What do Shoes, customer service and Cooking have to do with SEO
This is more of a customer service story than an SEO story but the link juice, link bait and social medial buzz that resulted from this one act of great customer service resulted in page rank that money simply can’t buy.
Great work Zappo for providing great customer service. For the SEO freaks out there that measure success by the amount of Snot on the Google toolbar lets have a look at what this one remarkable act of service and compassion did for page rank.
First the Story
A lady purchased 7 pairs of shoes for her terminally ill mother from www.zappos.com of which only 2 pairs actually fitted. Zappo have a free 15 day return policy. They will pay for the shipping but the only condition is that you have to take the goods to a UPS depot. The lady intended to take Zappo up on the return policy, however her mother had just been hospitalised and later died. When Zappos heard what happened they sent a UPS vehicle to pick up the shoes at no cost to the lady and the next day sent a bouquet of flowers.
This lady just happened to be a prominent blogger who was so touched by this heart felt act of kindness that she wrote a blog called “I heart Zappo’s – I really do”
Here is what happened to links
First up – I liked it so much I linked to both Zappo’s and the Blog post.
The Blog Post links to Zappos with the text
“IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.”
She writes a cooking blog so I am tipping that she is not an SEO expert. Keywords near the link are “buy shoes online”
Zappo ranks number 1 in Google for the keyword “Buy Shoes Online” so this link only helps strengthen their position and reinforce their authority as a place to “buy shoes online”.
The blog post had 196 positive comments and 79 links from other prominent bloggers, news sites, social media analysts and people that just though it was a great story.
Who are the SEO winners here
- the blog for receiving 79 links gets a page rank boost
- zappo get the benefit of that page rank boost via the link from the blog but most importantly they get a positive PR story that money just can’t buy
There is a lesson in this for all of us.
4 Responses to “What do Shoes, customer service and Cooking have to do with SEO”
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About the Authors
The world does not need another search engine marketing blog to tell us when Matt Cutts has a haircut or to regurgitate news that has just been posted on searchengineland.com. We will attempt to provide genuine commentary and opinion on how we see search today and where it is going in the future. I am the CEO of e-channel and my team and I will cover SEO and paid search and try to explore the marketing aspects of search rather than the technical. Please post your comments freely.
Frank Grasso, CEO
September 29th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
For every spectacular success story like this this one, there are hundreds of instances where other websites will link to you on a more minor scale.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:05 am
absolutely!! That is the wonderful thing about the internet and the brilliance of page rank as a ranking mechanism. It rewards this kind of behavior because it deserves to be rewarded. The quality of links generated by this one act of kindness is worth so much more than than silly two way / three way links. SMO meets SEO.
December 17th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
This is a really great success story. The greatest thing is that it just happened and that it wasn’t really planned. Zappo reached the success that everybody will talk about them. The lady had a positive ranking and all in all both gained success.
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
yeah its really nice act