How would you handle backlinking for a multi-million dollar company?

As RJD mention, if you don't know/can't do the project, politely refuse the contract.

When it come to SEO, whether it is for a micro niche site or a multi-million company, the principles are the same. On-page SEO for the main keywords that they are targeting, this usually involve you working with their website development team. Since it is an established website that is most likely already geting backlinks from both various website and various authority website (.edu .gov) you have an advantage.

Giving backlinks with usual white hat method of backlinking will usually not harm their website. You could do article syndication, using articles create by a team of the company so that they are approved, getting social backlink by creating a viral campaign designed by the company.
Once you have your initial backlinks create by let's say articles, you can now start a backlinking campaign that is more free since you are not linking to the company website, but the buffers.
Hope this help.

It really depends on the company, but in a case like this I would go with some sort of viral campaign. A while back there was a company that manufactured blenders and they were creating youtube videos that showed their blenders crushing up iphones and all sorts of weird stuff. Not only did it show consumers how powerful and durable the blenders were, but it also brought in a lot of publicity, backlinks etc. In fact, even though they are very expensive, my parents ended up buying one of their blenders because of the videos, so it does work.

That is just one example, but you probably get the idea. If it was a real estate company, maybe you could have a widget or app developed that would list local properties on realtor websites.

There are a lot of ways to go about it, but it will take money and a lot of creativity. If you aren't up to it, I would take the other advice in this thread and kindly decline the offer, but you may tell them your situation and see if you can't work out a deal.

Somehow, I completely overlooked the "tech industry" being mentioned there, so my apologies on that in my previous response.

With tech sites you need to find an angle, that might be a new product release or update to an existing software and then reach out to mainstream tech sites like techcrunch, mashable, etc., there are a bunch of them out there.

One thing to mention also with these "tech reporting" sites is that they are aggregated by thousands of blogs and news sites around the world, so if you can get them to link to the site, other blogs are going to pick up the story and also link to the site creating a wave of backlinks coming in. It is really pretty impressive when you see it happen.

I used to write for mashable.com years ago and was always amazed at how my one little story was instantly picked up and distributed across the web, that is actually what got me interested in seo because at the time I was purely a writer.

With a tech company, you have a lot of things in your favor actually. Sites like Digg and other bookmarking sites feed on tech stories, with a little manipulation you can bring in some serious traffic and links. I used to hit the front page of Digg daily with my tech site and each time it would get several hundred links within a few hours, not to mention about 40,000 people in the same time frame.

If you was referred by someone else then this person has faith in you to take on this type of job. This sounds like a big seo campaign and rather going for keywords you want to look at building there brand, have a look into online reputation mangement.

There is some good suggestions here, like the other warriors say shelling out hundreds of articles is just not going to cut it. If you are going to take this on, make sure you get a good contract sorted out.

Have you try link exchange with related website? I think this thing will pass the your client picky taste of backlink building.

Like many have said it looks like they are looking to do online marketing campaigns for branding their name which is so much more involved than just the normal backlinking. Company image, reputation, status, etc is all at stake.

I would suggest if you dont know how to do branding dont take on this client personally. I would be the middle man and do thruough interview with them to find out exactly what they need, what their expectations are, why do they think they are going this route, what do they expect to see as the end result. then go and find the best online marketing consulting people to do it for them and make a nice commission being the middle man.

1) Focus on corporate link transfers. Find 2 players in the same or similar markets, but not directly competing. Contact both and encourage them to quietly mention each others services in some form of press release or corporate web copy.

2) Buy related high PR domains. identifying the oppourtunity is the hard bit, they will have the cash once you do.

3) Use their corporate networks to build hidden link swaps

4) Yahoo directory listing ($50)

5) Buy adspace, not ppc but actual graphic links back to their home site and back pages on customer targetted sites (2 birds 1 stone)

6)

7)

... I could go on. If you need help with corporate clients i can help. I run Green Square Mile (owns link simply in full). We are a web consultancy agency specialising in these services.

Email me david.black@greensquaremile.com

I recommend you start contacting writers for publications and taking them to lunch. Tell them about this amazing company and why it is newsworthy.

Request the company train you to learn all about their products in advance and tell them you are meeting with media. Plan all this in your budget. Try and get a corporate credit card for these expenses. Practice your speeches without selling.

When you're meeting with the writers, also contact the advertising publisher and say you'd like to buy some advertising and mention you are meeting with one of their writers. If the publisher wants your ad business, they will make sure the story runs and they will treat you well.

Or, refer the company to me and I will meet with media to turn them into a newsworthy organization.

They DO want backlinks from CNN and FOX, right?

I'm sure they'd like a law professor from UCLA or Duke to write about them. Or perhaps someone from Stanford.

It might be best to find a corporate SEO service, refer them to that company and ask if you can also join their team (as a consultant or whatever) for just that project, that way everyone wins and you get experience in this type of thing.

The big thing nowadays that I notice about big companies is that they seem to focus more on social media. Just my two cents.