Top Position in Google worth a carat or two- Dragons Den

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Top Postion in Google worth a carat or two.

Added Wednesday 30/07/2008

Last night Dragons Den saw a contestent turn down over a quarter of a million pounds of investment in his online diamond business. His pitch was rubbish but the Dragons heads were turned by his claims of being at postion 12 in Google for search term "diamonds".

Clive Billing had been in the diamond trade for over 40 years, his new(ish) website diamondgeezer.com was turning a profit of 3k and he needed the Dragons help.

After a stumbling pitch he finally got the Dragons attention by announcing that he currently holds position 12 in Google for "diamonds" and position 9 for "diamond engagement ring". (as of writing he is nowhere to be found)

The business stank, the name stinks and his track record reeked (he claimed to had lost £1million in the late nineties in a previous online venture), yet still the Dragons were prepared to invest £255,000 in his business.

On the face of it that crazy money, most SEO's know that the majority of users dont even bother navigating to the 2nd page of the search results and even within the top 10 positions there is a huge drop off of traffic after position 4.

However the Dragons eyes lit up when they heard the scale of online business to be done in Diamonds. The market leader "Blue Nile" apparently turns over £300million in online diamond sales. Therefore even a small percentage of that market would reap massive rewards.

Peter Jones, with his experience in online and software markets would have been able to add huge value to this venture and would have had no trouble in moving his website up the rankings, fast.

Anyway it wasn’t to be and Clive decided to go it alone.

Clive, having turned down the Dragons input maybe you will accept some of mine. If you have any aspirations of competing in this market your website needs a complete overhaul. The design looks cheap and the navigation is appalling. Give me a call, I would happy to offer some free advice. I have just finished judging some web awards and trust me, your site would have scored poorly.

Peter, if you're out there, you can give me a call too! Looks like PJ Media Solutions needs a bit of work ;-) We would be an excellent choice of Web Development partner and we can also help with SEO!