Late last year we decided to role out a new service that is primarily based on Search Engine Optimization Only. Two+ years ago when we started our pay for performance internet marketing services there was no one in this industry that was providing performance based anything.  Today, there are numerous companies that have jumped on the bandwagon to offer performance based SEO only service that in reality aligns their pockets with allot more money than their standards seo packages do. It is unsuspecting customers that get hurt at the end.

Their claim to fame:  NO RISK

One of the main reasons besides providing good value to this industry was to combat these NO RISK, whoops I am paying 2x as much as seo packages service. Our Pay For Performance SEO service is based on the premise that we share the risk of SEO with our clients. Unlike our competitors in this space:

We do not charge a monthly fees

We do not have minimum number of keywords

We DO SHARE the risk of SEO

At the end of the day, our model has proven itself in creating the ONLY win/win scenario in the SEO industry. In the past 4 months we have helped rank close to 120 key phrases within the top 10 rankings for customers whom have chosen this service.

The reason for this post is to rant about a call that stuck with me from a guy in Houston that basically yelled at me because our Model is a shared RISK model and not NO RISK. Frankly, the biggest reason for this rant is because he kept me on the phone way too long and I just could not give it to him on the phone as it is not our style.

He TOLD me that pay for performance = NO RISK for him…

I simply said,  NO RISK =  No REWARD…  that is just business..

@ http://www.saasaffiliates.com We created our engagement models based on the value that we bring to our customers.  We are not everything to everyone. All our models are based on a win/win scenario created through partnerships, understanding and good karma.

No such thing as a free ride Enrique..  I hope you read this and I hope you come back to post a comment.  I would love to keep this conversation as an open dialogue.

Some highlights:

1) Our firm has been named and ranked in the pay for performance SEO companies rankings by Topseos an Independent Authority on Search Vendors.

2) We built our team from 5 full time employees to 13 Full time staff & 2 part timers.

3) Our client base has experienced growth rates of 57% to 322% year of year growth while we have been able to provide our clients with an average of 228% monthly ROI based on what we invoice.

Moving Forward to 2011:

1) We will be extending our one to one coaching program from 10 clients to 15 as this program has been very successful, it has not been advertised to the public and allows clients that do not fit the performance model still take advantage of the knowledge base. Watch out for an email explaining this program.

2) We will be introducing a new “Pay Per Ranking” performance model for those seeking ONLY an organic ranking service. The pricing is based on competitive analysis of your chosen keyword(s) and is paid based on ranking. Look out for an email sometime in January explaining the model further.

3) We will continue to work hard to locate profitable sources of traffic for each and every one of our clients. This is the main point of performance based online marketing. We are not interested in just traffic & visibility we are always on the lookout for profitable traffic & visibility streams as we make more money when you see results.

We are very proud of our accomplishments and want to thank our clients, our employees; our readers & certainly Google for making us all sweat every once in awhile…

As we are closing down till the new year we just wanted to wish You & Yours,

A Safe, Happy & Prosperous New Year.

In whichever order you choose…

Cheers,

Uri Lederman

Step 1: Establish Team & Stakeholders.

Make sure you have the buy in from all stakeholders involved on the team which are accountable for web visibility, presence & online sales work-flow.

Step 2: Describe the Performance.

Describe the performance or action you are looking to achieve and how it will integrate with your online/offline sales process. Clicks, Leads or Sales are three examples of key performance indicators.

Step 3: Examine Marketplace.

Keyword / Competition analysis is key to the success of any campaign. More so, if keyword & Competitive Analysis is done right you would be able to reverse engineer your budget, goals and even results prior to campaign launch.

Step 4: Decide how to Track, Measure & Manage.

Develop the online work-flow to Track, Measure & Manage the Campaign to success.

Step 5: Selecting the right people.

Experience Data Driven Marketers are key to the success of any performance based campaign. Make sure these people, whether in-house or outsourced are comfortable in assessing current and past data sets.

Step 6: Manage Performance.

Performance based Campaigns are rarely profitable right out of the gate. Take action for desired results, Measure, Optimize campaign to Desired Results & Measure again. As they say;  Lather, Rinse And Repeat

When a search is conducted in a search engine, it will exclude the stop words from the search query, and will use the query by replacing all the stop words with a marker. A marker is a symbol that is substituted with the stop words. The intention is to save space. This way, the search engines are able to save more web pages in that extra space, as well as retain the relevancy of the search query.

