Some explanation for non-seo folks: PPC (Pay Per Click) allows you to immediately run ads displayed on selected keyword searches but lasts only while you pay. SEO is more of a long-term investment. You hire an SEO agency and invest for some time by paying their retainer fees unless the web site shows up high enough in search engines to cover SEO bills and ultimately bring solid ROI. There is always an option to invest $5,000/month in PPC and get 1,000 visitors to the site (figures vary depending on the cost per click) or hire a SEO agency for $2,000 and get same 1,000 visits half a year after they start working, or 10,000 visits or 100. That’s all about numbers (read economics).

The economics of SEO is very simple yet fundamental. Here is an example:

Say a client engaged an SEO agency to promote his/her web site. After 6 months of work on the site the SEO agency got to the point when it’s delivering 5,000 visits to the web site per month. The monthly bill from the agency is $2,000. Now check the cost of traffic for those particular industry keywords in Google AdWords. Say it is $5 per click. That means if you were to purchase those 5,000 visits you would be paying $25,000 per month. Granted $2,000 monthly bill from the agency is a very cost-effective marketing.

Change numbers a little bit and you will understand why so many SEO agencies don’t deliver or the contracts get terminated. Say the agency delivers 2,000 visits to the site monthly but the industry is not that competitive. Cost per click in Google AdWords is $0.5 for that particular industry. It means that client could purchase the same number of visits for $1,000, risk-free, no investment. But the $2,000 monthly bill becomes unreasonable.

As you see, this is a very simple yet effective method. Two cooperating parties may quickly determine if their cooperation is beneficial. In order to determine the efficiency of an individual SEO campaign, SEO agencies or their customers have to multiply the number of visits delivered from search engines to the site by the average cost-per-click, which is common for a particular industry. If the ROI on SEO is at least 2 fold more than that of a PPC campaign then everyone may be sure that this contract is mutually beneficial and will last long. Otherwise there is no point in SEO because the client could purchase traffic from Google avoiding making and investment and taking a risk.

While looking thought our monthly performance in Search Engines I noticed some traffic with the following keyword: number 1 web development company. After checking it in Google I noticed that we naturally rank TOP5. WOW – what a funny surprise which we can be proud of (this keyword if of our typical promotion list of course).

If your activity is not very much dependant on time and location and you are not the sole service provider in the area, you certainly need advertising. If not advertising in its pure sense, then at least some efforts to make your business known beyond the circle of your actual clients, their friends and relatives.

There was a time when ads in the local newspaper would spread the word about you to everyone. Then came a time when you needed to bother about radio-coverage, publish a couple of leaflets, and, who knows, may be your city was big enough to have a TV channel.

Today, however, the issue of spreading information is not that simple. The thing is that the pool of information is bottomless. If you want to get your message through to me, for instance, it’s no use trying to do it with conventional advertising techniques. It was 1.5 years ago that I last saw a newspaper; I only occasionally come across a radio broadcast once in a couple of weeks; as for the television, I don’t watch it at all. And it’s not that I’m a snob who doesn’t care about the world around. The thing is that I don’t have time to follow all the information sources. And even if I did watch TV, how could one guess which of the dozens of channels I would pick that day. When there used to be only 3 TV channels, the term “information space” made some sense. But since their number saw an incredible increase, there have appeared numerous, practically isolated information spaces.

It’s true that some people can afford advertising through television, and radio, and newspapers and the Internet, but I’m going to focus on the latter. Just a year ago all you had to do is launch a site describing your services, spend a couple of dollars on Search Engine Optimization and contextual advertising (AdWords and such), and there would be no way for me to go past your message. But if you consider the amount of information digested by today’s users, it becomes quite clear that it is not enough anymore. Seriously, I use search engines by far less than I used to. And I haven’t been to the news sites for quite a time. The reason behind this is that I long ago realized what kind of information I need. So I get my daily portion of information from thoroughly selected RSS channels and social networks like Facebook and sometimes even MySpace. If I ran a business or targeted customers in another country I would have to master quite a different approach to social media, and have a presence in, say, Orkut for Brazil and India, LiveJournal for Russia, Hi5 for Columbia and Ecuador and so on.

What I’m driving at is that simply being on the web is not enough anymore; you’ve got to show up on the pages of MySpace and Facebook. For many these words have become synonyms to the Internet. A MySpace user may not be aware of what’s going on beyond it, to say nothing of the things that are not in the cyberspace.

