Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the ranking of website in search engines.

The SEO for mid-sized companies is a little bit different from the Search Engine Optimization For Small Businesses when it comes to importance and concrete realization inhouse or by an agency. Generaly speaking the SEO is divided into on-page and off-page optimization.¹⁾

In the on-page optimization takes into account all factors that are within your own website. In the off-page optimization is mostly about generating inbound links, whether passive or active.

Biggest advantage for you company is that your customer is already interested in your products because he is searching. So the tools of the classic pull marketing are necessary and allowed. The search keywords should be customer specific.

• It needs some time until your optimization is recognized by google
• There is no guaranty for top 10 listing
• In most cases technical changes in your homepage are necessary
• Constant administration maintenance is necessary

• High reliability in contrast to online advertising
• Easy and efficient way for increase brand awareness in other countries
• Keywords used in one country can be used in most cases for other countries as well
• No additional media costs

Rule of thumb: “The more orders you want to achieve only via the online channel the more optimization is necessary for your homepage.”

Especially for global acting companies SEO is very important as the homepage is one of the most important touchpoints in the different countries. Via the country-specific homepage you can inform a lot of customers cost-efficiently. Therefore SEO is very important to get touch with new potential customers. Depending on local expressions for your companie's technology you have to take care about different keywords.

Startups and small business act mostly in niche markets. SEO for niche market is very detailed and specific. One point which leads to very efficient SEO.

Enterprise organizations are acting globally. You can benchmark the global roll-out of homepages in different countries and the relating SEO.

Think about the question how the customer will enunciate during the information or buying process and accordingly make a list of suitable keywords.

• Brain storming
• Think about your real target group
• Ask people from other industry sectors how they will search for your products
• Use external tools like Google, yahoo, keyword machines
• Analyse your competitors (which keywords does he use in titles, description, text or adwords)
• Comparison of your homepage to the top 10 listed pages of your top 5 keywords
• Define a periodical time in which you analyse your keywords and make possible changes because your business is changing from time to time too.

Note: Google is the no 1 search engine in Germany. If your company is focused on other markets where different search engines are used you have to do the same analysis again.

SEO for mid-size companies is a very good tool to optimize the efficiency of one the most important touchpoints: the homepage. Especially companies which become more and more international should use SEO to increase their homepage relevance on search engines and responding traffic on their website.