Question to SEO offline consultants.
One of my clients (industrial client), has decided to cut back on some marketing they're doing with some big industrial directories, to shift that money over towards my work and increase their adwords budget (which they're doing well at).
Yesterday we were on a conference call with the directory who (of course) isn't taking the change happily, and they're trying to give them "extras" to keep them spending (We're talking $14K a year... from their stats on the call, I figured out that they're spending over $21 per VISIT to the website, with only some of them actually ordering).
So - one of these things the rep is trying to convince them on is to give them a "mirror". Yes, it's a site mirror (and yes, I know that the engines don't like mirrors).
Their supposed purpose of it, is to "monitor calls" and emails for "quality assurance" etc. (My guess, is they just want to see what's going on and how they can profit from it... but I digress). Even my client questionned the rep as to "what" they would do with the data, and the rep's answer was, "well we send it to you". (Yeah, and you don't do anything else with it? uh huh.).
Anyway - I brought to the rep's attention the aspect that mirroring is a NO NO in the engines because the rep stressed about having an "exact replica" of the site, that no one would even know they're on the mirror. (I've got alarm bells going off in my head here, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'm not liking this from a business owner's aspect).
The rep had no SEO knowledge (kept bragging about stupid stuff I won't get into here - I have their directory site outranked organically but they said they're ranking great LOL) - and said that the mirror problems were unfamiliar, and why didn't others have issue with it? (Yeah, not everyone is an seo expert).
So a few minutes ago I get this email from the rep (cc'd me, to my client) stressing how they'd like to do this "mirror" and how the "guys in NY know what they're doing" and that its "blocked from the search engines" so they won't know that its a mirror.
Okay. So is there a wierd thing with this or is it just me?
What is the POINT of a mirrored site... if the traffic goes straight to the main site ANYWAY?
I understand that the site could potentially be blocked from the search engines, but then how would people GET to it, if they are??
And if they're "mirroring" by taking the original site and directing it to the mirror... why am I doing SEO for them??
Anyone think I'm missing something here?
Yes, I questionned back, but haven't had an answer yet, and I thought I'd throw it to you guys.
Thoughts?
Am I right to advise my client NOT to go ahead with this?
Amber
Amber Jalink, Founder http://www.dime-co.com
WSO - Create Native Apps - Prelaunch Announcement
Amber Jalink, Founder http://www.dime-co.com
WSO - Create Native Apps - Prelaunch Announcement
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