Can you be everywhere? I’m not sure, just because I understand that MySpace and Facebook were designed for completely different types of people. The techniques you use to bring your message to people in one system won’t work for the other. Even if you spend a lot of time to get the essence of it. And there’s never enough time for everything, even if spreading information is all you do.

So you either have to put up with the fact that your ads only manage to get the message to the ever shrinking audience of conventional mass media, or you’ve got to hire specialists in the new types of media. Not just the media that have already won their million audiences, but also the emerging ones. The thing is that the interests and preferences of those important for you decision makers can unpredictably and radically change in just months. They can turn to those new types of media that only a handful of specialists and enthusiasts are aware of today.

Just mentioning among other things that you have been at MySpace since 2003 can be very rewarding. Or how about getting to know in 2011 that quite a half of your clients learned about you from a site that will only launch its public beta testing tomorrow?

As for us, we already have our private beta invitation to the Next Big Thing of the internet, no matter which site happens to be the one.

How does it work?
You insert the definite web-address (it can be the root URL or a concrete page) and push the “Go!” button. The system start global scanning and can provide you with the number of urls that have the same content or that have quoted you. Great, isn’t it?!

In reality everything is much more commonplace as you might think: the system just uses the command that is called “exact match” when you type something in Google, like, for example, “web development company in Europe” – you will get results exactly for this very phrase. No wonder, this is invaluable for copywriters.

By and large, what we’ve got?
The tool that queries Google (and Google only!) to find the pages that have the same or practically the same content. Is it perfect? Absolutely not! I will write down a list of disadvantages of Copyscape (sorry, if I criticize it sharp – I would like to see the more powerful tool in the nearest future):

1) Limited free queries per IP address (20 at the moment);

2) Google indexed pages scanning only (this means that Yahoo! Live.com and other search engines are ignored and this is really in vain as it has been long ago noticed that other Search Engines index pages more often and faster);

3) The system is often mistaken (for duplicate content it can take absolutely different information though some connectors, parenthesis or other cohesive elements that can be used absolutely everywhere on different web-sites);

4) It scans only those pages that are in the main index in Google (the pages that are in Supplemental Index – a very common practice nowadays – are excluded from scanning. Why? No idea!).

Once again, I’m not paying tribute to this Tool just for the disadvantages mentioned above. They are enough to ruin (100% the right word) a copywriter’s job! Even the following picture won’t save you 100% from stealing your content.

P.S. Ready for a big discussion! Please, leave comments.

The first thing I did as a marketer after playing with the web site – I checked it’s Alexa rankings (it’s now ranked as a 13k web site in terms of visitors) and yes – the traffic was exactly the same I had pictured in mind: the popularity of the web site skyrocketed in the first week when it was introduced (looks like it was in top 1k of the web sites) and then started decreasing gradually… I think the late posts like that and the users that haven’t seen it yet are keeping the web site on 13k position.

The important lesson that can be learned: the web site is amazing and fan, however it brings no real value or importance (why should someone wait for this girl smiling and thinking while when he needs). That’s the reason for super popularity which lasted a week (the number of visitors was really huge, however few of those returned).

From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

In a few weeks other search engines, like Yahoo and MSN, agreed to take into consideration the nofollow attribute of the links their spiders find while crawling. Originally this attribute was introduced to prevent people spam other people’s blogs with comments that contain nothing but links to some sites. If you have a blog yourself, you of course saw such comments linking to sites promoting viagra and texas holdem poker. Later other techniques of link spam appeared, including mass-submission of links to social bookmarking sites. Thus, most social bookmarking sites also introduced nofollow attribute for all the links that are bookmarked by the people. Some sites, like blogmarks.net and netvouz.com have not yet done so, but one can expect them to join the rest pretty soon.

However, the top social bookmarking sites I listed in my previous post can influence search engine results and traffic to the sites you promote even while using the nofollow attribute on all of their pages.

