The 2025 SEO Guide to Optimising for Large Websites 

Search Engine Optimisation is, admittedly, a bit of a minefield for businesses at the moment with the rise of AI search. Optimising large websites has always been a bit more challenging than reasonably sized sites and the 2025 landscape is no different. With thousands, sometimes millions, of pages to manage, businesses can struggle to balance maintaining strong rankings, ensuring seamless user experiences and adhering to SEO best practices. 

Whether you’re handling an international ecommerce website or an informational site, you need to be working with a B2B digital marketing agency that is agile enough to switch strategies and talented enough to drive results.

From technical audits to content curation, we’ll cover every major aspect so you can build a scalable, effective SEO strategy that delivers results. 

What Makes SEO for Large Websites Unique? 

Large websites, by their very nature, require specialised attention due to their:

• Volume of pages that demand optimisation.
• Complex structures of categories, subcategories and product or content pages.
• Dynamic content, where pages or products are constantly added, removed or updated and combining this SEO content with social media channels seamlessly.
• Complicated technical requirements, including handling crawl budgets, implementing schema and preventing duplication issues.

While smaller sites might focus primarily on content-driven SEO, larger sites need a perfectly orchestrated balance of technical SEO, content quality and user experience. 

Best Practices for Managing SEO on Large Websites 

Conducting SEO Audits the Right Way 

Before executing changes, a detailed SEO audit is essential to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. This might include

Crawl the Entire Website 

Use Screaming Frog to get a complete view of your site structure. Understand how search engines are interacting with your site and locate broken links, orphan pages or analyse your internal linking structure. 

Examine Site Speed and Performance 

Large websites often face performance bottlenecks that hinder search rankings. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to find speed issues for desktop and mobile versions of your site.

Optimise URL Structures 

URLs should be simple and descriptive. Implement consistent structures across your site that reflect your site’s content hierarchy. For example:

Good: example.com/category/subcategory/product-name

Bad: example.com/p=123456

Fix Crawl Budget Wastage 

For large sites, Google assigns a set “crawl budget” that determines how many pages its bot will crawl. Fix issues like duplicate pages or unnecessary redirects to ensure Google focuses on your most valuable pages.

Focus on Mobile Friendliness 

Large websites often struggle with mobile responsiveness. Use responsive designs, dynamic serving, or AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to align with Google’s mobile-first indexing. 

Writing Content That Scales 

When your site has tens of thousands of pages, crafting engaging, unique content for every page can feel overwhelming. Here’s how to manage content creation effectively at scale:

Prioritise High-Value Pages 

Start by optimising pages that hold the most strategic value. As with any B2B marketing strategy, think about what your goals are for the business and work on that accordingly. 

Repurpose and Optimise Existing Content 

Comb through underperforming pages to update them with optimised titles, headings and content. Consolidate duplicate or thin content to avoid keyword cannibalisation. 

Generate Templated Metadata 

Manual meta description optimisations are nearly impossible for thousands of pages. Use standardised templates and the power of AI to dynamically update page-specific details to ensure consistency. 

Unlocking the Power of Schema for Large Websites 

Schema Markup (structured data) is a game-changer for optimising large websites, giving search engines a deeper, more accurate understanding of your content. By implementing schema, you can improve your site’s visibility, boost rankings and provide users with richer search results.

Must-Have Schemas for Large Websites 

• Breadcrumb Schema: Enhance navigation signals, helping users and search engines understand the structure of your site. 
• Product Schema: Perfect for ecommerce sites to showcase pricing, reviews, ratings and availability directly on search result pages, attracting more clicks. 
• FAQ Schema: Capture more SERP real estate while providing quick answers to user queries, increasing engagement. This maximises your chances of appearing for zero click searches.

Tips for Effective Schema Implementation 

• Use tools to validate your schema and ensure it meets search engine standards. 
• Regularly review and update your structured data to reflect any changes in your content or offerings. 
• Combine multiple schemas where applicable to maximise their impact and deliver a comprehensive view of your content. 

Schema is essential for websites of any size, especially large ones, to stay competitive in search rankings and deliver a superior user experience. Implement it today to unlock the full potential of your website.

Things to Avoid in Large Website SEO 

While best practices lead to success, ignoring these common pitfalls could sabotage your efforts. 

1. Ignoring Crawl Errors 

Failing to identify crawl issues will result in wasted crawl budget and unindexed pages. 

2. Rushing Multi-Language Implementations 

If your site targets different countries, don’t launch content without proper Hreflang tags to handle language and regional targeting. 

3. Neglecting Analytics Setup 

Large websites need precise tracking to measure performance effectively. Ensure Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are set up properly. 

4. Overlooking Security Protocols 

Without HTTPS, your rankings (and credibility) will take a hit. Transition every page to secure connections. 

5. Shortcutting Image Optimisation 

Large sites often store thousands of images. Ensure they’re properly compressed to improve load time without losing visual quality. 

Achieving SEO Success at Scale 

Optimising SEO for large websites is a marathon and you’ll be constantly refining it for years. Focus on scalable solutions, automate repetitive tasks and regularly monitor performance to remain agile in response to trends and challenges. 

For businesses struggling to manage SEO across enterprise-sized sites, specialised tools and professional SEO audits can make all the difference. Interested in streamlining your approach? Speak directly to our expert team to learn how we can simplify SEO while delivering measurable results.