Barry Schwartz, Ophir Cohen and Olivier Amar (L2R)

Today Compucall had the pleasure of hosting a nice SEO get together. With the arrival of Barry Schwartz to Israel, we got a chance to meet and also host some of brighter SEO minds and agencies in Israel for a few hours. In attendance was, of course, Barry of Rustybrick.com, Itai Levitan of Easynet.co.il, Mayer Reich of Rankabove.com, Gilad Sasson of Nekuda.co.il and the Compucall Staff including Ophir Cohen and myself, Olivier Amar, amongst others. There was also a great presentation by the founders of articlesbase.com and bukisa.com.

Barry Schwartz, Meyer Reich and Gilad Sasson

Itai Levitan of Easynet

Firstly, I need to thank Barry for taking some precious time out of his 7 day trip. As part of a very organized Blogger Delegation to Israel with lots of stops along the way, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

Simon Gelfand and Eyal Halimi ArticlesBase and Bukisa Founders

The meeting started with two short presentations by Simon Gelfand. One on Articlesbase.com and the other on Bukisa.com. He explained to us his huge rise in growth, from zero to one of the main sites in each of their markets, in little to no time. He went over the business models and solid SEO infrastructures of either site. It’s nice to see such a huge website spawn from just an idea with the efforts of just a couple of people and no venture captial whatsoever.

Paid Search in Israel

Barry Schwartz then asked some interesting questions that veered towards paid search in Israel. The general consensus seemed to be that although some of the quality on certain verticals might sometimes be better in Microsoft and Yahoo, the combination of terrible platforms on both Yahoo and MSN and the lack of local offices for either of them, made their offerings here less than ideal. With the Israeli paid search market so much bigger than its population as a result of the number of Israeli companies dealing with foreign markets, both Yahoo and MSN would probably be in a much better position with local offices (as long as they ditched their present platforms and did something that more or less mimicked Googles, I mean why reinvent the wheel right?).

Google Analytics – The Future is Now!

We also touched upon how important Analytics had become in today’s companies and how no matter how far companies had managed to take their in-house analytics, then they never had the resources to go deep enough and get it right. Since both Easynet and Compucall are Google Analtyics Authorized Consultants (GAAC) we both felt that we had not yet come upon a company that had managed to get there alone. As a result it has represented a very viable avenue for both our companies to explore.

The meeting ended with some great smiles and some good catching up. Again, thank you Barry. We’ll get together again soon