Besides, omitting a few words also speeds up the search process. For instance, if a query consists of three words, the Search Engine would generally make three runs for each of the words and display the listings. However, if one of the words is such that omitting it does not make a difference to search results, it can be excluded from the query and consequently the search process becomes faster. Some commonly excluded “stop words” are:

after, also, an, and, as, at, be, because, before, between, but, before, for, however, from, if, in, into, of, or, other, out, since, such, than, that, the, these, there, this, those, to, under, upon, when, where, whether, which, with, within, without

The Title page is still a key onpage factor for optimizing your pages for the search engines. This factor is also limited to about 70 characters so not using these types of stop words will help in optimizing this real estate..

We are a Search Engine Optimization Company that work on a Pay Per Performance basis.

 The online world has been hit by changes made by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to its Guidelines Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsement in Advertising

 As defined by the FTC, an endorsement or testimonial is “any advertising message of an individual or the name or seal of an organization that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs and findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser”.

 Below outlines some of the more significant changes made by the FTC:

-The endorsement message must reflect the true opinion, experience and findings of the endorser (whether a consumer, celebrity or an organization)

- All claims and statements made in an the endorsement message must reflect what consumers can generally achieve otherwise it should clearly disclose the generally expected performance

- All claims and statements must be substantiated

- All material connections between the advertiser and endorser must be disclosed (whether monetary, in form of gift or research funding)

 FTC Press Release can be found here: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

 So what does it all mean??

 - Less Guru’s

- Less Hype

- Less Products to sell for affiliate marketers

- Less CPA Networks

- More Fear

- More Consumer Confidence

- More Trusted Advisors

- More money for Lawyers..

 Did I miss anything?? 

 Although this might cause a big headache for allot of people, it will certainly be a good thing for the industry that has a reputation of deception..

 Please provide your thoughts below,

In todays Search Engine Service environments there are two Types of companies:

1)      SEO companies with mass appeal price model that gets clients humming for $149

2)      Professional SEO service firms that are run in the thousands per month

Frankly, you get what you pay for so if you are a client of the former and compalin about being scammed by an SEO firm..

Well… you deserve it.. J

There are also two types of Pay Per Performance SEO companies out there:

1)      Those that get paid for ranking

2)      Those that get paid for sales or leads.

What would you rather have?

We negotiate our Pay Per Performance SEO services based on a best of breed hybrid model.

This provides our customers with less risk and allows us to pick & choose the customers with work with.

The perfect win/win.

The basis of a FAILED campaign.

My two first questions to them are:

1) Are you running these campaigns yourself?
2) Are you running negative keywords on these campaigns?

Look, DYI Google Adwords is certainly a steep learning curve. This learning curve costs YOU money.

Negative keywords are a root cause of most failed search campaigns.

This post is geared towards software companies that are utilizing the paid search environments as part of their online marketing mix.

First and foremost if you are unclear as to what negative keywords are you can read about them here.

One of the most UNDERUTILIZED ways of acquiring a negative keyword list is your own data, under your nose.

Print out a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly report (depending on volume) of the keywords being used to find your website. This data can be acquired through your organic data source or through Adwords own, Search Query Performance report.

Sift through these reports and you will notice many negative keywords that just do not apply to your product or service.

Here is a list of generic ones that I use for my ppc campaign management and I use as a starting point.

To negate freeloaders I use the following:
free
freeware
gratis
kostenlos
gratuit
“public domain”
“open source”

To negate people looking for cracks or pirated software:
crack
cracks
cracked
crackz
key
key gen
keygen
keygens
key gens
key generator
key gens
keygenz
“registration key”
“license key”
pirated
pirate
patch
patches
rapidshare
rapid share
serial
serials
serialz
wares
warez
unlock
unlocking
hack
hacked
hacks
password
torrent
torrents
torrentz
bittorrent

Programmers love to click on ads to search for sample code:

c++
delphi
php
flash
xml
visual basic
ajax
vb
api
excel
java
code
source
template
templates
model
example
sample
xls
xsl
sheet
schema
project

What about negating exact terms such as:
[software]
[program]
[programs]
[shareware]

The above are just a quick sample which might help my readers out in running their own campaigns. It is certainly NOT an exhausted list.

Negative Keyword Search is imperative to your paid search success.

As a Pay Per Performance PPC Management Company we take as much of the guesswork out of our PPC Managed Campaigns as we can. Not because we can, because we have too..

I hope this helps..

Good luck.. And good marketing..

Cheers,

How are you using social marketing?
Search Marketing?
eMail Marketing?
Convergence marketing?

If your understand Today’s environment then you know that today is the fastest, easiest & cheapest way to get a hold of your target market.

Not convinced? Have a look at this:

Check it out here.

http://blog.quantcast.com/quantcast/2009/09/quantcast-top-sites.html