Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The rule of valued recommendation: Who is of greater value, the competitor or the one who recommended them?
Which camp are you in? Open links out or closed site? No hedging, pick one.
We have a good offering and people will come and buy from us because of that. But if they want to compare our competitors prices and products then let us help them. They will go to google and look anyway, so we just make their life easier and get paid for that.
Doug
I know I am better than my competitors (or at least I keep telling myself that) so if a customer does leave for a competitor they will be back.
No matter how hard you try to contain, but people will always refer from several resources before final decision, be it buying or collecting information. This is the case as with most.
Healthy competition is more fun ;)
Closed site idea sounds like a dark, ugly ghost house ;)
My thinking is that I want to be known as the authority on my subject. So I had demonstrate that I know everyone and everything about my subject. Likewise, I want my visitors to feel like I've helped them. So I want them to have access to the knowledge and resources I'm aware of.
I guess I'm old fashioned.
Which camp are you in?
Open links out for me as well. I have never feared competition at all. Our services only gets better when there are serious competition in our marketplace.
Why? It works.
Linking to competitors is risky and can look unprofessional: "Can't find what you're looking for? Why not try etc" - no! If you can't cater to your customers then make them WORK to go somewhere else - don't help them - make it difficult (unless you're being paid to link to them).
I just think that if I've spent all this time getting people to a site then I want them to leave: a) when they've bought something or b) when they click on a paid link.
In my case everybody knows the competition, so there is little value in providing direct links to them. (Traditional shops do not advertise their competitor next-door, so why should I?)
Hence i am more for having a presence on any site that is part of the industry, or related industry's, regardless of any ranking authority that travels with the links, i am more interested in joe surfer, surfing other sites, and then finding us than the search engines traversing the links.
