McLaren Books Ahoy! SEO on webSEOlive

McLaren Books, one of the UK’s leading bookdealers in maritime & nautical rare books based just outside Glasgow, has commissioned webSEOlive to not just design a new website and optimise their online presence, but create a complete solution to the almost defunct PBFA Book Management System (BMS) database that will not involve annual license fees in late Spring 2010.

webSEOlive has had a long-running association with the rare & secondhand book-trade. Eight years ago Samantha Dunham used to work for Stocklight as their Web Marketing Manager, for the rare book website of Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books and Bloomsbury Auctions; by the sheerest bloody fluke, webSEOlive’s Roddy Newlands also works for Bloomsbury Auctions, London’s leading auction house in works on paper (such as books), where he has been, staggeringly, since 1995 – 13 years of getting to know & understanding the special needs of bookdealers…

Understanding the Needs of a Fine & Ancient Trade

With such a distinguished pedigree, webSEOlive feels it has a certain “feel” for the needs of this fine & ancient trade, and an awareness of what tools it has at its disposal to cope in this world of blogging, tweeting, digging and stumbling. Despite the first few pallid shoots of economic recovery poking through, frugality still rules and many small businesses are turning more & more to the internet as their primary means of marketing.

An Online Presence Cutting Down on Commission Fees

Online presence has become increasingly important in a competitive market, and while sites such as ABE and eBay provide a useful facility for reaching & selling, they often do so with a hefty commission. This is where a good, optimised website is crucial, particularly for booksellers with an area of specialisation, or looking to sell at the high end of the market; the ability to be placed on Page 1 of Google above ABE results allows you to sell and foster relationships without paying commission.

For this reason we are proud to announce not just our first book dealer client in McLaren Books, but that we are now looking to offer a variety of customisable solutions tailored for bookdealers, which can be completely tailored according to your short- & long-term business needs. We can not only redesign and build your website from scratch but can work on the optimisation/restructuring of a pre-existing website to dramatically improve page-ranking.

We can also help set up feeds to automatically transfer your stock details onto the main bookselling portals such as ABE and Ilab-Lila. For those interested in the business potential of social networking, and bored of Stephen Fry’s twitterings, we can also provide Twitter profiles for your business so you can Tweet yourself, as well as creating/optimising your Facebook page.

Website Build + Book Catalogue Database & EPOS in 1

Here’s an example of the array of features that we can offer book dealers seeking to optimise their presence online without any annual license fees being incurred:

Website redesign
Ecommerce Content & Customer Management System (so that you no longer have to pay for your website to be updated and have just 1 database that runs your book cataloguing database, online and offline store pos)
The facility to add or edit stock items offline
Zoom-in function for online stock images
Online/Electronic Point-of-Sale to allow 3rd party payment by all card types: for example – Secure Trading, PayPal, Google Checkout, etc.
“Special Offers” options
Gift Certificates
The facility to create PDF catalogues with covers for online or print production
The ability to display Flip Book Searchable Catalogues
An integrated blog allowing you to create posts about book fairs, particular books, etc which are placed straight into Google and allows your “subscribers” to receive automatic feeds/updates without you having to do anything.
An XML feed to automatically update stock items onto Google’s Merchant index, preferably with images
Multiple feeds that export stock entries into ABE, eBay, Amazon and similar sites
An easy Stock & Customer List Import/Export in MS Excel (or similar) format

Accounting

Orders tracking modules
Margin & Inventory reports
Sage & QuickBooks integration
“Best buyer” lists, end-of-year reports, &c.
Print design for label and stock detail printing, invoices, settlement statement,

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO copywriting training
Backlinking SEO campaign programmes
Twitter & Facebook account creation allowing people to come to your business from these social networking sites (and other if wished) with full auto-publishing features to these sites from your blog to keep these social network sites updated without duplicating your workload

Newsletter Distribution