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David Melamed

Greater Denver Area

Founder of Tenfold Traffic, an acquisition marketing agency with proven results scaling companies from zero to 70+ employees and managing over $50,000,000 in paid search spend and six figure SEO budgets. Influences over a billion dollars in E-commerce revenues through a private mastermind group.

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Online Marketing SEO Direct marketing Copywriting PPC SEM Grant Writing Media Planning Web Strategy Search Advertising

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Reviews 10

Answers

David Melamed answered

How do we leave our Local SEO firm safely without being blackmailed by them?

As long as you control the phone number listed in these directories you are fine. one of the keys to local SEO is NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) consistency, so if that is uniform across the web, you shouldn't worry about leaving them.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Local Search

David Melamed answered

What is the best way to effectively optimize our SEO without paying a company 2500/mo to do it for us?

If you can't afford the 2500 a month, you should probably take SEO off your priority list. Done right requires building and nurturing relationships long term with bloggers, webmasters, journalists, associations, etc... so you have effective distribution whenever you create content that can't be found elsewhere... That investment is more like $5k/month for 18 months to see breakthrough results...

Depending on your CMS, your site is probably 90% technically optimized, and there are a million cheat sheets for onsite best practices, but if you really can't afford it...

Focus all your money and energy on improving your user experience. This will not only squeeze more value out of your existing traffic, but will also help your SEO long term.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

David Melamed answered

How Google's move to hide Keyword data from Google Analytics will affect the SEO industry?

You should be using Webmaster Tools search query report for this reporting... The Analytics keyword reporting is a small tool in a big world, and one that I have never relied on in 8 years of doing SEO.

SEO's validate their ROI based on revenue and sales like all marketing, not based on keyword level reporting.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO

SEM

David Melamed answered

What exercises can I use to come up with an effective brand for my product?

This is a bit unconventional, but it's what I call the "Can A Kid Remember and Spell It Test"...

Once you have a name you like, find a kid who is around 3rd-5th grade and tell them the name, and see if they can repeat it back, and spell it.

The most important element of a brand name is that its easy to communicate via word of mouth, and once someone hears about you, they can easily find you.
So, if a kid can remember and spell it, you are good... if not, start over...

The second best piece of advice is DONT FALL IN LOVE WITH A NAME!!! Ego is a business killer, and I have seen so many companies come up with a clever name and fall in love with it, even if its bad for their business.

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Branding & Identity

Branding

Brand development

David Melamed answered

What is the most common way for a reputable startup to get more links, other than generating link worthy content. Do people still buy links?

There are many ways, but I have not found a single strategy that replaces creating linkworthy content and distributing via aggressive outreach.

Here is a list of all the strategies out there...
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

In your shoes, I would stick to blogs and websites that cover startups, and focus on generating referral traffic, not links for SEO.

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Link Building

SEO

David Melamed answered

What are some of the most ingenious ways to increase traffic to a website?

The most ingenious strategy to generate the highest quality traffic is called "Syndicated Content".

Basically, you find someone who is selling a related product to your target audience, and you create either a video course, or ebook and offer it as a FREE BONUS he can give away as incentive to his customers for buying his product.

It works so well, because you are getting a validated recommendation from someone the consumer demonstrated they trust enough to give them their money.

For more strategies I wrote a blog post with 50 other ways...
http://www.davidmelamed.com/2013/08/05/the-big-list-of-ways-to-get-traffic-to-your-blog-website-or-content-interactive-graphic/

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SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

David Melamed answered

What offers can attract advertisers to my website?

The best option is Native Advertising, which is identifying the atomic unit of consumption on your site, and creating a paid version of it. (i.e. paid search ads, or preroll videos.)

an internet advertiser will pay for anything that produces a return on investment, or boosts his ego. So, make them look good, and make them money, and you are in business.

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Online Marketing

Online Advertising

David Melamed answered

What factors could prevent online display ad spending from hitting $21 billion and surpassing search spending by 2015 as eMarketer forecast?

any hiccup in multi-device, multi-channel attribution, like opt-in default cookies, privacy laws that hinder Data Management Platforms from integrating third party data like credit card purchase data, etc...

or some killer new native ads that change the face of display.

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Online Marketing

Display Advertising

David Melamed answered

Why are large publishers not understanding the concept of the ad exchange?

