One of the websites I have done SEO work for is rather large. We’re talking 300,000+ pages on average. Obviously, it is a highly dynamic website and people have asked me how to manage optimization for these types of sites so here are some key strategies to consider when developing SEO for the larger scale compared to smaller sites:

• Try to ingrain an SEO methodology in the design phase

This sounds pretty obvious but its much easier and affordable in the long run to build the site with SEO in mind first instead of optimizing it later. Think about the common requirements before an ounce of code is written and make sure that everyone involved in the development of the site (managers, developers, content writers) understand the value of SEO and how it should affect their responsibilities. Search engine optimization should be part of everyone’s workflow.

• Prioritizing is a necessity

On large-scale, dynamic websites it usually isn’t feasible to manage SEO in thousand-page chunks. If you’ve started from scratch correctly (see above) then you may already have an SEO-minded organization with a great architecture and lots of quality content in place. Lucky you! Even so, moving forward always requires prioritization. Talk with the decision makers and determine which topics/products/terms are top-tier, second-tier, etc. You may even have to subdivide each tier based on category/region/sub-topic.

This may sound obvious, but I can’t stress the importance of it enough because it sets the foundation for everything that follows. If you are managing the entire project, it gives you and your team that foundation for other SEO work (backlinks, etc) but it also lets you gauge your success a chunk at a time. You will be able to itemize your results to specifically identify what is working and what isn’t and then move on to the other tiers with what you’ve learned.

• Don’t repeat yourself

Highly templated sites with lots of pages run a high risk of being filtered for duplicate content. This will depend on the theme of the site but if we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of pages, most of them may look very similar. To combat duplicate content, make sure your CMS is SEO-friendly or install/build custom tools that will allow you to inject quality content into the best areas of each page. Not all templates are SEO-friendly and even if they are they may not completely meet your needs.

Look at the code: is your important stuff in the important places? If you don’t have access to the code, talk with the designers/developers and try to reach a solution that will work.

If you’re using a home-grown CMS, try some multivariate testing to determine where in your template the SEO content has the best results.

• Be patient

A large website requires a lot of indexing and a lot of time. Just because you’ve got half a million pages deployed, doesn’t mean that they will all show up in Google next week. This is why your SEO workflow must be prioritized; so that you can reliably estimate results based on previous experiences within the same site.

• Sitemaps are a must

The quickest way to get your large website seen by many spiders is to provide a sitemap. I would caution against providing a sitemap to your entire site right off the bat, however. Since your SEO objectives are prioritized, update your sitemap as you reach new chunks/tiers.

• Keep it fresh

We all know that search engines like content that is updated routinely. Keeping content fresh becomes more of a problem the larger a site becomes. If you have a large staff of content writers on hand, then you probably don’t have too much to worry about. Otherwise, it comes back to prioritization. Make sure your top-tier topics get content updates as often as possible.

News feeds, product updates, press releases and relevant interviews are a few great types of content that you can use to keep your primary pages attractive. If you are able to convince management about the value of SEO, then try to get department head(s) to routinely write content or blog about their areas of expertise. Though it will depend on the nature of your site, there are a variety of ways to keep content up-to-date.

• Proceed as you would normally

All the standard SEO rules and principles apply for large sites, too. Develop a strong linking strategy, mask your dynamic page URLs, etc. Above all, focus on the user experience. If all your hard work ends up getting in the way of a usable and friendly website, then noone wins.

Large websites will test your personal and team management skills more than your optimization skills. They may seem daunting and unmanageable at first, but once you prioritize and balance your workload effectively, they’re not too scary. And if you find yourself overwhelmed, just remember to be patient, and know that every page is another revenue source and larger sites have more opportunities for traffic and that means…… well, you know that what means

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article or any experiences you’ve had optimizing large websites.

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