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soopermark
Joined: May 12, 2002
# Posts: 34
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Posted: 2007-Aug-25 02:58
Hi,
I have been in business for 8 years now, my website had a high PR6 a couple years ago, is stable at 5 with good traffic. We have about 900 pages of content. We sell specialty products, and we give away information to anyone who comes to the site.
Over the years we have sold to nearly 80,000 individuals. Many of these people are web-savvy. We get tons of positive emails from super-satisfied customers who ordered our products, used our information, and it made them extremely happy. We pack and ship everything from our own warehouse, we do things right. Ship quick and offer a great product.
The thing is, lately there are so many copycat websites that give people the same information but they don't sell anything. They just sell Google ads that often lead to our site because we are one of very few actual sellers. Some of these guys are search engine pros, with their content and skill they are leapfrogging our natural search results.
We send out a monthly newsletter that's loaded with new information, and several thousand people read it religiously. People love our newsletter. How can I politely ask our dedicated customers to help us? I was thinking of asking people in our next newsletter to add our URL to their blogs, and go mention us in forums, link to us in any website, and go to sites like Epinions and type up a review of our site there. What do you suggest? What is the best way to get all of our satisfied customers work for us to improve our search positioning? Thanks for any advice!
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2007-Aug-28 23:23
Unfortunately, most of your happy customers are not very likely to be willing to help. Perhaps a better strategy would be to have a highly-optimized SEO WordPress blog on your own domain where you can grow you own niche network.
The power of social networking in this manner is huge. Few understand it at this point. The search engines favor pure information sites over commercial sites in the natural listings.
By having your own information only blog with excellent networking built in you are likely to be able to regain your position in the search engines and also drive new free traffic through the growing spider of social networking. Basically, you do with your blog what you currently do with your newsletter: build a relationship with current on future buyers.
It appears that your thought was to increase organic position by linking. That is a good strategy provided the links are relevant. Most of your customers may not have related sites so the value of those links would be limited.
Positive reviews definitely increase conversions so that can also bring you new business. Whether those are counted in link value is outside my current specialized knowledge.
For a more organized link strategy you might consider implementing an affiliate program. I know someone who specializes in setting up such programs and recruiting and training effective affiliates. I can provide his contact information if you would like to send me a PM here. I have run across his clients at SEM meetings and they have volunteered that they are well pleased with his work.
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pwcarguy
Joined: Jul 27, 2007
# Posts: 51
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Posted: 2007-Aug-29 00:09
Pay close attention to the sites that are listed ahead of you, specifically the ones that offer content similar to your own. Look at the sites that are linking to these "competitors". Look at the content they are offering. While SEO "tricks" exist, most of the stable sites do not engage in rocket science to list well.
You mentioned 900 pages. Evaluate your site structure and logs, and make sure that the site is being crawled effectively. Are these pages ever updated?
We get tons of positive emails from super-satisfied customers
If you aren't doing so already, post those emails on your website (anonymized, of course), especially the ones that mention your company and products (keywords) by name. Tons of emails mean fresh content.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2007-Aug-30 05:44
I agree with your tips pwcarguy; however, the best testimonials are not anonymous. They lack credibility and are not nearly as strong as those from people willing to at least use their names. (I would not post email addresses though - too much spam.)
There is some additional information about using testimonials in the notes in the second post at Designing Web Sites for Higher Sales.
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pwcarguy
Joined: Jul 27, 2007
# Posts: 51
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Posted: 2007-Aug-31 05:07
flyingrose is, of course, correct. I agree 100% about using names.
I should have been clearer. What I meant was that it is a very bad idea to post individualized details that could be contained in the emails (i.e. email address, company, address).
In other words, don't copy and paste emails straight to the site.
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flyingrose
Staff
Joined: Oct 30, 2003
# Posts: 3361
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Posted: 2007-Aug-31 08:00
True. Personal communications should never be posted without prior permission. I would even verify that anyone writing a review or testimonial approve posting it unless they entered into a system where that is obviously going to happen.
I just received an email from Google Checkout that appeared to be a follow-up survey but clearly stated that whatever was typed into it would be posted online. That is one way to solicit testimonials.
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