SEO Techniques 2009: SEO Business Models

    by Paul Shuteyev
    16.03.2009

    How to make SEO work for you or “SEO Business Models”

    We all respect and use SEO in modern and trendy web 2.0 ways. Sure there are many experienced searh-engine engineers and technicians, but not all of them do SEO as a job. Some of them make money with SEO. These tactics are called SEO business models. Let's see what we define as SEO business models!

    Top 5 SEO Business Models of 2009:

    Profit Share

    Some SEOs may be interested in working using a profit share business model.

    This type of relationship requires a great amount of trust from both parties.

    Usually people who do not know you well will not want to work for a potential

    share of future profits.

    I cannot even tell you how many people set up a generic, pharmacy-templatedriven,

    affiliate website and want me to work for future profits for them. I tell

    them “no,” but someone asks me about every month.

    Most SEOs are not going to want to work via profit share off the start unless you

    have a REAL tangible brand. If you have an original great idea, some may, but

    generally it is going to be hard for most webmasters to find a profit share SEO

    partner.

    Pay-Per-Click

    Some marketers specifically sell services for setting up and managing pay-per-click

    search engine accounts. Some people charge anywhere from $300 to $10,000 to

    set up the campaign, then 10% to 20% of ad spend for management. Some people

    charge for account setup and let you run things from there, and some people

    charge recurring fees.

    Different business models will be better for you depending on how competitive

    your market is and how complex your campaign needs to be. If you have an

    exceptionally cheap campaign, then it will be hard to get people to do a quality job

    for 20% of a few hundred dollars.

    Sell All Clicks as Pay-Per-Click

    Some SEOs sell both organic traffic and pay-per-click ads on a cost-per-click basis.

    This has recurring fees, but also may limit your down payment risk since you are

    only paying for traffic you get.

    Some networks that do this have you pay to create content where they also place

    ads for others, and they may take years to deplete your initial deposit. Make sure

    you define how the ads will appear (i.e., I would recommend buying exclusivity),

    and get an approximate time range to deliver traffic. Also ask around to ensure

    their traffic is legitimate traffic and not automated traffic bots.

    Cloaking and Doorway Pages

    Some software allows people to automatically generate thousands of keyword-rich

    pages a day. Obviously, search engines do not like this technique. Some people

    are exceptionally good at cloaking, but you still may get caught if you use it.

    If you find yourself paying only a few hundred dollars, you will want to set up

    different sites for those types of services and you will not want to connect those

    other sites to your main business site in any way. Multiple sites can get penalized

    because one of them was doing something shady. The wrath of Google can be an

    unpleasant experience.

    Create a Content Network for You

    Some SEOs create a content network for you and charge you for the traffic. In a

    sense, this is leasing traffic in a way similar to using pay-per-click search engines. If

    they know what they are doing, they should be able to provide you targeted traffic

    cheaper than pay-per-click search engines do, but there are a couple major

    downsides to this business model.

    • Some of these networks also sell traffic to your competitors, meaning

    that you could be paying to set up networks that drive traffic at

    competing websites.

    • Some of these networks may require a down payment that takes many

    years to pay itself off. After they already have your money, there is no

    guarantee that they will care about you.

    • When your clicks run out, you have to pay again.

    • If you decide not to renew, then, in the end, you paid to create another

    competing website that will continue to drive traffic at competing

    websites.

    If you are interested in this topic I will be happy to provide more techniques and tactics!

    Written by:
    Paul Shuteyev
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