How would you prioritize technical SEO fixes on a large enterprise website?

Working on large enterprise websites is a different challenge compared to smaller sites because there are usually hundreds or thousands of pages, multiple teams involved, and fixes take longer to go through approvals and development cycles. So prioritisation becomes really important.

The first thing I always do is a full technical audit. Tools like Screaming Frog, Semrush, and Google Search Console together give a clear picture of everything that needs fixing. But the key is not treating every issue equally.

Indexing and crawlability issues come first. If Google can't properly crawl or index your pages, nothing else matters. Fixing blocked pages, incorrect robots.txt rules, noindex tags on important pages, and crawl errors is always the starting point because these directly impact whether your content even shows up in search.

Site speed and Core Web Vitals come next. Enterprise sites tend to have a lot of legacy code, heavy scripts, and unoptimised images that slow everything down. These affect both rankings and user experience so they're high priority, especially now that Google weighs Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor.

Duplicate content and canonicalisation issues are very common on large sites. Multiple URLs serving the same content confuses Google and splits your ranking signals. Fixing canonical tags and consolidating duplicate pages is something I prioritise early because it directly impacts how authority flows across the site.

Broken links and redirect chains come after that. Large sites accumulate these over time especially after redesigns or migrations. Long redirect chains slow down crawling and dilute link equity so cleaning these up is worth doing before moving to other fixes.

Structured data and schema markup I treat as a separate workstream. It doesn't need to block other fixes and can be rolled out gradually across page types. But for enterprise sites it has a big impact on AI search visibility and rich results so I always make sure it's on the roadmap.

The most important thing I've learned on enterprise projects is to tie every fix to business impact. Development resources are limited and competing with other teams for priority. When I can show that fixing a specific issue affects pages that drive the most revenue or leads, it's much easier to get it moved up in the development queue.

With over three years of experience in SEO, I've learned that not every technical SEO issue deserves the same level of attention. On large enterprise websites, I prioritize fixes based on their impact on crawlability, indexing, user experience and business goals rather than trying to fix everything at once. My approach is simple and systematic:

• Start with a technical audit to identify crawl errors, indexing issues, broken links, duplicate content and server-related problems.
  
  
• Fix crawl and indexing blockers first, including incorrect robots.txt rules, noindex tags, broken canonical tags, 5xx errors and redirect loops.
  
  
• Review site architecture to improve internal linking, URL structure, and navigation so search engines can easily discover important pages.
  
  
• Optimize Core Web Vitals and mobile performance since these directly affect both user experience and search performance.
  
  
• Focus on high-value pages first, such as product, category, or service pages that drive the most traffic and conversions.
  
  
• Monitor the results using tools like Google Search Console and analytics platforms to measure improvements in crawling, indexing, rankings, and organic traffic before moving on to lower-priority issues.
  
  Following this step-by-step process helps me address the highest-impact technical issues first while delivering measurable SEO improvements efficiently.

Something I have been thinking about while learning technical SEO is that it is really easy to get pulled into fixing things that look important but do not actually move the needle.
On a large enterprise website there are always going to be a long list of issues flagged in any audit tool. Page speed, broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, the list goes on. And when everything shows up as an error it is tempting to just start fixing whatever is easiest or most visible.
But from what I understand, the most logical place to start is always crawling and indexing. If Google cannot properly crawl your pages or is wasting crawl budget on the wrong ones, none of the other fixes really matter. You could have perfectly optimized content and flawless Core Web Vitals but if the pages are not being indexed correctly they are essentially invisible.
So before anything else I think it makes sense to look at how the site is being crawled, whether important pages are actually getting indexed, whether crawl budget is being wasted on low value URLs, and whether there are any blocking issues in the robots.txt or through noindex tags that should not be there.
Once that foundation is solid then you can start working down the priority list. But skipping that step and jumping straight into meta tag fixes or page speed improvements on a large site feels like fixing the paint on a car that will not start.
Still getting my head around enterprise SEO but that logic at least makes sense to me.