One of the things that we’ve implemented with Tradebank is an inbound linking program… they refer to it as “WebLinks”… Whatever you want to call it the results are the same.

If you have regular visitors to your site, having them post links TO your site on throughout the internet will help your ranking. There are certain exceptions… this is one area where there can be too much of a good thing… but that would likely only happen if you were indeed trying to cheat the system. The search engines are smart… they’ll figure that out. But we aren’t focusing on “cheating” here… we want to focus on how inbound linking can play a part in your SEO program.

Tradebank leverages the Barter System to increase their exposure on the Internet.

So how can inbound linking work for you? Well, we can help with that. First off, there is value to links. So if you really want people to link to your site you need to find something of value to give for those links. Often times it can simply be a link in return. Be careful though of getting involved with “link exchanges”… sites that contain thousands of links, but no real content. Those fall into the “too much of a good thing” category.

Once you have links, you’ll want to start tracking them. There are a number of analytics tools out there that can get you started (and of course, when we build an inbound linking program we provide that data to you). If you custom build your web app (like we did with Tradebank) then the link clicks should be counted for you. But you can also just watch your log files for “referrals” to determine where your traffic is coming from.

No matter how you track the results though, getting links out there will help your site in the organic rankings, as well as build your pagerank.

Have questions…? Just blip us an email (link to the right or below) and we’ll be glad to help however we can.

Barter, using FeO, is Smarter…

Barter is Smarter with Tradebank

Tradebank has been a client for well over a decade. The relationship with Tradebank began in 1997 when FeO became a client of Tradebank. Since then we have helped Tradebank develop an entire business application that handles all of their customer interaction on the web.

With over a million lines of code Tradebank’s CRM system (known as myTradebank) is one of the largest applications that we manage. We integrate this application into Tradebank’s online presense, their online client management system, as well as their backoffice accounting and customer management system.

Using this system hundreds of Tradebank associates manage tens of thousands of customers all over the United States and Canada. Some of the highlights include:

• Online payment processing.
• A client locating process that integrates with Google Maps to provide location and direction information that helps clients find one another.
• A client directory listing all clients, their business categories, and contact information.
• An automated matching system that helps identify which clients are most likely to do business with each other.
• A classifieds system that allows clients to list items for sale in the myTradebank application.
• A “message board” that allows all the clients and associates to communicate within the application.