SEO Competition - win £500....

[Jan Smith]

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Hi everyone.
We're a new Merchant www.click4gap.co.uk (so apologies if this posting isn't in the correct forum) and would like to let you all know about us, our programme and our affiliate SEO Competion.

Firstly my names Jan and I'm one of the partners in the business.

We're running an SEO competition where a prize of £500 will be awarded to the first affiliate who can reach the first position on http://www.google.co.uk with the search term 'gap insurance' and remain at the first position for one month. (for more details see our programme at Affiliate Future).

This is a realistic opportunity as Gap Insurance really hasn't been exploited on the search engines at all.

I won't bore you all too much about Gap Insurance itself, theres loads of details on our site www.click4gap.co.uk and our programme at Affiliate Future. In brief though, it's a Motor Insurance policy that compliments, rather than competes, with Comprehensive Motor Insurance. Return to Invoice Gap Insurance pays the difference between your cars insurance valuation and the amount you originally paid if it's stolen or an insurance write-off. We pay up to £25,000 per claim.

Our customers, on average, save 75% on the the premium the dealers have to charge. Add to this the possibility of cars depreciating by up to 60% over three years you can understand why sales are increasing exponentially.

Our background is we've been providing the policies off-line for about 20 years, last year we dipped our toes in the water on-line and have been blown away by the growth of sales.

Now it's all about attracting as many visitors to the site as we can. We have the support of Autotrader and Whatcar but I really believe that working with affiliates is the way forward.

I'll end where I started, which is we're new to the affiliate market. So if any of you would like to contact me directly with your views on how to make our programme work better for you, feel free (but be gentle)

Great forum!

Jan Smith

[deano6410]

Hi Jan,

With regards to your SEO competition:

This is a realistic opportunity as Gap Insurance really hasn't been exploited on the search engines at all.

That may be the case, but anyone who aims to start a site to try and rank number one in google should bear in mind it takes an average of 9 months in google to be released from the sandbox. Even once you are out you will be competing with some major players.

e.g the site in 6th place for "Gap insurance" = www.gap-insurance.com

They are Dmoz listed, have over 830 strong backlinks and are well optimised. Getting higher than that site would take some doing, but even if you manage that you will still be competing with such small sites as:

AutoTrader
Mercedes Benz
Audi

However, for current authorities on this area I am sure it could be possible. Best of luck anyway.

[Jan Smith]

Thanks, value your comments... (told you we were new).

We're in the process of optimising the site ourselves and, although I'm no authority, I'm reliably informed that strong backlinks are a big part of the process. So we'll be doing everything we can to help the process.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Jan

[paulatukcamera]

Looking at the top positions for "gap insurance"

http://www.audi.co.uk/finance/gap_insurance.jsp PR3
http://www.carpages.co.uk/info/gapinsurance.asp PR3
http://www2.mercedes-benz.co.uk/cont...Insurance.html PR4
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/CARS/motoring/ins/in-6.jsp PR4
http://www.gap-insurance.com/ PR6
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/finance/gap_insurance PR 4

So the web site that concentrates solely on this topic and whose page ranks higher, (gap-insurance.com) is still outweighed by the big guns!

I would say that a top ten position was the best an affliate could hope for, providing that is, he already has a PR5 or 6 rating on his/her web site. That will narrow the field down a bit!

I could be wrong, but on top of either being in a related industry:
I think you would need about 10 to 20 pages extolling the virtues of Gap insurance plus a load of technical info (the more obscure the better) plus a directory of who's who in the Gap industry to get those relevant inbound links all written in plain vanilla html! Nothing very difficult, just a trifle time consuming!

Paul

[deano6410]

I agree with Paul and have sent more info to Jan via PM.

The 500 pound bonus is a great idea and I applaud her for giving extra incentives, but in this case it would most likely cost over 5k to have even a slim chance of winning the 500 pounds. As a director of a betting company those are not the sort of odds I look for.

However, we shouldnt be critical, Jan has tried to think outside of the box and I wish more merchants did the same.

Dean