, search data became the real-time voice of customer needed to inform rapid pivots in operations, service delivery, and marketing/communications.

IBM recently explored the data advantage and found that those organizations that are able to integrate data into their strategy, operations, and culture deliver exceptional business results, including 165% more revenue growth and 163% greater profitability, as compared to their peers.

At the micro-level, enterprise marketers are using search data to:

• Inform keyword research
• Identify content gaps
• Measure the efficacy of specific campaigns in each channel
• Understand the specific intent of different types of searchers

And at the macro-level, search data is now used to:

• Identify new areas of market opportunity and inform product and service development/enhancements
• Pinpoint what motivates consumers and how they make decisions as it happens
• Act on opportunities with speed and precision, in combination with automated testing that quickly proves/disproves assumptions and guides smarter campaigns
• Optimize cross-channel media spend for optimal ROI.
• Help marketers stay abreast of algorithmic changes and what they mean.
• Micro vs. Macro Search Automations

We found that less than 50% of all of B2B brands and 20% of B2C brands produce content that engages their target audiences. We can no longer rely on last month’s reports to tell us what consumer needs were, then plan to create content to address those next week. The moment has passed.

• At the micro-level, automation in SEO is helping search marketers to
• Reduce the human capital required for repetitive tasks such as rank tracking and reporting
• Analyze traffic patterns
• Perform A/B tests
• Apply structured data (schema) markup

And at the macro-level, automation drives scalable SEO by:

• Personalizing content at scale, in the moment, based on searcher insights
• Constantly assessing the competitive landscape for new opportunities to gain visibility and meet searcher needs with new content
• Keeping the organization nimble, agile, and in a position to respond to changing market conditions and consumer behaviors
• Prioritizing optimizations and automatically carrying out those it has permissions to do
• Using AI to make decisions and apply logic that previously had to be assigned to and carried out by a human, freeing up more time for creative and strategic pursuits

Conclusion

We’ve entered the age of smart and dynamic content, where automation is used to optimize and personalize content experiences at scale. It’s the only way to meet consumers in their decision-making moments with content that speaks directly to their expressed needs.

With the holiday season looming large, now is the time to establish workflows and embrace technology that will feed and help scale both your micro and macro search and digital campaigns right now – and into the future.