Over at SEOMoz, a typically brilliant post is getting some good attention: Ranking for your promo codes. Tom posts some great exapmles that companys are not ranking for there own company name in relation to promo or coupon codes. “My Company promo code,” for example – is your company even in the top ten? Don’t wait, check it out now.
SEOMoz suggests adding a static page to your site with listings of promo codes. While this page might push down some of the affiliate sites and coupon mega-stores out there…it adds another task to your perhaps already full plate. Do you add those coupon codes manually? Write some sort of custom script to pull new codes out of your shopping cart back end to populate the page? And this doesn’t answer the most pressing question: does listing codes on your own site cheapen your brand? A writer at GetElastic Ecommerce Blog talks about this very issue.
To quote:
“You erode trust with the customer and potentially damage your brand. Coupons can cheapen your image, and you condition the customer to expect a discount next time too. They may never pay full price from you again.”
Her basic point is that your customers will be trained to look for these discounts, and perhaps might wait to buy a product that they might otherwise have bought on the spot. She then goes on to reccomend showing the promo box to only those customers coming from an affiliate link or banner.
User MOGmartin at SEOMoz caps the conversation with a great tip:
“About six months back I realised that several affiliates were driving hundreds of transactions per month for ranking for “[our brand] discount code” as a search term.
the domain, “[our brand] discount code.com” was available – registered it, set it up as a thin affiliate, and guess what, we have reduced our affiliate commisions on that term by about 85%.
Total cost to us? $8 for a domain.
Monthly savings? substantial!”