It's likely a classic case of control issues tied together with the mentality of "why pay a middle man".

In other words, the lack of transparency and control over your inventory scares them, and they believe they can sell it for more than you can...

It also might cannibalize their existing ad sales if their advertisers can go through the exchanges, as well as possibly hurt their brand equity, and create the impression that their ad inventory is worth less than they sell it for directly.

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Online Marketing

Online Advertising

Marketplaces

David Melamed answered

How can I convince a client to sign up a 12 month SEO contract?

To answer your question, offering a guarantee that minimizes their risk should do the trick... (i.e. if you dont double the money you pay me in 12 months, Ill give you a refund... assuming you don't damage their site, just the time passing and age alone should produce double what you charge them, even without doing any real SEO..)

However...

I don't see any reason why you would need a full year to show results... There are usually low hanging fruits you can uncover and fix for the first crawl google does showing results within weeks.
If you are promoting content to earn links, than I think 4-6 months is reasonable...

Your best bet is to talk about accumulative efforts, and how the value you provide will build on itself, and it would be a shame if you didn't have a chance to see it through. (i.e. building relationships from outreach to earn links will create new linking opportunities in the future...etc...)

All in all, I do SEO month to month, and i have clients that stuck with me for 5+ years... I guess it really depends what you are actually doing for them...

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SEO

Professional Services

Digital Marketing

David Melamed answered

Is there a way to use paid advertising to test a domain name?

I am not sure what you mean by testing a domain name... I am assuming you want to see if one brand name works better than another... considering the cost of buying a domain name is less than $10 a year, I would just buy the ones you are interested in and try promoting both with adwords...

In general it is a violation of google's TOS if you dont have added value content on your site... so I wouldn't advertise it on google if you are just testing a domain name... I would make sure to have actual content and a functioning website...

I would recommend using Google Consumer Surveys to do a poll of two different names, but make sure to register both domain options or someone might steal them from under your nose... http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home?gclid=CKG_8Kfsv7oCFUfZQgodhS8Azw

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Online Advertising

Market Research

PPC

Reviews

David is one of those well trusted life long friends. He is extremely creative and one of my brainstorming partners, and I'm picky! He is well established and knowledgeable in many areas of internet marketing. An excellent marketer balancing level headed strategy and out of the box thinking while focusing on the bottom line, ROI.

Josh Bochner Source: LinkedIn

David is a brilliant guy. It was while talking with David that I we came up with the idea to create the e-commerce round table. It is unbelievable the depth and breadth of knowledge that David has in e-commerce and internet marketing is mind blowing.

Avi Marko Source: LinkedIn

David is brilliant! An amazing asset to any company. David is very smart and internet saavy. It was a pleasure working with David.

Joe Apfelbaum Source: LinkedIn

David is a hardworking, creative, and passionate about ideas. He would be an asset to any team.

Steve Gross Source: LinkedIn

David has always performed superlative work and been a pleasure to work with.

Zev Safran, CFA Source: LinkedIn

Unlike most LinkedIn recommendations, I’ve had the chance to see David Melamed work for and on many different companies—and I’ve seen him do amazing things for each. He is not just an internet marketing guru, but one who is always looking to learn new methodologies and broaden his horizons professionally. Based on what I’ve seen David do, I could not recommend him more highly.

Eli Feldblum Source: LinkedIn

I had the pleasure of working with David for the past 11 months and I personally have never met anyone so in touch with search and online marketing as David. He just gets it!

Joseph Gindi Source: LinkedIn

David is a vey astute individual. He always provided good counsel and was willing to explain details of the process at all times. He is sharp and I recommend him.

Tom Cosentino Source: LinkedIn

David is a remarkable marketing professional. His knack for truly understanding what the consumer wants combined with his years of experience in the marketing industry is a combination that has led to millions of dollars in growth as well as savings from cutting wasteful marketing dollars. No project is started until there is complete concise plan in place. David provides insight to a project from an angle that most of us are not capable of. Having worked with David for over 5 years, I can say that I would go to great lengths to have him on my team.

Joseph Baumann Source: LinkedIn

David is excellent at managing and bring the best out of people. Being very detailed oriented and focusing on the goal at hand, David is able to move a project forward with a cohesive team.

Rafael Chemtob Source: LinkedIn

Member since August 2013