Customer testimonials and customer profile article guidelines?
-
I want to help people who give testimonials by writing an article about their business including a good quality link. This will be on the site that received the testimonial, possibly linked from an our customers page.
I want to make each customer profile testimonial into a separate page.
I don’t want to compete with the customer who gives the testimonial for their keyword phrase but I do want to boost their page rank if possible.
What would be the best formula for title tag, headline and linking keywords etc?
-
Philip
SEOmoz is a great help for local and in our firm we have a saying we use with every new client. If you only have a little to spend, wait on everything else and let us get local tight for you. We have a local coordinator who stays on top of local and insure we get it right.
On moz there are several who have a ton of Local knowledge and as an associate, Miriam, is invaluable. You can also read Mike Blumenthal, etc. for a ton of data.
Hope it helps, best to you and your clients.
-
Thanks for the thread ! i want to start a page for testimonal in our blog, from sponsors and advertisers and other bloggers !
With their profile and and link to their site ! Can i add the rel=nofollow in the link ?
If they accepted it will be like 100+ Testimonals and links ! Will it be ok. I think mine is something different from the about site. Like review in Google.
Just a page for the Fellow bloggers and get worthy review from them !
-
Hello Robert
First, thanks for taking the time to provide such detailed replies. As you say “experience is a dear teacher”, and yours is much appreciated.
My new plan...
Forget about articles and concentrate on helping local businesses get on local listings like Yelp etc.I wasn’t thinking in terms of bribing people, my plan was to help local businesses in a tight economy when every little helps. I can now see how this could look a bit fishy.
“My concern would be the quid pro quo would cause you problems with Google and Yelp specifically.”The Google seven pack...
“We strive to show them ways to get the reviews put on Google, CitySearch, Yelp, etc. This is because it will help them rank better in local search.”This makes a lot of sense, I'll rethink my plans and try help them get on Yelp etc.
Cautionary: words like "valuable link" are subjective.
I live in Bradford England, many small local businesses have basic websites and make no attempt to optimize them. I've come across several websites with no inbound links at all. These are the people I was hoping to help.
My new plan...
Forget about articles and concentrate on helping local businesses get on local listings like Yelp etc.Thanks once again Robert
Best wishes
Philip. -
There are a couple of things to consider with your approach. First, will it provide you what you are looking for - reviews that matter for the site. First, is having them on the site the best/only place they should be?
With Google, being highly ranked in the seven pack is valuable real estate. Your reviews on the site will not carry any real weight as a review for the purpose of ranking; we have clients who literally have hundreds of reviews on their sites that I am sure bring them business for those that go to the site. We strive to show them ways to get the reviews put on Google, CitySearch, Yelp, etc. This is because it will help them rank better in local search.
If, you want to encourage people to put them on the site, are you going to state that somewhere on the site or will it simply be a reward? (By saying, hey, give us a review and we will put a page up about your company, it is really a bribe.) Not in the worst sense obviously, but in the literal. My concern would be the quid pro quo would cause you problems with Google and Yelp specifically.
The problem lies in giving something to someone and then stating it is not for just good reviews. When you do that, human nature is such that they tend to give better reviews for that because they feel they have to "pay back" the favor.
So, yes to doing it on the site. I would not if it is off the site as above.
Cautionary: words like "valuable link" are subjective. If you give them their own page and the link is from that new page, there will be no value in it in the beginning and likely none going forward. (Obviously, my 'no value' is subjective as well. It won't be a single link from a PA of 50 is my point.)
Phillip, I hope this is helpful and not confusing to you. If it is, let me know and I will continue to respond. One last thing is we are big in local and we have developed good and bad mechanisms to get reviews; experience is a dear teacher.
Best to you in your endeavours, (I think that's the Brit spelling;)
Robert Fisher
-
Hello Robert
Thanks for the help, sorry about the confusion.I want to make a win win situation for people who provide testimonials.
If you give me a testimonial, I write an article about you and link to your website.
I'm not talking about Yelp etc. just my own website (or a site I make for my customer).
I hope the graphic below makes it a bit more understandable.
-
Phillip, I am not sure others will be confused, but I am. This is what I hear you saying:
You have a site Company1.com that is a client.
Whoever gave the testimonial ("review" is what I think you mean) for a given company would get something written up on that companies website profiling the reviewing company. So, they give a review on Company 1 from their site JoetheMortician.com. You will put a page on Company1.com that is about JoetheMortician.com and link from that page to JoetheMortician.
Where did they leave the review? Google+, Yelp, Citysearch, YP, etc.? assuming it was Google and/or possibly Yelp, you could be creating a penalty situation for your client (I am assuming your client is Company1.com). You are inducing people to leave reviews it would appear.
Next, I think a blog post would be just as helpful with a link as a page. The issue with the page is that if others do not link to it, it won't have much PA and that link won't be helpful. Are you planning to link from a home page (remember each new link dilutes the others) or some other page with PA that is high?
