OK... i've asked similar things here before, and was pointed int eh right direction (thanks, Firehed). Since then, i've grown, i've learned. I'm stumped again. I've got a client (www.cars.com.na) that is trying to bring his conversions up. We did major improvements to the site already, approximately 10-folding his conversions. We did extensive tracking on usage (using google analytics and other tools) to find layouts that work, click patterns, etc. Now we're getting to SEO. I am still new in the field of SEO, but i'v ehad my bit of success. I've already made vast improvements over older versions of the site, etc. The issue i'm having is the following: The primary competitor is a spammer. There's no nice way of putting this. The inbound links he gets to his own site as well as to his clients' sites are from pharmaceuticals sites, MP3 sites, etc, often in a site-wide footer. I've run IP lookups, etc on him, and i know for a fact that the servers he's running on are registered to a person affiliated with (for starters) a certain MyCanadianPharmacy. All of this leads me to a difficulty. Trying to play a very clean game here, i am having an extremely hard time finding people willing to link (especially in the motoring industry and in the area) are mostly Competitors. Especially those with authority (wheels24 South africa, for example). I am aware of the fact that on-site SEO could still be streamlined, and i am working on that. However, given that the inbound links that the competitor has outnumber my client's about 10:1, it's tough for me to make a recommendation that has any real impact, besides "Build links". My client's site used to have a news section on it, which would be ideal for linkbaiting. However, we took it off because it clearly improved the conversion rate on the vehicle sales, which is what my client makes money on. According to Alexa, we are raking in substantially more traffic than the competitor, with my client's site being ranked higher (regionally) than all other sites affiliated with the country. However, we are guessing that the competitor's conversions are higher (my client's clients confirm this) because of the google rank he's getting. A Substantial amount of this would be from the spammy links that he has coming to his and his clients' sites... Any advice? Any ideas? Help.
I am aware of this, but thanks. The issue is that we had text on the site, and conversions went up when we took it off. so we took it off...
well, you can put text to pages where it doesn't affect conversion directly. if you don't want to place text on the page of the single car, maybe you can make a directory with all car brands and models and use these pages as landing pages and then guide the user to your actual conversion page.
tried that, unfortunately... It's a difficult one, this... the competitor has spammed inbound links. On-site SEO is still being tweaked a bit, but the major issue we have is (in my experience) inbound linking. I suggested to my client to start blogging (recommended, more like it), in order to attract more links. I've (as a matter of fact) suggested a couple of things that i would do (split cars, bikes, boats completely, as that leaves options for more specific SEO work). The biggest issue to my client is his conversions, though. If you have any ideas how to improve that, please... hit me with them...
