Latest Trends in the Industrial Marketplace: Mirror Sites

Are you trying to track your conversions on your marketing programs?
The latest solution offered by numerous industrial directories is a mirrored site. The mirrored site would be set up on the directory’s domain name, then all of the links currently listed in the directory will be redirected to the mirrored site instead of the original domain name. The purpose of this mirrored site then is to:

• Track the contact form, rfq and other online requests that are coming from the directory.
• And put in new contact phone numbers that have a recording service that, again, can be tracked as conversions from the directory.

This sounds appealing and it would be an easy way to determine if your program with the directory is worth the investment, but…

Here are some things you should think about:

• The website is duplicated and can be indexed by the search engines. This means you can be penalized for your own content in the search engines. Google, Yahoo and MSN do not know which website is the original and will dump either site. If your original website is penalized – there goes all your hardwork and future customers.
• Once you give approval for another company to make a copy of your website you no longer have control over the content. Who owns the content on each page? Who owns the requests and contact information of those converting on the mirrored site? You can’t promise your customers privacy because a third party is involved. Security for an online user is important. Don’t break the trust of your visitors; new can travel fast.
• Page Rank Alert! If the urls from the directory are redirected to a mirrored site, you just redirected your Page Rank! The rank from the directory is no longer being transfered to your site. Your page rank may drop. This helps you gain higher visibility in the search engines and it takes a lot of effort to build this rank. Do not ruin it without thinking!

Tracking the conversions or trying to find a way to measure your investment with these industrial directories would be great. But DO NOT damage the progress you are making on your current website. Sometimes you need to have faith or find other ways of measuring your investment.

Our theory: Industrial Directories are great, because you shouldn’t always have all your eggs in one basket.

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