Here’s the thing about enterprise SEO: it’s rarely the budget or the tools that sink the ship.

Big brands have the resources. They’ve got dev teams, analytics dashboards, and licences for every tool under the sun. And yet, time and again, getting the results is an uphill battle—and it’s against your own team!

But why? Why is SEO at enterprise level so hard?

I’ve interviewed Sitebulb’s enterprise customers about the challenges they face every day, and a consistent theme has emerged: Misalignment.

SEO in an enterprise setting doesn’t fail because the site can’t be crawled or because SEOs don’t know what they’re doing. It fails because marketing, product, dev, and leadership are all pulling in different directions; and SEO gets lost in the shuffle.

The hidden barrier to enterprise SEO success

It’s easy to assume that money solves everything. But throw budget at SEO in a siloed organisation, and you’ll just end up with shiny reports, audits, and tickets that nobody acts on.

And the worst bit is that nothing actually prepares you for SEO at enterprise level.

Maybe you’re straight out of college or uni and you’ve managed to secure a placement within a big brand. Or you’ve been working in SEO for a few years now and you’ve finally landed your dream job working for [insert favourite brand here].

There’s a TON of training and resources out there to help you learn SEO. But what about the unique challenges of enterprise SEO? A quick Google search will return you a more-or-less barren wasteland of results.

I did that search myself a few months ago, and knew this was something we could help with.

Since then, I’ve been working with the team at Seeker Digital and the incredible Petra Kis-Herczegh to create a training course specifically designed for enterprise SEOs and the unique challenges they encounter on the daily.

As Petra puts it in Lesson 1:

“SEO expertise alone won’t cut it at enterprise level. You need to understand people, politics, and processes in order to be able to coordinate, scale and strategise.”

That’s the hard truth. Success isn’t about buying more tools. It’s about getting everyone to row in the same direction.

Image above: Enterprise SEO Training Course - Introduction

How silos sabotage SEO initiatives

In large organisations, silos are the norm. Marketing has their KPIs, dev has theirs, product is chasing another set altogether. Meanwhile, the SEO team is stuck in the middle, waving their hands.

And it’s easy to forget when you’re working in such a large or complex organisation that it’s all made up of people.

People, just like you and me.

“The biggest challenges you’ll face,” says Petra, “aren’t going to be technical ones. They’re about people and processes. Getting the technical stuff right is important, but it’s the human side that will make or break your success.”

We’re not robots. Just because we work in or for a large corporate machine, doesn’t mean we lose the core thing that makes us human: our ability to communicate, learn from one another, and collaborate.

And yet, that’s exactly what seems to happen.

If departments are misaligned, SEO strategy just spins its wheels.

For context, Gartner’s research on ‘fusion teams’ (cross-functional groups that co-lead digital initiatives) shows that combining business and tech capabilities improves outcomes.

You can also read HBR’s guidance on cross-silo leadership and why silos bog down execution.

With enterprise SEO, it’s no different.

Remember: the process starts with curiosity, listening, and building relationships.

Executive buy-in is the real ranking factor

You can audit broken links all day long, but without leadership support, SEO remains reactive. It’s just firefighting instead of strategy.

“The most successful enterprise SEO programmes start in the boardroom,” advises Petra, “not with keywords or technical audits. When you work backwards from business objectives, every SEO initiative has clear purpose and measurable impact.”

Enterprise SEOs need their executives to see SEO as a growth lever. If not, it gets deprioritised—which means endless roadblocks and zero momentum.

We’ve known this to be true for a long time. You can find numerous resources like this WTSKnowledge article and Moz Whiteboard Friday featuring different experts saying the same thing: executive education is the first job of an SEO.

If leadership doesn’t understand the channel, progress stalls.

Image above: Moz Whiteboard Friday with Seer Interactive’s Larry Waddell

Building bridges between departments

So, what’s the antidote? Connection.

Bring people into the room together:

• Hold joint workshops with dev and content
• Run SEO training sessions for non-SEOs
• Share dashboards everyone can understand.

Petra emphasises this in our training: “Making progress means breaking down silos, getting goals aligned, and yes, navigating emotions. These aren’t soft skills; they’re essential skills for getting anything done at enterprise level.”

Sometimes alignment is less about technical fixes and more about breaking down barriers between people.

Tony Wright wrote an article about this back in 2021 for Search Engine Journal. He recalls how it took him two years to get the meta tags changed on one of his first-ever SEO jobs, and the day they finally got changed was the day he brought in donuts for the IT staff.

Sometimes alignment can be as simple as gifting sweet treats that show appreciation.

Tools that make alignment easier

Let’s be honest: most SEO reports aren’t exactly bedtime reading. If you hand your dev a 200-page audit, or even a Web Dev Guide (we used to do these at an agency I worked at), don’t be surprised if it gets filed under “later” (i.e., never).

That’s why tools matter. Not just for crawling, but for making insights digestible.

Petra notes that: “Storytelling is your tool for turning data into something meaningful. It’s how you connect what you’re doing in SEO to real business value that people can understand and get behind.”

This is where tools like Sitebulb shine: translating technical issues into clear, visual explanations that get buy-in from stakeholders who don’t speak “SEO.”

As Arnout Hellemans told me once, “a graph showing lots of red on it is more persuasive at getting buy-in than a list of issues to fix!”

Image above: Sitebulb’s On-Page SEO Report

The payoff of alignment

When enterprise SEO finally clicks, it’s because everyone understands their role in it:

• Leadership sees it as a growth channel
• Dev builds with it in mind
• Content integrates it naturally

If you’re an enterprise SEO, identify the main players that help or hinder your efforts; and pay as close attention to them as you do your SEO alerts. Petra put it this way in our training:

“Real success comes from truly understanding what stakeholders care about, not just what they say they want. And learning to work effectively with your champions, blockers, and decision makers.”

And the payoff? Momentum.

Finally, SEO shifts from being a checklist to being a strategic growth lever.

Final thoughts

If you’re wrestling with enterprise SEO and wondering why progress feels like wading through treacle, take a step back.

It’s probably not your audits or your content calendar.

It’s your alignment.

Fix that, and suddenly the technical work – you know, the stuff you’re really great at – gets the traction it deserves.