In this episode of International Web Effectiveness Podcast, Bill Hunt and Bill Scully take a deep look at the strategic advantages and challenges of centralizing web operations across multiple markets. They break down the impact of centralization on SEO and development processes, share insights on optimizing ticketing systems, and discuss how unified approaches can enhance efficiency and consistency.
Key Takeaways
- Centralized Reporting: Streamlining data reporting across markets helps in identifying performance trends and optimizing strategies.
- Unified Ticket Management: Centralizing ticket submissions and management can simplify issue resolution and improve development efficiency.
- Consistent SEO Practices: Standardizing SEO protocols across regions ensures better performance and reduces conflicting advice from different vendors.
- Efficient Resource Allocation: Centralizing tools and vendor management can lead to cost savings and more effective negotiations.
- Enhanced Global Strategy: A centralized approach allows for cohesive and impactful global marketing strategies and easier cross-market learning.
Catch the Full Episode
YouTube: https://youtu.be/F7rOkULuUKc
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/20UIhhjupalTMwjpBT9Ff1?si=IhBIZxFGSS2Ye74QM_77cQ
Transcript
Bill Scully: Welcome to episode ten of the International Web Effectiveness Podcast. Today, Bill Hunt and I will be discussing strategies and techniques that are key to improving your web presence and managing global websites.
In our last episode, Web Service Contracts, we shared valuable tips on how to get the terms you expect and ensure you’re covered if anything unexpected happens. It’s definitely worth a listen, so check it out.
In this episode, we’ll dive into the pros and cons of web centralization. I’m a big believer in centralization. The benefits are clear—brand consistency, cost efficiency in implementation, and the ability to execute faster and better. When experts share their knowledge, it elevates the entire organization, and everyone benefits from each other’s success.
Bill, do you want to share your experiences with web centralization?
Bill Hunt: Sure. Having worked with large multinational brands for the last 30 years, we always run into this issue. There are usually two or three common scenarios. The first is when most of the operations are centralized, which provides consistency for all the reasons you mentioned—brand consistency, ease of use, and so on. But I’ve also worked with decentralized organizations where the market is seen as an autonomous unit. I call these “free-range markets” or “free-range brands,” where they operate with total freedom.
When you start thinking about things like search and web effectiveness, that’s when issues arise. Now, I’m not suggesting centralization just for the sake of it, and I don’t support centralization if it negatively impacts the brand in certain markets. I have a special affinity for Asia, and I’ve seen this particularly in Japan. Japan often needs to adjust its approach to meet the unique needs of its consumers.
Many Western markets don’t understand this. They often say, “Just do what we tell you,” but then end up facing problems in the market. I’ve seen cases where Japan was allowed to operate freely, and that worked well. We need to look at this issue holistically.
I once worked with a client where every market was operating as a free-range unit. During a search roadshow for them, every market resisted centralization. They said, “We can’t centralize anything—no templates, no web development, nothing.” It was pure resistance from the corporate team.
To address this, I reframed the discussion by asking, “What do you need in a local market? How is HQ holding you back? What’s your biggest challenge in managing local websites?” Once we got their feedback, we realized that the things they disliked could actually be addressed by using a common template—giving them room to customize certain aspects.
Then, we asked the critical follow-up questions. It’s like dealing with a child asking, “Why is the sky blue?” and then following up with more questions to get to the root of the matter.
For example, I asked, “What specifically do you need to edit?” They replied, “Events and campaigns.” That’s easy—we could create a page just for that. I also asked, “How often do you edit product information?” They said, “Almost never. We post a product page, and it stays up until something changes, like a campaign. We might tweak the wording, but that’s it.” I said, “Great. If we manage that template and you just handle the content updates, would that work?” They agreed.
It seemed like we were making progress, but the real issue was that local agencies wanted to keep building and managing their websites. They didn’t want to lose control over their local sites. In this case, though, we optimized the templates, and within two weeks, every keyword we tracked for all 37 markets was in the top five.
We didn’t do anything at the market level. We just deployed a common template with SEO best practices baked in. Suddenly, markets were saying, “Wow, this is amazing. How do we get more traffic?” What started as resistance turned into a desire for more centralization because it gave them more freedom to focus on what they really wanted to do.
Bill Scully: That’s a great example of how centralization can work.
