Enterprise Websites Need Links, Too
While large brands may have a strong foothold in search for their primary pages and important keywords, being a big brand doesn’t guarantee success. Every day, enterprise companies launch marketing initiatives that fail to gain momentum. Securing links can help these new marketing initiatives gain traction and reach their intended audiences.
Search is an incredibly valuable channel for driving traffic, and strong visibility within search engines can significantly impact the success of any new marketing program, especially digital strategies. Links are integral to capturing that search traffic.
Recently, my company’s CEO, Jon Ball, attended a conference catering to representatives, largely Digital Marketing Managers, from enterprise companies. Jon was there to discuss the importance of SEO within online marketing and ask questions.
During a presentation, Jon asked the room, “How many of you have recently had an online marketing initiative fail?” Every single person in the room raised their hand.
Being a recognizable brand name doesn’t insulate you from failure, particularly online, where marketing is still evolving.
In this post, I want to look at a couple of high-profile examples of enterprise businesses that could use link building to support new initiatives, to help them gain increased visibility online.
Example #1: Keurig’s New KOLD Product
The first example comes from Keurig, a company in the beverage industry known for its single-serve coffee brewers. However, Keurig’s revenues have stagnated recently. To drive growth, they’re expanding their product line with the new Keurig KOLD, which produces cold beverages rather than coffee.
The established Keurig coffee maker is already ranking quite well (positions #5 and #6) for the term “coffee brewer.”
Keurig is an established brand closely associated with coffee, and you would expect them to rank well for a term like “coffee brewer.” However, with the Keurig KOLD, the company is moving into a new vertical, cold beverages. It looks like the new product is ranking decently for “cold beverage maker” (position #7) as well as for “cold drink maker” (position #2).
However, the Keurig KOLD is not ranking for more searchable terms like:
- “soda machine” (Search volume = 5.4K)
- “drink maker” (Search volume = 1.3K)
- “soda maker” (Search volume = 3.6K)
These terms present an opportunity for Keurig’s new cold beverage machines, and a sustained link acquisition campaign could help expand Keurig’s visibility and reach across organic search.
Furthermore, looking at the results for “cold drink maker” again, I see that the Keurig KOLD is being outranked by negative press. To improve their search visibility and outrank negative press, they are going to need links.
Examining the “cold drink maker” results, I see some positive news coverage from The Boston Globe at the bottom. Clicking the links takes us to this page. Keurig has had a rough couple of quarters, which is mentioned in this post. However, this coverage is fairly positive, and it would be worth contacting the reporter to express gratitude and attempt to secure a link.
Converting these news mentions into links doesn’t always work due to internal policies or unresponsive reporters, but I’ve seen success with very well-established publications. In this instance, it’s worth reaching out to the author of the article.
Scrolling to the bottom of the article, it’s easy to find contact information. A simple outreach thanking the reporter for the coverage and asking if they would be willing to add a link to Keurig to provide further information for readers could be beneficial. A link here would certainly help add visibility for Keurig’s new product.
At the time of writing, the Keurig KOLD landing page has 79 referring domains. This is a decent number of links for a new product, but there’s clearly more opportunity. A sustained campaign could help grow visibility and ensure ongoing growth for Keurig’s new product.
Example #2: Orec America
The next example involves Orec America, a company in the outdoor power equipment niche. Orec America is a relatively new American division of the established Japanese equipment manufacturer Orec.
This example is a bit different from the Keurig example. Rather than focusing on a new product, I’m going to look at a relatively new content initiative the company has launched to grow their visibility, online presence, and brand recognition.
Orec’s blog isn’t new; it launched in October of 2013. However, it’s clear the company has made a recent investment into the blog: There is an uptick in the frequency of their posts, an increase in depth, and overall improvement in quality.
With this investment in a new content initiative, the goal is undoubtedly to garner more attention, shares, and links for Orec. But if I plug the first post listed, “Using Brush Clearing Equipment in Autumn,” into an SEO tool, here is what I find: Not a single link.
Looking at the page, I can tell time and energy were invested in creating an informative, high-quality blog post. So why hasn’t this post attracted any links? My guess is that Orec hasn’t invested in serious promotion.
While Orec America has been sharing the post socially, it hasn’t gained any traction, and there’s no targeted marketing. In this case, links can support a new marketing initiative by building visibility, earning attention, and increasing lifetime value.
Because Orec’s post on clearing brush is informative and helpful, promoting it as a resource could prove fruitful. An example of a page where their post may prove useful would be in the “Agriculture News” section of Purdue University’s website. This page discusses clearing brush, and Orec’s blog post explains a process for doing just that, making it a viable resource.
Furthermore, contact information for both the author and Ag Communications department can be easily found on the page. It would take minimal time and effort to reach out to these contacts and suggest Orec’s blog post as a resource.
Another option would be to promote the post within relevant forums to answer customer questions. For example, here is a forum question on a highly visible site that relates to the topic of Orec’s blog post. This would be a great place to list a link to Orec’s blog post because it would help answer this person’s question.
While forum links are typically nofollow and of limited SEO value, they still provide value in terms of driving traffic to the blog, brand building, audience engagement, and increased exposure. If Orec is investing in creating useful content, it’s worthwhile to find forums where their audience could benefit from that content.
The entire Orec America blog is in need of some manual promotion. Because the blog has relevant and useful content, it would be feasible to build some quality backlinks. For example, after doing some quick research, I found a website that links out to other relevant sites within the lawn care niche. The webmaster is even openly asking for suggestions for the page.
If I were working for Orec America, I would definitely take the time to reach out to this webmaster and see if they would be interested in adding Orec’s blog to this resource page.
Orec America has invested in creating compelling content that is link-worthy, and they should be supporting their content initiative with manual promotion for links.
Don’t Let Your Initiative Die On The Vine
Link building can support new marketing initiatives and help them succeed.
If an enterprise company is going to invest in a new marketing initiative, they need to be strategic in their marketing efforts. By ignoring search as a channel, these large brands often miss valuable opportunities to drive traffic and awareness and build brand affinity.
Fortune 500 companies frequently launch new initiatives for various reasons, and unfortunately, many of these initiatives don’t garner the attention or traction they need. These companies can use SEO and link building to power their strategies and avoid failed initiatives.
Enterprise businesses need to ensure their online marketing strategies account for search as a channel and take advantage of valuable link opportunities.
