Fortune 500 company + SENuke = disaster!!

[markowe]

I keep meaning to post this link to an article on the Linkbuildr blog (a white-hat SEO company): Fortune 500 Company + SEnuke = Disaster

Sort of funny in a way - think of looking in the backlinks profile of a F500 company and seeing tons of crappy spun Quizilla stories propped up with forum profile links!!

[linkbuildr]

If I could have only show the profile.....it made for a real good laugh. It was a little shocking to see how little of a clue a lot of the company had when it came to this stuff. Too many people over 50 running things still it seemed.

I do however think I can say with confidence that no other fortune 500 company had more forum accounts than then lol.

[BarryWheeler]

Fabulous read. Thanks for sharing it.

[linkbuildr]

Thanks and I have to stress that I by no means have it out for SEnuke. Some situations it is just not suitable. With that being said, if I'm going to go out and rank an EMD of mine, I sure as hell am not going to do that by hand lol.

[markowe]

Ha, I think 'Nukeing' an EMD is probably overkill anyway.

I've been reading the Linkbuildr blog for a couple of years - it helps keep my feet on the ground as regards SEO People around here and other SEO forums tend to lose sight of what SEO is trying to achieve and just blindly try to "blast" their sites to the top (and it so happens to work a lot of the time!).

Really, what we are essentially trying to achieve with SEO is to create the kind of patterns of linking that the SE algorithms see as natural link patterns, that would be expected when a site/page gets popular and becomes identified with some key phrases.

Now, with totally white-hat SEO we are trying to do that in a truly natural way, which is really just "marketing" the Internet way, using the kind of methods you guys espouse. I guess "grey-hat" means that, as you say, all that viral, linkbait stuff just isn't going to work for "brass-plated bathroom taps", so we have to basically "simulate" these natural linking patterns as closely as possible by artificial means

But for a serious online business, that has a brand to think about, and a long-term marketing strategy that CANNOT rely on current loopholes in search engine algorithms, well, that spammy stuff is just out of the question.

If we must build links by artificial means to our "serious" online ventures (like my offline company site!) then they just have to be quality links from quality properties that will stand the test of time - and the next algo update, and the one after that...

[RevSEO]

I'm actually surprised if this "Fortune 500" company actually did this. Off-site SEO for a Fortune 500 of this "low caliber" really isn't all that beneficial in the long run. Whats even more surprising is that they were only able to produce "a dozen" in 8 months.

This begs the question, how do you know it wasn't a competitor? Granted it seems that the university admitted their tactics to you. I'm still shocked they spent 8 months to develop a dozen linkwheels, even with student labor. That shouldn't take more than one or two months max.

[Mike Anthony]

I'd spit out my coffee too. large corporations don't mess around with that stuff very often. Although the owner of senuke was out here during the launch of SenukeX saying many large corporations use it. I of course upset the SEnuk affiliates by calling him out on that nonsense

[Seofarmer]

Thats a very interesting article

On the other hand, how should big companies (or fortune 500) do in terms of SEO?
Do they not do article submission etc.?

[linkbuildr]

How did they come about the SENuke mess? Well they got all gung-ho about link building after a few of the execs went to a conference. They went and put together a "team" from a batch of fresh marketing grads from their local university. All sorts of trouble started from that point on. They had marketing people, video editors, PPC guys...just nothing really focused on links.

@seofarmer

We tend to focus on things that will bring them those "natural" links just because they can't f around when it comes to their brand. So, with that being said we usually do stuff like

- mobile application development - why? you can get tons of crazy juicy links from app sites...think android, iphone, palm pre etc
- useful apps for say firefox or wordpress if the chance presents itself
- getting their company interviewed on a podcast, radio show or tv spots
- link bait of all sorts of course
- local university job fair....booyah! Time to get links from .edu in a legit fashion
- do they have an affiliate program? Sell Wholesale? Whole whack of linking opportunities there.
- finding citations where you can request a link back
- contests
- etc etc etc!

When it comes to big brands, you have to look at what they offer then dig deep to see what linking options present themselves. Since you guys linked us already, I'll refer you folks to our post title "Link Building Tactics For 2011: Keeping It Fresh (I can't post links yet) for more of an idea.


But I run my own ecommerce site somehow on the side and have a plethora of EMD's...so sometimes you just need to automate some link lovin.