obo said:
Odin, just a business question for you.
What are your thoughts on getting onto the first page of Google. How much have you noticed your business increase when you move up another slot on the google search? Currently viking is 2 slots away from the first search results page on Google. I feel like if Viking got to the first page, business would massively increase.
Would it be worth it to advertise a little more to get your Google slot up? Then once you get it up, pull back on advertising.
Just curious on your thoughts about this.
We've done a little work to move up the ranks, we're on page 2 and even at the bottom of page 1 of some of the keyword search terms. This is with a very modest monthly SEO budget (couple hundred dollars).
To stay on page 1 consistently on an array of keyword terms would probably cost a couple thousand a month, and then you really need to start to look at what is called 'blackhat SEO', or in other terms, having an entire staff of people working on making a 'fake internet' to boost your rank with google. Fake blog posts, fake review sites, etc etc. Of course the fake sites have to look legitimate or else google gets wise. Evil absolutely has a top-notch blackhat SEO firm working for them.
Our marketing firm has explained that you really need to be 'above the fold' (above where you don't have to scroll down) which means search return #1, #2 or #3. I think something like 95%+ of hits go to the first three sites on any keyword search. Something like 50%+ go to the first page. In order to get into the top three spots, we would be looking at launching a massive multi-thousand dollar blackhat SEO campaign.
In other words, we'd be back to the system I described above where we'd have to start selling you cheaper mods with no support in order to save up enough cash, to dump into a blackhat SEO campaign, to boost sales, etc. Again, the guys at Evil are great marketers which is business 101. I think it's a group of frat guys who went to school together for business and marketing that run the site.
I went to school to be an engineer, and so did my wife. So i guess we just focus on what we do best and keep relying on that Viking360 word-of-mouth. Which is why I get really offended when customers come in here and trash our product - especially when they only paid $40 for a DIY kit or that "Steve" guy that came by and trashed us after he paid only $119 for a Thor's Hammer. Dammit, I know Viking360 has room for improvement, but we are seriously light years ahead of the other mod companies.
Our problem right now is price and I'm working behind the scenes to get that lowered by the next holiday season this Fall. But then again, I wonder if price is really our problem if people are seriously paying $300 for a master mod then maybe the problem is exposure. Hard to tell. I figure Viking is probably at best only 5% of the rapidfire market? Just based on the amount of traffic we generate at our site vs. the amount of traffic that is generated at our main competition: evil controllers, gamermodz, gamingmodz, rapidmodz, silentmodz, einsteinmods, lightnincontrollers and all the other 'johnny come lately' sites that have popped up.
I'm just really surprised we don't have more market share just based on our macro software!!! What that tells me is that Viking360 customers are a superior breed that are smart enough to recognize the best when they see it. Everyone else are just sheep following the herd. So for those of you who found us, cheers!
P.S would not mind being sponsored odin???