Bill Hunt: Absolutely. I have another example from when I was the director of e-marketing. After we were acquired by Siemens, we had to switch to their CMS system with their templates. I’ll be honest—I resisted it at first. There was a language barrier with the person I was reporting to, and it was frustrating. But over time, as we worked together and they understood our needs—since we weren’t in electronics but in services—we were able to make it work.
Ultimately, the Siemens CMS was better for us. It allowed me to integrate SEO elements, and they got their branding and content management system in place.
When they made updates—like changing the logo color three times or creating a new font—they did it with consistency. Before working for Siemens, I didn’t really understand the value of a brand. But once I did, I realized how powerful brand consistency is. I could spot the Siemens logo from fifty yards away, and I noticed Siemens trucks on the road. It really showed me the importance of a strong, consistent brand.
Bill Scully: That’s an interesting perspective on brand consistency.
Bill Hunt: Yes, and centralization can help with that. For example, in one company I worked with, we saved over a thousand hours in just six months by moving to a common CMS and using the same template across all markets. Every time we made a change to the template, it deployed globally. When we calculated the man-hours saved, it was huge, and it got the attention of everyone involved.
Centralizing things like script management and calling images from a CDN also had significant benefits. For instance, the hosting bill went down, and it made the entire process more efficient. These are just some of the technical benefits we saw from centralization.
Bill Hunt: There’s another point—honestly, we could do a whole session just on the benefits of templates. One thing that always fascinated me, going back to our early search days, was that when you started working with a company, it was hard to find two markets with the same reporting structure. Everyone had performance reports, but they weren’t uniform. Most companies included similar KPIs: increasing organic traffic by X, reducing cost-per-click on paid ads by Y, or driving leads from search. But getting that data consistently from someone was always a challenge.
One project that stands out was with Huawei. They were one of the first companies I saw using a common Excel template. Everyone could download it from the web, fill it out, and save it to a shared folder. Then, they’d use a visualization tool to import the data. The result was that they had an entire dashboard with top-level marketing data—across ten screens. It was impressive.
We ended up adding a few more screens to track specific things like leads from organic and paid search globally. It was all possible because everyone was filling out the same template. This made reporting more consistent and gave us insight into how regions were performing. We also started thinking, “How can we extend this to other areas?” And, ultimately, getting people to report consistently was key.
Bill Scully: That sounds incredibly efficient.
Bill Hunt: It was. The real breakthrough came when we worked with multiple regions. Even though some regions used the same agency, each market would often report different things, using whatever they got from their SEO tool or analytics. So we told them, “We want consistency. We don’t care about the format, but we need everyone to use the same format.” We brought all the regional representatives into a room via video conference, and after some back-and-forth, we agreed on how to fill in the template. Then, we could pull all that data into a tool like Domo for easy visualization.
Of course, one big agency pushed back. They said, “You didn’t contract for this level of reporting, so it’ll cost extra to meet your needs.” We didn’t renew with them. But that’s just the reality we faced.
Bill Scully: It sounds like a lot of work up front, but the payoff must have been huge.
Bill Hunt: Absolutely. The next step was hiring a person specifically for marketing data aggregation. And in the following round, we required any agency working with the team to fill out the same template. The consistency paid off big time. Now, we could easily view the data across regions and markets, compare performance globally, and spot trends. For example, how was APAC doing? How about EMEA, Africa, or any other region? The consistency made it possible to slice and dice the data however we needed.
The second benefit was identifying both positive and negative trends. When we noticed a market’s performance fluctuating—whether increasing or decreasing—we could drill down and figure out what was causing it. We set up automated prompts to identify any significant changes and alert us to markets with notable increases or drops.
Bill Scully: And what kind of insights did those prompts provide?
Bill Hunt: It was fascinating. For example, Japan had a huge jump in organic traffic, and we wanted to know why. It turned out they had been doing something unique. They were mining competitor software reviews on social media, finding bugs or frustrating features users complained about. They’d then write content around how their software didn’t have those bugs or was easier to use. It was brilliant. They drove hundreds of thousands of visits just by addressing the frustrations customers had with competitors’ software.
Bill Scully: That’s genius. And you were able to replicate that approach?
