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I recommend the manufacturer creates two separate descriptions - one for themselves, and one for their distributors. Requires more work, but I think is a nice solution to this problem.

John's right, but you need to work out what the search intent for each term is - and presumably pick the one that more closely matches your goals - this video is worth a watch: https://moz.com/blog/google-may-use-your-behavior-to-impact-search-rankings-whiteboard-friday

I would redirect if you can as there may be duplicate content issues if you simply republish without them...

I would also check that your content hasn't been copied by any external sites as well as we neglected this and lost rankings as Google thought we'd nicked the content when we redeveloped our websites. It all worked out OK in the end, we did the DMCA request, and sent letters to the people who copied us asking for removal but it was a pain in the proverbial - and entirely unnecessary if we'd have done this before we switched to a new site hierarchy.

It depends on too many variables to give an accurate answer.

The only way to know for sure is to test. Set a reasonable test budget and run the campaigns.

Thank you!

Hi,

I'm looking into setting up an affiliate programme (as an advertiser). The company offers commercial mortgages for a UK market only. I was wondering if you had any experience with any UK affiliate platforms and had any recommendations?

I want to test the water with a platform first as we don't really know whether it will work for us or not.

We're looking at it for lead generation. Potentially offering payment on a completed mortgage or a lower payment per lead. I think it may be worthwhile offering both options. I'll have to work out the model, but we can make it work nicely for the publisher, I think.

Thanks,

Amelia

We do this on a monthly basis with another company (a former employee who moved to a different company, there's synergy in what both companies offer). So far (and we've been doing it for just over a year) we haven't had any problems with doing this.

We also do guest blogging without reciprocal relationship.

I think it works so long as there are clear, demonstrable reasons for doing so - like I say we do this with a company that is not in direct competition with us but does have synergy with what we offer so we're able to provide expertise in our area for their visitors and vice versa. I think it adds value for our visitors and theirs.

Hope this helps

EGOL - you always have something brilliant to say. I salute you!

Toby - you could pay a fortune for advice like EGOL has just given you for free, I really hope you take it on board.

Thank you.

It does help no end. Shows that I'm on a fools errand! Thank you we could have wasted hours trying to fix the unfixable!!!

No worries! I'm grateful for your response

The conversion tracking works.

It's when I 'Fetch and Render' as Google in webmaster tools that I get a problem.

The Google adwords tracking pixel is blocked (apparently). As far as I know the pixel has been installed correctly. There are no errors with conversion tracking.

I just want it to be 'complete' instead of 'Partial' - I hope that makes sense?

The tracking is on every page of www.commercialtrust.co.uk.

Thanks,

Amelia

Hi,

Whenever I use Fetch and Render in Webmaster tools I always get 'Partial' and a list of problems...

The blocked stuff is the Google ad conversion tracking pixel... Does anyone know what to do?

I've so far ignored this problem, but would like it fixed as I like everything to be 'perfect'...

The devs are looking at it, but I wondered if anyone had a workaround or the answer!

Thanks,

Ameia

Yes, making the links nofollow should be implemented.

BUT... I will say that outgoing links are not generally a bad thing, unless that's all there is to the site. If all you're doing is publishing affiliate links without any content then I wouldn't expect to give up your day job any time soon to retire to the Bahamas... Affiliate sites that do well, do well because the people running them provide decent content and add value.

Just my twopenneth... I am not suggesting that this is your plan, just that that may be the reason you've heard that outgoing links are 'bad' for SEO.

In fact, Google is more likely to recrawl more often if the site is both easy to crawl and is not a dead-end (in other words a site with no links would probably not be crawled very frequently), so it could be argued that outgoing links are a good thing.

Personally, I would use magento over wordpress - it's more secure and less likely to get hacked.

I hope this makes sense! Good luck with your venture.

we don't do the hard sell

If I read that on your website, I would be a lot more likely to call.  This is why I would be an email person.  I want to avoid this.

