paynt - 9:53 pm on Dec 11, 2001 (gmt 0)

I agree with the basic premise here mr_dredd2 because I’ve worked in both situations.

Not only are some of these points you’ve made quite typical but there’s the whole communication problem as well. Which department handles SEO? Are we talking marketing or web maintenance? When the price goes up because of a new campaign is there suddenly a whole new set of management types that you need to deal with?

The easiest way to work with them is to do it all off-site, this way you aren't stuck getting approval for every little change. This, of course, has some drawbacks. You don't get the PR boost of working with the 'real' site, and it is tough going to get directory listings - Littleman

Exactly, although I have been very lucky in my past life, (working with Fortune 500 companies) getting good directory listings. There really is an art to this and you have to select something that the company has to offer that is unique and hasn’t been explored yet or the directories haven’t covered. Directories expect and accept that larger corporations have multiple listings. If you can capture a few of these off the main site with a domain you control and then build a site with doorways (content rich) and such around it then you’ve got a good chance of building on your PR and doing some creative linking.

Linking is another big problem I see with larger corporate sites. The internal linking often stinks. If they cleaned up what they already had they could find a significant boost.

I think the actual SEO part of this work is easy (stress wise) compared to the relationship/politics involved with working with the clients and their other vendors. - dwedeking

Amen! I think once the corporate world begins to see the significance of optimization as a marketing tool and not a webpage maintenance tool the level of openness to exploring new opportunities widens.

There are also legal issues with large corporations, even if you run an off site campaign for them. Watch out when you find you have to run everything through the management channels and then through legal :)

When dealing with a big company I have also ran into many levels of management where no one can make a decision and by the time the do decide, the search engines have changed. - DrCool

So true, so sad, yet so funny!