Bill Hunt: Exactly. After seeing that anomaly, we asked Japan what they were doing, and they shared their strategy with us. We created a point-of-view paper, sent it to the market, and localized the content for other regions. We even encouraged other teams to mine for similar opportunities. This central reporting system allowed us to identify these insights faster and more effectively.
Bill Scully: So, this was all thanks to a consistent reporting system?
Bill Hunt: Yes, without a doubt. Even something as simple as consistent reporting can make a huge impact. It’s about seeing patterns, anomalies, and trends that you might otherwise miss. One of the first things I did was hire an analytics agency to ensure we had full control. We created a top-level comparison of regions, comparing senior executives responsible for multiple countries. The data helped us pit managers against each other, but in a way that was constructive, not about targeting individuals.
Bill Scully: That’s a great way to foster healthy competition.
Bill Hunt: Exactly. We also broke down the data further, by industry and country. Then, we only sent the detailed reports to the people who needed them. What we found was that questions started flowing to the SEOs—“Why is France outperforming us?” This sparked more collaboration and knowledge-sharing, helping to build a stronger center of expertise.
Bill Scully: That sounds like a great way to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Bill Hunt: It really helped. It’s what I used to call “management through embarrassment,” a technique we used at IBM. When one person’s report was red, and everyone else’s was green, it would get their attention. They’d ask, “Where’s your green?” and it would light a fire under them to collaborate and improve.
Bill Scully: A little friendly pressure can go a long way.
Bill Hunt: It’s definitely effective. And to circle back to something we mentioned earlier, while it’s become a bit taboo to talk about “keyword phrases” these days—since everyone’s focused on entities and concepts—people are still using phrases to search. At the end of the day, the fundamentals haven’t changed.
Bill Hunt: One thing I find many companies lack is what I call “always-on reporting.” I first started doing this because most reports I created were used as a lever, or a stick, to motivate people. What I mean by always-on reporting is this: if you talk to a company, even if they have forty markets, you should be able to ask one question: “Do you rank for the equivalent of ‘stapler’ in every market?” Let’s say we sell staplers. In each market, there should be a term they can tell me about their performance. It could be a specific model—“Super Duper Acme 500 Stapler”—I don’t care. I just want to know if I’m represented in each market for the local equivalent of “stapler.” Am I on the shelf? We used to call this the “shelf space report,” because I wanted to stay as far from search jargon as possible.
When I worked with a spirits company, the first thing I did was pull a report on terms like “vodka,” “whiskey,” and “rum” to check if we had representation for any of our brands in each market. It was a pretty embarrassing report. I’d come to the global team and say, “Out of sixty markets, you have no representation for your brand in twenty-five of them, even though you sell these products in every market.” The room would go silent—people couldn’t believe that a brand of their stature wasn’t ranking for the very products they sold.
I’ve had similar experiences at companies like Procter & Gamble. People would ask, “How could we not dominate organic search?” Well, you may dominate with your brand name, but when it comes to generic terms, you might not. This is why we started using always-on reporting as a way to grab people’s attention. It was eye-opening.
I remember using this approach at IBM. We said, “If you’re not represented for eighty percent of the critical words, if you’re not in the top five for those words, then you need to buy eighty percent of the share of voice with paid search.” Fair enough?
Bill Scully: Yeah, that makes sense.
Bill Hunt: If this is the essence of your business—if you make or sell X product—you should be ranking for those terms. And if you’re not, you need to pay. What really got people’s attention was when we included the cost of not ranking. We’d tell them, “It’s going to cost you two and a half million dollars to backfill for what you don’t rank for.” After that, we couldn’t keep up with the meeting requests—people wanted to understand why they weren’t ranking for their critical terms. Now they could quantify the cost of it.
It’s fascinating how many companies don’t have an always-on report to monitor their “shelf space” and make sure they’re ranking for the terms that matter to their business.
Bill Scully: Yeah, that’s a great point. You’re boiling down the thousands of words you’re working on to just three, four, or five core terms. That’s really powerful.
Bill Hunt: Exactly. So, can you tell me more about the cost of not ranking? I know I’ve posted something about it years ago, but you took a different approach. Did you use a thirty-five percent calculation for being in the first position, or something else?
Bill Scully: Well, let me simplify it for you. I don’t think you remember, but the first time I did this was for Siemens. They didn’t care about organic search at all back then.
