Internet Direct Response Marketing Resources Resource Center 

If you handle pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, this is your ultimate reconnaissance tool. Use it to find out how much is being spent on PPC advertising by category or industry... or you may prefer to drill down and and discover how much a competitor is spending per day on PPC, plus the number of clicks their site is receiving per day, the average position of their ad and the average cost per click.

First look up your own domain to view the stats. Based upon the site's reporting of this editor's PPC spending, the deets (aka details) were spot on, from daily budget to total number of clicks per day and average cost per click. Amazing.

Or look up a specific keyword phrase. We looked up "search engine marketing" and found that (at the time of this writing) the top bid for that phrase was $13.42. Two of the top advertisers for the phrase were FathomSEO and Google. Drill down and you can see their top organic and paid competitors. The spying goes on and on. At the time of writing, we also spied on the top 500 biggest keyword advertisers (aol.com ranked number one with an estimated daily spend of $410,404) and the top 500 most expensive keywords ("data recovery services los angeles" was curiously the number one, ringing in at $52.82 maximum bid).

Here is where you can find lots of articles, resources and services geared to boosting your response rates and maximizing your copy's selling power. This site is dedicated to creating the best sales copy possible. Professional copywriter Michael Fortin is the brawn behind the site.

At the time of writing, resources found at the site included hundreds of articles and blog posts. A few that caught our eye were "Using Vivid Mental Imagery" and "Creating Scarcity and Urgency". We also enjoyed the 51-page PDF entitled "The Death of The Salesletter: Web 2.0 and Its Impact On The Future of Internet Copy". Mr. Fortin also provides a forum for copywriters, an email newsletter and an RSS feed. As expected, you will also find a fair amount of sales copy dedicated to selling his products and services, which include copywriting, videos, sales courses and more.

Static URLs generally perform better than dynamic URLs (which often have long strings of session or user ID code) in search results and take up less space on tiny mobile screens. Spam filters also can flag dynamic URLs in email messages. So, judicious rewriting sometimes is useful. If you're not an HTML code jockey, this handy tool from the SEO Chat blog will convert your dynamic URL to a friendlier-looking static URL.

Note: We use the term "judicious" because SEO experts don't advocate that you rewrite every URL on your site. This Search Engine Watch article, "Dynamic URLs: To Rewrite or Not to Rewrite...That is the Question" explains both sides of the issue. Before moving forward with this tool, read it to decide whether you should rewrite a specific dynamic URL.

If clicks and activity on your Website are stalling or dropping, how can you get fast, knowledgeable feedback? Focus groups are pricey and need lots of lead time to set up. UserTesting promises you a quick, inexpensive usability report that's like eavesdropping while someone tries out your site.

UserTesting picks its site testers from a database of screened, skilled amateurs, basically "real people" who perform the tasks you want tested on your site. While they're clicking around your site, they're recording their screens and voices so you see what they saw and hear their opinions.

Once the test is over, you'll receive both the recording and a written evaluation from each tester. At time of writing, the fee was $29 for one tester, up to $561 for 20 testers.