A Page for Each Brand You Carry or Install

Searched by brand, answered with a logo

A customer who has already decided on a product searches for the brand and the name of their town. They want to know who sells it nearby, whether it is in stock and who will look after it.

Your site has the answer, in a sense. There is a row of brand logos at the bottom of the home page.

The logos are images, so search engines read little from them. Some link to the manufacturers' own sites, sending the visitor away. None of them says what you actually stock.

So the search shows a competitor's page instead, or the manufacturer's dealer list, where you are one name among several.

What a brand page answers

• Whether you are authorised to sell or install the brand.
• Which models you keep in stock and which you order in.
• What can be seen or tried before buying.
• Who handles warranty claims, you or the manufacturer.
• Service and parts after the sale.
• Prices or price ranges, and how long orders take.

The fourth is the one people search for months later, when something goes wrong. A page saying you handle warranty claims for the brand is a reason to buy from you rather than online.

Why brand searches deserve a page

Someone searching a brand name with a town has done most of their deciding. They are choosing where to buy, not what to buy.

That is a more valuable visitor than one searching the general category, and fewer businesses are competing for the search.

A page about the brand, at your location, is exactly what that search is looking for. A home page that mentions the brand once, in the file name of a logo, is not.

Logos are not content

A logo tells a visitor the brand is involved somehow. It does not say whether you sell it, install it, repair it or once did.

Keep the logos if the manufacturer allows it, but make each one link to your own page about that brand rather than to the manufacturer's site.

Use the logo on the brand page too, beside a heading that says it in words: the brand, what it is, and your town.

Your words, not the manufacturer's

The easy route is to paste the manufacturer's descriptions. That produces a page identical to hundreds of others and answers none of the local questions.

Write instead what your staff say at the counter: why you carry this brand, who it suits, how it compares with the others you stock, and what customers ask about most.

Two or three short paragraphs in your own voice are worth more than a page of copied specifications.

A worked example

A kayak shop on the harbour road of a coastal town sells sea kayaks, recreational kayaks, paddles and safety gear, with three main kayak brands and a few smaller ones.

Its home page showed the three logos, each linking to the manufacturer's website. Every week staff took calls from people asking whether a particular model was in, or whether the shop could do warranty work on a boat bought elsewhere.

One manufacturer's dealer locator listed the shop with a link to its home page, which said nothing about that brand.

The shop wrote a page for each main brand with its most experienced salesperson: the models kept in stock, which could be tried at the monthly demo evenings, warranty handled in the shop, and repairs.

The logos now link to those pages, and the manufacturer changed its dealer link to point at the right one.

Say exactly what the relationship is

Authorised dealer, authorised installer, service centre and we can order it are four different promises. Use the one that is true.

Claiming authorisation you do not have misleads customers and can bring a letter from the manufacturer. Servicing a brand you do not sell is worth saying, in exactly those words.

If the manufacturer publishes rules for dealers on using its name and logo, follow them. Most are straightforward.

Warranty and service

This is the section most brand pages leave out and most customers need.

Say who handles a claim, what the customer should bring, how long repairs usually take and whether you lend anything in the meantime.

If you service the brand regardless of where it was bought, say so. It brings in people who bought online and later found they needed someone local.

The dealer locator link

Most manufacturers list their dealers on their own sites, and many link to each dealer's website.

Ask them to link to your page for their brand rather than to your home page. Someone clicking through from a manufacturer's site wants that brand, and should land on it.

Check the listing while you are there. Old addresses and phone numbers on dealer lists are common, and nobody tells the dealer.

When a brand is dropped

Brands come and go. When you stop carrying one, do not delete its page.

People will search for it for years, for parts, service or warranty questions. Update the page to say you no longer sell the brand, what you carry instead, and whether you still service it.

A page that answers honestly keeps the visitor. A missing page sends them elsewhere.

The counter-case

A dealer that carries a single brand does not need separate brand pages, since the whole site is about that brand.

A shop with hundreds of brands, such as a hardware store, is better organised by product category, with brand pages only for the few that people seek out by name.

A trade that installs whatever the customer chooses may need just one page listing the brands it installs and services.

For a business with a handful of main brands, though, a short page for each is one of the most useful pages it can write.

The order to write them in

1. List the brands customers ask about by name.
2. Pick the three to six that matter most.
3. Interview the person who sells them best.
4. State your exact relationship with each brand.
5. Explain warranty and service in plain words.
6. Point the logos at your own pages.
7. Ask manufacturers to update their dealer links.

Step three is the one that makes the pages worth reading. The person who sells a brand every day knows why customers choose it, what worries them and which question comes next.

Getting that knowledge onto the site is covered in writing down what your best salesperson says.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.