Bill Hunt: Oh, way back when. Yeah, I remember.
Bill Scully: We built this model for them because they couldn’t get any traction in organic search. At that time, search was much simpler. You just asked, “How many organic listings did we have?” If you had ten organic listings, that was good.
Bill Hunt: Right. Ten organic listings, and maybe ten ads on the page. So, what’s the chance of getting clicked? Around 5 percent, right? We would use that number for both organic and paid clicks.
Bill Scully: Exactly. And we also looked at the ratio of organic clicks to paid clicks. Back then, it was about 1 percent, though sometimes we’d hear from the Google reps, “Don’t blame us for that.” Over time, we adjusted that ratio, and it became 30/70—paid vs. organic.
Bill Hunt: Right, so if there are 100,000 searches for a query, and you’re not on the first page, you get zero clicks. But if you’re on the first page, with a 2 percent click rate, you get a certain number of clicks. We would also estimate how much that would cost in paid ads.
Bill Scully: And if we couldn’t get organic clicks, we’d calculate how much it would cost to get that traffic through paid search. The point was to show the cost of not ranking, and that’s where it would hit home for people. If you wanted the same amount of traffic for free, you’d have to do SEO—though, of course, it’s not completely free because SEO takes time and resources.
Bill Hunt: Right, and the shocking part was always showing the number—the cost of not ranking. People realized, “We have to get serious about SEO.” After that, we would show the benefits of co-optimizing paid and organic strategies. It’s interesting that now, after twenty years of pushing that idea, everyone’s finally talking about co-optimization like it’s a new concept.
Bill Scully: Yeah, it’s become the cool thing to talk about now.
Bill Hunt: Exactly. But these reports really help companies see the cost of not ranking and the opportunity to drive traffic. Most companies assume traffic is free, but it has a real cost.
Bill Hunt: That’s great. But that’s just the idea—the idea is, can you frame up a report and call it “shelf space,” “always on,” or whatever you want? We’re simply asking: for a set of keywords that define what your company does across multiple markets, how are we performing? Is anyone monitoring that? And is there an opportunity we’re missing?
We still have a little more time, right? Yeah, I’ll keep going. There are two more things I want to talk about that I haven’t really heard anyone discuss. It ties into what you mentioned about a search center of excellence and council. If you already have one, you’re ahead of the game.
One thing I’d recommend for that group, especially if you have a centralized development team and decentralized SEOs—meaning various SEOs or agencies working independently—is implementing a protocol to centralize all SEO-related tickets. Even if everyone submits their tickets into the same system, you need someone to monitor them. It could be someone from Brazil or any other market—whoever has the bandwidth.
Ideally, you’d have a project manager on the development side who reviews tickets and says, “Hey, these five look identical.”
It’s a game-changer after an agency, especially a regional one, completes an audit. Their measure of success often becomes how many issues they find—how many tickets they can generate. Now imagine this happening across eight European markets. Every SEO, every agency, each with different points of contact, starts submitting tickets. Eventually, someone will say, “Wait, these all look the same.”
I wrote about a case like this in an article. We had 14 or 17 markets submitting tickets saying, “We need to fix the 404 errors. There’s a significant number of 404 and redirect errors identified in the audit.” That exact ticket description was submitted a dozen times.
The problem? No developer wanted to touch it. The ticket didn’t provide actionable details. It meant developers had to hunt down the source of the 404s and redirects. So, we simplified the process.
We asked each agency to crawl their respective sites and export the list of 404 and redirect errors. Using Screaming Frog, we pinpointed where each error was detected. Then, we compiled everything into a database, ran a pivot table, and found that 40,000 errors were caused by links in the header and footer—links that were changed during a UX update.
So how did we rewrite the ticket? We closed all the duplicate tickets and replaced them with one clear directive: “Update the header links in every market to the correct equivalents.” We even created a table listing the proper links for each market.
That one ticket got immediate attention. Developers handled it in the current sprint because it was:
- Easy to execute.
- A global fix with a measurable impact.
Instead of 14 different market-specific tickets, we had one global issue that, once resolved, eliminated 40,000 errors overnight.
This happened simply because someone took a centralized approach—recognizing patterns across tickets, writing a clear action plan, and elevating it to a global priority.