1. The first site most of you have already heard about is del.icio.us. It is the most popular of all the social bookmarking sites and it’s popularity became it’s power. Some people would use del.icio.us instead of a common search engine if the amount of irrelevant data in SERPs for their query seems overwhelming. Lots of other sites all over the web like tagvy.com, travelicio.us, tagcentral.net and many, many others would syndicate data from del.icio.us for some of the tags people use to describe their links at del.icio.us. The sites I’ve listed publish links for many tags, but it’s not a rare practice that some blog writing, for example, about SEO, would contain somewhere in the blog sidebar several latest links that people tagged as relevant to SEO. And the features I like most about del.icio.us is their export and import. Because all the links you have added to del.icio.us can be exported together with all tags and descriptions in several various formats and del.icio.us seems to be the only place where you can collect bookmarks and then import them from there to loads of other sites and applications that work with bookmarks. Even browsers offer less functionality than del.icio.us.
2. Once you have added several sites to del.icio.us, you can export the links and add them to Yahoo MyWeb. The peculiarity of this service is that it’s integrated in Yahoo and once the page you submitted to this service appears on any SERP in Yahoo, it will stand out on the page and look different from all the other results in the SERP. Yahoo will indicate how many people have saved this very page into Yahoo MyWeb, and as so far very few pages are saved there, this really makes a difference.
3. The last service from this top 3 I want to talk about, is not just a site, the most important feature with Stumbleupon is their toolbar. Once the toolbar installed you can vote for or against any page on the web. Or, if you feel bored, click on Stumble! button on the toolbar and the service will forward you to a random site according to your interests and the chances you land on some particular site are as high as the number of positive votes from the toolbar users. Of course, this would not help you if you are promoting something dull and something that only a small audience would understand, but once your site sells or offers something interesting, you should try Stumbleupon. So far we had very nice results with it for several sites.

And I would not recommend you the following websites for your SEO efforts: lilisto.com, linkagogo.com, unalog.com, igooi.com, hyperlinkomatic.com, zurpy.com and looklater.com. I’m not saying that these sites a bad or useless, but for me they were not worth the time I spent trying to figure out how they work and testing them for the sites I’m promoting. However, you might have a different experience.

But with social bookmarking instead of a few trusted editors for each directory (or topic within the directory as in DMOZ) here comes the power of the crowd that chooses the best sites and pages, instead or limited number of categories – myriads of tags that describe the links as precisely as possible and instead of just one place where the link would be found in a catalog, one wise submission to a social bookmaking site might mean tens or hundreds of links to your site syndicated all over the Internet.

Submitting your link to social bookmarking sites might seem a nice alternative to submitting it to directories. You do not have to wait till the link is approved by the editor (it will appear at the site at once, you can add as many tags describing the links as you need, and much more. If you just want to keep your bookmarks somewhere online instead of just within your browser and share selected links with a few friends and colleagues then any of social bookmarking sites will do for you. You can even go to semi-automatic submission to several sites, with the help of this tool for example.

You can test it on our page if you like: Socialize this page

If you follow this link above, you’ll get a list of services the link will be submitted to. And choosing any service in which you already have an account will bring you directly to the page where you add your link. You will not even have to type the link and page title into each form, the tool will do that for you.

But of course for each good idea there will be people who misuse it. People who will try to spam the social bookmarking sites. And of course these sites will fight such spammers. Some sites would use redirects instead of direct links. Some sites would use nofollow. This means that while any site from the list they use at
this Socializer tool will be fine for just using it to store your link collection not each and every one of them will be fine for SEO. My own top list will include del.icio.us, Yahoo MyWeb and stumbleupon.com and in the following posts I’ll cover each of them more in detail, explain why I chose these 3 sites and give a list of services that seem a complete waste of time for someone who is promoting a site, not just collecting links for fun or future use.

1.) http://www.ezinearticles.com

The leader in collecting articles and ezines from anyone in the Internet. The biggest articles-share system that has a number of opportunities for professional copywriters and for the beginners and SEO-specialists as well. You can try your skills in copywriting by becoming a member of this community and you have 10 articles submissions for free but that is not all! If your articles appear to be an outstanding source for the people – you have a chance to win a Platinum status that allows you to publish an unlimited number of articles. You are allowed to use external links from your article to other resources and even the site you want to promote. The use of special html-tags is restricted. After you publish an article, the site-editor has to check it whether it complies with the rules. Usually it takes 3 or 4 days. Recently approved articles are seen on the index page with a PR of 6 but do not delude yourself as your article won’t be there for a long time, though the categories where your articles will appear also have a high PR. You can then always upgrade your membership by paying a fixed price. The interesting feature is that you can always be aware of the visitors activity and their transfer to your web-site from all of your articles.

