How to do SEO for famous fortune 500 companies

[SamuelDarwin]

Hello SEOmoz,

I have a question to you guys. How typically SEO should be done to fortune 500 comnpanies who are very much famous offline.

The problem I see is any links built gets attention and media can make a big deal out of it. For eg: The recent JCPenney SEO issue. Though their paid links got them penalized, other traditional methods can also not fit their stratgy. Here are the traditional methods and how it can not be applied to them.

1. Commenting on blogs - Well, it is reputation here. If some one sees a link on blog comments, it might be fishy and can be named as blog spammers.

2. Forum marketing - Same here. The reputation of clients can go down.

3. Paid post / Paid links - Again risky

Please suggest how to build link for type of famous clients. Please do not give stratgic level of advice, but be more specific in your answer. For eg: Do this kind of link building and don't do y. etc.,

Looking forward for ur answers.

Thanks

[DavidKauzlaric]

Hi Samuel,

In my opinion it is easier for a Fortune 500 company to get authoritative links than a new company. Personally, I think blog commenting and forum marketing is not that effective.

If I had to do SEO for a Fortune 500, here is what I would do:

• Write amazing content. Write content that provides huge value! Being that you're a Fortune 500, it's very easy to get media exposure and as a result, links. Providing high quality content is where its at!

• Next, definitely implement a company blog and start engaging your potential customers, existing customers, and anyone in between. Write blog posts that provide value and are insightful for your industry, typically you can get a good amount of links for a valuable blog post. Look at SEOmoz

• Press releases through a top-tier distribution wire like Vocus are great. They're expensive but do work well. For a Fortune 500 company, it shouldn't be an issue.

• Donate to universities or sponsor them in some way, shape, or form. Generally you can get a nice .EDU link in exchange! (In a relvant and contextual manner too!).

• Donate/sponsor a bunch of non profits or well-known organizations, they generally have a lot of authority and a link back could be huge from them.

I hope this helps?

[elephantseo]

Hi Samuel,

This is really going to depend on the type of customers the Fortune 500 company is targeting so I will go with your JCPenney example.

1. Partnerships - Find out who heads up business development and review the sites of every partner. If the partner does not have a link to you then get the Biz Dev person to call them up and ask. Another good tactic is to send a gift basket outside of the holidays, then follow up with a call asking. When a partner page already exists on the site it is easy but if you are major partners then you can ask for one to be built.

2. Charity - Does the company or employees participate in any charitable work? Check out the charities for donor pages and get your site listed if not already. Partner with the charity to do a local or national fund raising drive, hit up bloggers who are fans of either the charity or brand.

4. Identify Brand Advocates - Find the mommy bloggers and others online (forums included) that talk about your brand, competitor brands, the products you offer, etc and engage them. Let them hold a contest on thier blog for a gift certificate is a simple example. Coca Cola

5. Sponsored Blog Posts - This falls a little bit on the more risky side but it is an option. Vacations to Go has employed this so take a look at thier backlink profile for further insight.

6. Offline Marketing - Bridge the gap of offline marketing by creating a page or minisite for each offline campaign that points back to the main site.

7. Coupon / Deal websites - There are hundreds if not thousands of sites that feature coupons & deals by major companies. Dig in and find them. A good tactic is searching twitter, google, technorati, etc for words such as coupon, deal, rebate, sale, discount, promo code, promotion, promotional code. Create a list of the sites and submit your coupons & do an outreach campaign to the bloggers / twitter users.

8. Conferences - There are both industry & consumer focused conferences. Become a sponsor or speaker and get listed on the conference website.

9. Create a Youtube Channel - Make videos about interior design, cooking, back to school shopping, etc. However people use your products make videos of that, just be helpful. There is a reason Oprah, Dr. Oz, Food Network are so popular.

I could go on but this should give you a good starting point & keep you busy. The idea is you need to energize & engage the people who already use your products and leverage that to expand the customer base.