Supporting New Marketing Initiatives With Link Building

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 have a large impact on 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 I’ll show you comes from Keurig, in the beverage industry.

Keurig is a company that has experienced rapid growth due to the popularity of their single-serve coffee brewer. 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. (At the time of writing this, a popup for the Keurig KOLD appears on their home page; Keurig is invested in marketing this new product.)

The established Keurig coffee maker is already ranking quite well (positions #5 and #6) for the term “coffee brewer.”

Keurig is an established brand that is 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 “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)

Search volume numbers according to SEMrush

These terms present 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:

Of course, if Keurig would like to improve their search visibility and outrank negative press, they are going to need links. According to Majestic, this Fortune article only has 13 referring domains, so outranking it would be viable.

Thus far, from looking at the search results, there is a fair amount of coverage surrounding the Keurig KOLD. Examining the “cold drink maker” results again, I see some 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.

But converting these news mentions into links doesn’t always work (internal policies, unresponsive reporters and so on), 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 (which I have blurred for the author’s privacy), which is prominently displayed:

If I were working with Keurig, it would be natural to reach out to Taryn Luna (by email or Twitter), thank her for the coverage and mentions and ask if she would be willing to add a link to Keurig to provide further information for her readers.

A link here would certainly help add visibility for Keurig’s new product.

At the time of writing this post, the Keurig Kold landing page has 79 referring domains (according to Majestic). This is a decent number of links for a new product, but there’s clearly more (and missed) 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 (founded in 1948) Japanese equipment manufacturer Orec.

This Orec 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 frequency of their posts, an increase in depth and an overall improvement in quality, as well.

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 Majestic, here is what I find:

Not a single link.

Looking at the page, I can tell time and energy was 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, as links can build visibility, earn attention and increase 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 this post 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 for this article.

Furthermore, contact information (again, blurred out by me) 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 either of these contacts and suggest Orec’s blog post as a resource, and a link on a trusted site like Purdue University’s would certainly be worth it.

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 (Houzz.com) 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, there is still 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 go out and find forums like this where their audience could benefit from that content.

It turns out the entire Orec America blog (which has worthwhile content) 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 was able to find this website, which links out to other relevant sites within the lawn care niche:

The webmaster is even openly asking for suggestions for the page (again, I have blurred email address):

If I were working for Orec America, I would definitely take the time to reach out to this webmaster and see if he or she 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. Without the visibility links provide, Orec is not getting maximum value out of their content efforts.

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 will need to be strategic in their marketing efforts. By ignoring search as a channel, these large brands often wind up missing 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.

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