The website for Factoring Solutions has fortunately been on page one of Google for the last ten years but one of the downsides is that it makes me a target for others who would like to share in my success by fair means or foul.
A Google search for factoring solutions last week came up with a result in 11th place headed:-
| Benefits Of Using Factoring Solutions | Touch Financial Factoring Solutions – Over 40,000 business in the UK now use factoring and invoice discounting. Read more about how factoring could help your business grow, … |
My website which has been online since 1999 currently starts off with “Factoring and invoice discounting is being used by over 41,000 companies UK wide” and what is more I have used similar phrasing since 2003
It would seem that Touch Financial Support have cleverly manipulated the meta tags on the website in what looks like an attempt to try and lure people there who are actually looking for my Factoring Solutions website
The H1 title on Touch Financial Support’s web page is headed “Benefits of using Factoring Solutions” and as the webbies reading this will know, Google attaches importance to the H1 titles.
Whatever Touch Financial may claim to the contrary “Benefits of using Factoring Solutions” is hardly correct grammatically and the upper case S in Solutions gives the game away anyway.
As if that wasn’t enough there are further references throughout the page as follows:-
The benefits of using Factoring solutions is that cash flow is assured
Businesses seeking Factoring solutions have two options
What’s the cost of using Factoring solutions?
Naturally, one of the key considerations when thinking about Factoring solutions is the amount it will cost
If you believe that Factoring solutions could be for you the next step could be to contact Touch Financial to compare quotes
In my mind there is no doubt what Touch Financial Support are trying to do and whilst it’s quite legal the question that I ask is whether it’s ethical or not.
I know that some of my competitors read this blog so if anyone from Cashflow UK is looking in you might want to have a look at www dot touchfinancial.co.uk/knowledge-centre/guides/factoring/factoring-uk as they have tried the same trick on you with this page deliberately designed to try and lure people searching for Factoring UK as your company used to be called.
I did contact Touch Financial Support asking them if they were finding these tactics fruitful but apart from a standard email thanking me for contacting them they didn’t bother to respond further.
That is a bit cheeky, but I can’t see them getting away with it because Google really does know what it’s doing. You know what they say though, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
But they are getting away with it as far as Google is concerned. Whether or not the page is proving of benefit to Touch Financial Support is another matter entirely and only they will know whether their attempt to divert people looking for me to their own site is proving financially worthwhile or not
It looks like Touch have suffered from the recent Google Penguin algorithm change as they have been unceremoniously dumped from their top spot on Google to the bottom of the second page where no-one will find them.
Google don’t like sites that are over optimized and it looks like Touch as well as another broker who also has web pages designed to attract people actually looking for someone else are the major sufferers of “Penguin” as to be honest no-one looking for factoring on Google will bother looking at the bottom of page 2
It must be karma 🙂