2.) http://www.articlehub.net

An interesting resource that allows publishers submit their articles for free that will appear in a special related category. Moreover, there are 5 last submitted articles + 5 most viewed articles on the index page that has a PR of 4. One link from an article is permissible. Worth considering if the article is a unique source of information. Then you can purchase permanent links under the articles. The example can be viewed here: http://www.articlehub.net/article9890.html

The last issue is not very interesting as you are to pay 50$ for this step and at the same time your links won’t be probably counted as there can be unlimited number of the links and you won’t get any PR after the update.

3.) http://www.prweb.com/

The most “serious” resource on the Web that is targeted mostly at press-releases rather than articles and ezines. The main page has PR7 and if you apply for a paid membership most likely your press-release will appear on the fist page and will stay there for a long time – pretty enough to get indexed for the web search engines crawlers. Easy and intuitively clear registration. RSS feeds are supported and ease the life of the clients in searching of a particular press-release. This is what this service gives you:

“We will show you how to get the most out of what has become the most advanced and robust system for distributing news releases to reporters, search engines and thousands of web sites that download news via our daily XML/RSS feeds.”

There is also such option as PRWeb Direct™:

WHY USE PRWEB DIRECT™?

• Same Day Distribution
• Streamlined Submission Process
• Personalized Service
• Advanced Distribution Options
• Increased Search Engine Visibility
• PRNewswire Distribution Options
• Press Release Writing and Editing Service

This is not a complete number of services provided to you by this extremely popular company!

4.) http://www.submityourarticle.com

An interesting source that allows you to submit your articles to thousands of publishers and web sites with just one click! Your articles will be definitely and instantly published on multiple major web sites that increase your link popularity. Personal RSS feed for your articles – add to your own site to keep your site automatically updated. The service will help you to boost traffic to your web-site that results in increasing sales. You can even make money from copywriting here: you are to sign up for a free course that will show you how to write articles better and more concise. A huge number of topics to choose from.

5.) http://www.articlegeek.com/

Another reputable source to submit your articles and ezines. There is a huge number of benefits that you can acquire from them:

“We, the editors, will be aggressively marketing and building the ArticleGeek.com brand. We will optimize all of our pages and build links to our website as much as possible. For you, this means that you will get increased exposure and the increased chance of getting picked up by more websites or publications. This, in turn, will lead to the all important one way links and traffic to your website.”

They just require a one simple link to their resource to keep it alive – that is their only requirement and a way of donation. Yes, it is fair just one link from you and 10 links from them from 10 of your articles. Only useful and unique content is allowed.

If you want your web-site become popular and your business prosper – do not abandon the management of the web-site. You are to follow all the trends in the sphere of hi-tech and implement them on your web-site even if doesn’t relate to technology and web-development. The efficient issue is to draw potential visitors to your web-site and in order to achieve this one should not neglect such marvelous marketing steps like creating a blog, for example, a successful corporative blog that presents its visitors with detailed information about modern furniture trends on the market; making some press-releases about the new products and services provided by a concrete web-site; organizing meetings and broadcasting them online again with definite details about a web-site; leading Google AdWords campaign and come out first in the Sponsored Search results; taking part in affiliate programs and so on and so forth.

One should not forget the that a Sale is an issue of enormous importance. Nevermind how great a sale is (-10%, -30% or more) this produces a psychological effect of the end customers. The table “Currently on sale” affects the customers as a magical artifact. Special events and occasions are the best sources of marketing strategy. Let’s say “Christmas Sale”, “Independence Day Sale”, “Thanksgiving Day Sale” and other. Well, this is a great marketing step in order to attract visitors reminding them of the pleasant things that they want to hear at the same time showing that shop owners as well as shop-assistants are caring about the end customers and show their “equal relation” or “we-group” (psych.) in relation to the buyers. Decoration here places by no means the last role. An ideal instance can be this online-shop: Ductless air conditioners & heat pumps store.

Summarizing this post one should restate the fact that there is always a huge scope of substantial improvement that a webmaster can put into practice if the ultimate objective is to benefit on-line!

I just tried “project management” search and found the open source clon of basecamp I was hunting for couple of weeks. Hopefully we will integrate it into our project management process for some teams that use Agile methodology soon.