As to title tag: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag,
headline (assuming you mean the H1 and H2 here)http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/on-page-factors and
linking keywords (anchor text) http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/anchor-text
For each of these, you would follow the conventions in the links I have provided. BUT, It would help to have a clearer picture before you go down this road. I would hate to see you wasting time and money otherwise.
Best,
Robert
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Over optimization of Anchor Text | Consequences, Guidelines, Precautions
Hi everyone. I am really worried because of the constant penguin and panda algorithms. I hired two or three SEO agencies and they did some link building for my pages a while ago. And just this time, our rankings dropped almost sitewide some 7-8 positions. I checked our link profile in this site , and we do not seem to have spammy links. I admit that we do have some low link quality, such as directories, blog posts, etc. And it seems to have 10-15 links with overoptimized anchor text, such as keyword exact anchor text, etc. I have a couple of questions regarding this matter? - What entitles an overoptimized anchor text? I mean, i can´t control people linking to me out there, and many of them used the product or brand name. Added to the fact that my former agency used article marketing links with exact keyword. - If i "overoptimized" my anchor text, what is the best solution?, I could change some anchor text by asking some people. Should i disavow, delete? What is your best bet here? - What is (May 27 2013) best practice for anchor text or link referall. I know it will keep changing, but i want to engage in the right practice right now. should link with www.domain.com/keywordpage.html, or how would one look natural? -I saw some recent links that are really strange to me. Could the competition be sending me some bad links in order to augment the situation. Is that something normal?, it sounds strange to me. Thanks for your valuable advice. I know many people are frustrated with these penalties and hits. Because there are still many sites with Mass EMDs, 3-page content, flash sites, that are ranking better than a high quality and engaging one. Any resource is more than welcome to recover from these dropped rankings. Regards,
Link Building | | JesusD0 -
Reposting my articles on other blogs - good or bad?
Hi there! Our blog is full of really good articles on consumer finance topics. Recently we established contact with some local media and even government agencies who said they will be happy to repost our articles on their sites. Question: is it ok to repost our articles as they are and link back to us, or shall we rewrite them to make them 100% original? The media doesn't insist on original content, but I'd like to get SEO benefit from it (the sites are really good). If original content gives us more SEO value, we're happy to do it Please advise. P.S. Using rel=canonicals is not an option (it's government websites and some old school media - they are very not tech savvy).
Link Building | | imoney0 -
Guidelines for keyword-targeting and link building?
Hello, Every month, I set a goal of targeting 10 - 15 relevant keywords for my website. I then attempt to boost my site's rankings for these terms through a combination of content writing and white hat, non-paid link building. My question is: Are there general guidelines for keyword-targeting and backlinks? Is it healthy to target 10 - 15 different keywords (or more??) like this per month?
Link Building | | BBEXNinja0 -
Good article distribution services?
Our site has a lot of content we are able to modify/distribute without too much time so I am planning to syndicate some of this using article distribution. Apart from Ezine articles, are there any other article distribution services I should/could consider using? I do know that I should also be focussing most of my resource on building high-quality links through guest blogs etc! However this seems like a relatively quick win. Thanks in advance
Link Building | | GBC0 -
What is Business Profile Listing?
Could you please explain business profile listing and the advantages of it in detail. Can the listing be made in any of the business profile listings websites or to the content related websites. For example, for automotive engines website, can the profile listing be made in any business profile listing or only to automotive related business website. Can you also provide few business profile listing websites with good page rank.
Link Building | | PrasanthMohanachandran0 -
How many nofollow links should we build to have a natural link profile
Hi guys, As with many link builders we have been building lots of dofollow links for our site, so many that mainly our incoming links are dofollow. Some pages have 99.5% dofollow external links which I know is not very natural. In your experience in terms of percentage how much should you have in terms of nofollow external links in your link profile. I noticed SEOMoz has about 12-13% nofollow external links, shall I go with this figure? Thanks guys. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
What are the best article sites to submit to?
Can you submit to more than one? or do they detect that the article has already been posted on another site? Which sites do you usually use for posting articles? Thanks, Storwell
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
How does Google interpret articles or prepositions in languages where it's attached to the (key)word?
Hi, All! This is for any foreign language SEOs where articles or prepostitions such as "the" "to" "in" or anything else are actually part of the word they are modifying and not a separate word, as in English: How does Google understand those words on-page and in anchor text? If you want to optimize for the word "house", and your content/anchor text says "the house" or "in the house" (again, all one word) - what does Google count that as? Does it count toward "house"? Does it count toward "in the house" only? Does it count toward "house" but not as much as if you had just put "house"? I end up sometimes writing slightly grammatically-off content because I want to optimize for the keyphrase - but is that necessary? Obviously different languages might be different, but you can probably project a little from one to the others. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | debi_zyx0