What is the feeliing of "Here's where our site can help" text links used for conversions?

[Will-McDermott]

If you have an ecommerce site that is using editorial content on topics related to the site's business model to build organic traffic and draw visitors who might be interested in using the site's services eventually, what is the SEO (page ranking) impact -- as well as the impact on the visitors' perceptions about the reliability of the information on the site -- of using phrases like "Here is where [our site] can help you." in nearly every article. Note: the "our site" text would be linked in each case as a conversion point to one of the site's services pages to get visitors to move from content pages on a site to the sales pages on the site.

Will this have an impact on page rankings? Does it dilute the page's relevance to search engines? Will the content look less authoritative because of the prevalence of these types of links?

What about the same conversion links without the "we can help" text - i.e., more natural-sounding links that stem from the flow of the article but can lead interested visitors deeper into the ecommerce section of the site?

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Will

The only problem I see here is why you are writing these articles in the first place. It's not uncommon for an eCommece site to write helpful articles about problem-solving then offer a solution by adding a link to one of their products or services.

If the article is well written and optimised then it makes sense that if ranked for a particular problem the addition is a link could drive traffic to your money pages.

However, equally valid is you building a reputation for problem-solving without trying to sell at every opportunity. We SEOs post on MOZ, in forums, in our own Facebook groups and other places, but very rarely will you see a direct contextual link back to our services. Building a reputation takes time and effort and it needs to be done gently without feeling the necessity to sell a product or service at any opportunity.

The upshot is that I would temper this activity. Produce genuinely interesting and useful content and your reputation will grow. People will then want to follow you because you offer sound advice. If one in four articles have internal links then cool, but presumably if they are on your site reading your stuff they are aware that you sell as well.

Retail sites can be really bad at this - blog post after blog post just sharing products - complete waste of time, they never rank and only work for email purposes, well you know what - stick them in an email - tell your acolytes but don't clog up the site with tosh.

Anyway that's my spin - if you try and oversell you can end up not selling - people get bored very quickly and a post with buy-me written all over it is doomed to fail.

Cheers Nigel

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

Bottom line, should the opportunity for conversion be readily available at all times? Absolutely! Should you ever flood links across your websites pages for the purpose of increasing the likeliness they will click the link most likely as a result of human error?

Absolutely not, don't do that. I'm probably misinterpreting the question my bad if I am, but just on the off chance I'm clarifying of coarse! I find that you will get tremendously more value than rushing the monetization. Any sales technique that is initially viewed and interpreted to be a sales gimmick, will most likely fail out the gate..

What my sales training taught me when working for a multi million dollar bank that invested thousands into my education of moving their products and services is that selling complete garbage that offers literally nothing can easily be done! (Nothing horrible just credit card insurance haha.)

About 5% of my sales with that bank came from drive by pitches. So incentive wise, I didn't do so hot in the first 3 months. However, Once I learned the true powerhouse/weaponry, the one two punch of sales  was RAPPORT/Rebuttal. Once you refine those 2 skills, It was game on!

On the internet if you master this craft, which most certainly I have not, it is a process that can be entirely automated after much trial and tribulation. MY boy is a Ecig Vape juice vendor, he tells me he actually gets 25% of his sales by literally hitting people up in the chat box when they land on his site. And he gets another 25% from hitting them up AFTER they've made a purchase, which causes many to buy tons more stuff!

In conclusion, gain their trust, get them to humanize you and your products first, sell second. Spam always fail!