The folks over at Tradebank (the nation’s best barter exchange) took on a fairly daunting task earlier this year. Tradebank, which is based just outside of Atlanta, has independently owned regional offices across the US and Canada. Over the past several years some of these offices started their own websites, with varying degrees of success (and quality). So to help these individuals, each with their own ideas of what a site should do and how it should look, Tradebank created a system that not only allows each of these offices to create their own look but also shares the data that each site creates across the entire system. There are a number of benefits to this:

1. A centralized support system: As all of the offices use the same website administration system it is much easier for Tradebank to support the entire system. And since everyone utilizes the same interface, ideas and techniques can be shared between the offices.
2. Data sharing: The system was designed so that content created by one office can be used by other offices in the system. This reduces the duplication of effort that was happening across the system.
3. One step upgrades: When a new feature is introduced to the system it is available to all the sites in the system. Again, this reduces duplication and opens up new ideas to the entire group.
4. All the social networking links were built as well. Each office now has their own Twitter and Facebook pages so that clients in their region can keep track of each individual office instead of being blasted by updates from all the offices.

Often times when sites for a large company are created like this you will find that they all look the same with only some changes in text or logos. Not so with the system built for Tradebank. This system is highly customizable so that each office can be extremely creative in their designs and content. Take a look…

Tradebank of Greenville:

Tradebank of Charlotte:

Tradebank of Orlando:

There are many more examples, but you can check those out over at the Tradebank website. As you can see though, each office has been able to create their own look, even though the administration system is the same.

This system has helped Tradebank manage the different sites from one location saving them time and effort (and thus money) while giving all of their independent barter exchange owners an advantage over their competition. Stay tuned for even more updates to this system and the individual barter sites.

One of the things that we’ve implemented with Tradebank is an inbound linking program… they refer to it as “WebLinks”… Whatever you want to call it the results are the same.

If you have regular visitors to your site, having them post links TO your site on throughout the internet will help your ranking. There are certain exceptions… this is one area where there can be too much of a good thing… but that would likely only happen if you were indeed trying to cheat the system. The search engines are smart… they’ll figure that out. But we aren’t focusing on “cheating” here… we want to focus on how inbound linking can play a part in your SEO program.

Tradebank leverages the Barter System to increase their exposure on the Internet.

So how can inbound linking work for you? Well, we can help with that. First off, there is value to links. So if you really want people to link to your site you need to find something of value to give for those links. Often times it can simply be a link in return. Be careful though of getting involved with “link exchanges”… sites that contain thousands of links, but no real content. Those fall into the “too much of a good thing” category.

Once you have links, you’ll want to start tracking them. There are a number of analytics tools out there that can get you started (and of course, when we build an inbound linking program we provide that data to you). If you custom build your web app (like we did with Tradebank) then the link clicks should be counted for you. But you can also just watch your log files for “referrals” to determine where your traffic is coming from.

No matter how you track the results though, getting links out there will help your site in the organic rankings, as well as build your pagerank.

Have questions…? Just blip us an email (link to the right or below) and we’ll be glad to help however we can.

Barter, using FeO, is Smarter…

Tradebank has been a client for well over a decade. The relationship with Tradebank began in 1997 when FeO became a client of Tradebank. Since then we have helped Tradebank develop an entire business application that handles all of their customer interaction on the web.

With over a million lines of code Tradebank’s CRM system (known as myTradebank) is one of the largest applications that we manage. We integrate this application into Tradebank’s online presense, their online client management system, as well as their backoffice accounting and customer management system.

Using this system hundreds of Tradebank associates manage tens of thousands of customers all over the United States and Canada. Some of the highlights include:

• Online payment processing.
• A client locating process that integrates with Google Maps to provide location and direction information that helps clients find one another.
• A client directory listing all clients, their business categories, and contact information.
• An automated matching system that helps identify which clients are most likely to do business with each other.
• A classifieds system that allows clients to list items for sale in the myTradebank application.
• A “message board” that allows all the clients and associates to communicate within the application.