The same principle applies to other areas, like managing Google Search Console issues. I guarantee many market-level Search Console errors stem from common root causes—how redirects are handled, how templates are structured, and so on. If you approach these centrally, you can create a single ticket that addresses multiple markets at once.
Imagine if companies required all agencies to submit tickets in one shared system. Even if the tickets weren’t prioritized immediately, at least everything would be in one place. It could even be a templated process or a corporate-level service that regional teams tap into.
One last thing before I forget—this could even apply to third-party services, like ratings and review plug-ins used across different markets. Standardizing issue reporting and resolution processes at a global level could dramatically improve efficiency.
Bill Hunt: When we were working with six or seven different brands and managing one ticketing list, one person found an error. That single issue turned out to be affecting all of them. Once we identified the problem, it was easy to fix across the board. This really highlighted the importance of centralizing vendors.
If you consolidate vendors, you gain a stronger partnership. When you’re spending a lot of money with one vendor, you have leverage. Back when I was with Siemens, we managed to get custom features added to one of the services. Because Siemens was a big company, the vendor recognized the value, and those features ended up benefiting other large companies as well.
You also gain better negotiating power. If you’re operating in forty markets and paying for forty separate website services, you shouldn’t be. You should be negotiating a bulk rate. Have you worked with centralized vendors before?
Bill Scully: For the most part, they don’t exist in a truly global sense. Even vendors that claim to be global often operate as separate profit and loss centers in different regions. That’s a challenge I’ve encountered multiple times.
Web development might differ slightly from SEO and marketing services, but if you can find a centralized vendor, all the benefits you mentioned apply. They do tend to be more expensive because of their scale, but if you’re a large company, the advantages outweigh the costs. Even if you use regional vendors, it’s crucial to ensure they work together and align with a consistent strategy.
Bill Hunt: Exactly. You often hear arguments about competitive advantage, intellectual property, and secrecy. But in reality, most of what vendors should collaborate on has nothing to do with their internal processes—it’s about your strategy. That’s why having a Center of Excellence to oversee vendor alignment is so important.
Consistency is another key factor. You need to ensure your European vendor isn’t contradicting your Asia-Pacific vendor. One might tell you to remove H1 tags because some “celebrity SEO” said so, while another insists you need five H1 tags. That’s where central governance plays a role in maintaining best practices.
Bill Scully: That’s a great point. It’s critical to have oversight to maintain consistency across regions.
When it comes to tools, it’s a different story. Platforms like Ahrefs or SEMrush work well across teams. You can negotiate enterprise licenses for global access rather than paying for multiple standalone accounts.
Bill Hunt: Right. Some companies take a “tin cup” approach, taxing individual brands or regional teams to fund tools. Others categorize tools as a global marketing expense, which can sometimes be easier to justify in budgeting.
A smart tactic is negotiating with vendors. Say, “We’ll provide a testimonial, let you use our logo, or co-host a webinar—if you give us a discount on licensing across multiple markets.” With HREFLang Builder, for example, we licensed it for one market but deployed it across all. That’s another layer of centralization—managing sitemaps and HREFLang efficiently across multiple regions.
Bill Scully: That’s an excellent point. Another consideration is contract terms. If a vendor wants to use your logo for marketing, that should be a negotiation point. If you initially restrict that right, you can leverage it later for better pricing.
Bill Hunt: Exactly. Looking at the bigger picture, centralization benefits brand consistency, implementation efficiency, and data management. When all your data is consolidated, you can analyze performance by region and make informed decisions.
Another advantage of centralization is easier pilot testing. You can trial a strategy in one market, measure results, and then scale successful initiatives globally.
One thing we didn’t touch on—maybe a topic for another episode—is cross-market learning. Sharing wins across regions helps marketing and SEO teams continuously improve.
Bill Scully: Agreed. Any final thoughts?
Bill Hunt: Just that if anything we discussed was unclear—like “tin cupping”—reach out to us. We have a free Facebook group where you can ask questions and join discussions.
Also, check out our website for training on HREFLang, building business cases, and managing SEO at scale. If there’s a specific topic you’d like us to cover, let us know!
Bill Scully: And if you enjoy what we’re doing, please rate, review, and share the podcast. Your feedback helps us improve and keep delivering valuable content.
Bill Hunt: Thanks, Bill. Great discussion!
Bill Scully: Thanks! See you next time.