Would you believe it though??? I wonder how many people would... I guess its worth testing!!! I'll talk to the team and see what they think. Thank you!

Unless we know the customer's financial history we can't offer fair and reasonable advice

If you tell me this before you start asking I am will be more comfortable about providing it.  You probably do this now.

hmmm... I honestly don't know. The sales teams do build a rapport with the customer over the phone, which helps I think. I'd need to see their 'script' (they don't have scripts as such, more like checklist to ensure they cover the regulatory/legal requirements) to know for sure.

Thanks again for the input - I always look forward to your advice.

Hi Egol

With regards to Financial services companies asking for personal information - we need that in order to offer advice. Unless we know the customer's financial history we can't offer fair and reasonable advice - and to suggest a mortgage product without knowing this would be irresponsible.

As for if you just want to ask a few questions - again, it depends on how detailed the answers need to be - 'can you get me a mortgage?' is one question which seems simple enough, but has a different answer depending on who's asking it!

We provide BTL mortgages (for landlords), which aren't usually regulated, but our company is regulated so we still comply with regulations because that's the right thing to do. It means that we have to provide personalised advice, which means asking questions!

So, yes I get what you're saying but the questions are there for a reason. However, I think you raise a really valid point about pushy sales. Our sales team aren't pushy (it could be argued they're not pushy enough....), but the questions they ask are necessary.

Thank you, you have given me food for thought. I just need to find a way of showing that we don't do the hard sell...

We had live chat previously - it didn't really work for us to be honest. Hardly anyone ever used it. That was two years ago.

I get what you're saying about hating calling - I hate calling too, but we get better conversion from calls so my personal preference is irrelevant really! I do think though that someone who makes a call rather than fills in the contact form may be more committed and therefore that's the reason calls are better.

We have to speak to the customer over the phone anyway in order to advise them, so a phone call is inevitable.

Hi Patrick,

I can't A/B test the page for calls as we're not currently using call tracking (and TBH I don't think we'll be allowed the budget for that). We do have separate numbers for different channels (PPC, SEO, Referral websites etc) but it starts to get complicated to then add another layer, which is the only way I can think this could work. Perhaps I'm missing something though?

Our site is fully responsive and Click to call is already utilised. I have recently introduced a click to call button on the quote pages... I am thinking of widening this to other landing pages too.

I wish I could use phone tracking - I think that way we could optimise our PPC campaign for calls rather than online forms - it seems to me that as we've optimised for more online enquiries (our current only conversion tracked by Adwords) we've lost calls (but gained overall in terms of lead volume). I think though that the budget will not be released for this - I tried around 2 years ago and was unsuccessful. Though it may be worth another crack...

Thanks for your tips!

Thank you Tony,

Unfortunately we have to be really careful about making promises because of our industry regulator.  I can't even put 'We can help' - It would have to be 'We may be able to help' - which loses punch! This is a real problem for us (but also our competitors) and one that frustrates the hell out of me!

I really like your phone icon idea - that's something I will recommend to the team.

Thank you again for these tips.

Thank you Alick - yes we are doing this already... Not with any great success TBH. The problem we have is the main PPC campaign cannibalises the (newer) mobile one. Though we're still at very early stages of it and I'm sure improvements can be made!

As for meta descriptions, I try to fit the phone number in there if I can, and have done so since we launched the site. I haven't been using a separate phone number for this (as opposed to our usual 'SEO' number I mean) so it's not tracked. I therefore, don't know how effective it is.

Great tips, thank you!

Amelia

Just that really - we're getting on average around 80% online enquiries, and 15% calls. Calls convert better so would prefer calls. What steps would you put in place to increase calls?

Ours is a lead generation site - we're a mortgage broker.

So far we have a click to call button on the quote page which loads on mobile devices and doesn't display when the call centre is shut.

We get traffic from organic and PPC.

I'm trying to come up with a bit of a plan to address this.

Thanks,

Amelia