It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I see the point, especially since a fair number of your visitors will have come to your site from the page to which you are linking!

Once people are ON your site, you will best hold on to them by providing the information or experience they are seeking, not by taking up space with a "kinda testimonial."

As you say, you could lose visitors this way, and I think that you'd be likely to lose more than you would gain...

Just my opinion, though.

Your reply is right on the button, and I agree with it - however what made me think about this concept was that one of the Live classes we offer is all about utilizing a website and the internet to do nationwide mortgage brokering/lending ... internet orgination ... is what it's called in the mortgage loan industry. Therefore the point, "See WE can get us to #1 ... do you think that was LUCK? Of course not, sign up and we'll show you how to do it!"

Actually I think possibly my own pride may have the best of me, since I don't know anybody who knows anybody, who's #1 in both Google and Yahoo! on more than a half dozen mortgage industry key word/phrases ... so I'm guess I'm merely pleased we can do it, and therefore show others how, as well. But thanks for your thoughts pal.

I would definitely use it as a sales tactic! Even if the visitors are coming from the first page, they're only coming from one of those terms -- rankings for several is impressive (we use screenshots as part of our portfolio :-) )

I guess it can't really help your rankings too much if you're already on the first page, but I would be curious to know if it has any affect on terms you don't rank as high on to increase rankings...you would just have to take care not to give away your business in that technique!

Keep us updated on the results if you can tell if it helps or hurts in any way!