Behind every successful business project, there are real people. I am Stanislav Bakhariev (born in Ukraine), founder and co-venturer of the international digital ecosystem IT Rating. I will tell you a little about myself and my project.

IT Rating — Your Digital Ecosystem

IT-Rating is the first independent resource and digital ecosystem that rates companies that work in the digital sphere and industry. Our rating is based on smart and unique algorithms and scoring systems. To appear in our rating and see its positions, companies should apply information about them, go through our verification step, and then add a portfolio. Our smart scoring systems will use this information to make a top list and determine the specific position of the company in it.

02/24/2022 burst into my life and turned everything upside down, including my business and my family.

After this date, 90% of my IT customers disappeared. IT Rating was put on hold because the companies from this industry faced other problems. It was unclear how long it all would last…

After that, it was necessary to think of what to do next. My reliable partner Alexander Dolgarev and I decided to look for investors for our business and quickly launch a project that would work in the US and globally. Previously, we were already thinking of expanding to Europe and the US but we never got down to it.

Together with a new partner, Volodymyr Zhukov, we found our first angel investor, Vasyl Rakivnenko. He provided us with 55,000 EUR. We opened a company in the US, Delaware, and called it IT-Rating.com Inc. Now, we conduct all our activities through an official company in the US.

We composed a business plan and set goals that we have successfully achieved:

  1. Have completed over 250 tasks on the back end and front end. Implemented a redesign of our website. Translated the entire website from Ukrainian and Russian to English. In total, all these tasks took us around 700 hours.
  2. Deployed the website back in December 2021. At that moment, 50% of the content was in Russian. We lacked time to focus on the website until approximately April 20. From May 10, we fully concentrated on it. The full-fledged launch took place around June 1.
  3. Made 390 connections and sent out emails together with our sales specialists. Added 270 contacts to friends.
  4. There were also over 100 operational tasks to do. This included searching for copywriters, generating ideas, carrying out tests, and controlling processes. To save time and money, I did a lot of things on my own.
  5. Found over 100 services and directories. Registered IT Rating in them to get links and recognition.

Promotion Results in 6 Months

We chose search engines as the basic traffic source for our promotion. We outlined the stages of this promotion: the transition from top positions in low frequencies to medium, and then to high.

The strategy was designed so that its implementation would last at least 6 months. However, we can already analyze its first results.

Аchievements and promotion results for the period October-November.

We are certainly happy with such changes and are happy to share them with you: 

Attendance doubled compared to September 2022.

Ahrefs indicator DR – pond 29.

Increasing search positions:

Increasing attendance at the service by 317%.

Over 7100 new, unique visitors.

We have divided requests for services and activities of companies into the following categories:

  • SEO;
  • Web Development;
  • PPC;
  • SMM;
  • Mobile & App Marketing companies;
  • Fintech Software Development;
  • Direct Marketing companies;
  • Industrial Design companies.

We chose the largest market players as the competitors that we could take cues from:

  • clutch.co
  • www.goodfirms.co
  • www.designrush.com
  • upcity.com

These projects have been around for over 8 years. Each of them has a solid reputation and a fairly serious amount of traffic.

In terms of the comparative analysis, we take one key factor that can show the dynamics of our development and growth: the growth of positions on key queries.

Why did we select this particular factor? We have been actively promoting the project for only 6 months. During this time, it is simply impossible to accumulate the same, or at least an approximately identical link mass as our competitors who have been on the market for over 8-10 years each. The same can be said about other factors, such as the frequency of brand queries in the search, traffic to our website pages, the number of pages in the index, etc.

Despite the very short time of promotion, we see that the IT-Rating project has already been able to outperform some of the competitors that were listed above in terms of search positions. It even managed to get ahead of Clutch in some queries.

How We Attracted Further Micro-Investment

By September, with these project indicators, we went to search for further micro-investment to finalize the next stage of the project development. We found two more micro-investors who contributed 25,000 and 30,000 EUR, respectively. In the process of searching for micro-investment, we received an investment offer from seedinvest.com for 5,000,000 USD. But we are not ready for such investments at this stage and we did not want to lose a large share of the company’s ownership.

Here is the plan that we drafted for the next stage with these investments:

  • Focus on the promotion of 5-10 sections (but no more) to achieve the best possible results and start selling to these niches.
  • Take 3-5 sections from these 5-10 ones, making sure they are not that popular on Clutch and Goodfirm, to make it easier to get to the top.
  • Set up context ads on Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines in the US and other countries to attract specialists for outsourcing/outstaffing job offers in the USA.
  • Finalize the section with the specialists and make it a LinkedIn analog within our website.
  • Detect the most efficient channel or a set of channels and get the first 10-20 customers.
  • Find and hire a lead generator for LinkedIn, forums, email newsletters, calls, etc.
  • Add a block of partners on the About Us page and the main page.
  • Make a presentation of the service that will contain the block with partners + CEO achievements + all services in one place + transparent and honest formula that we use to calculate points for companies.
  • Add new countries and top cities in them.
  • Find a person who will be in charge of communicating with banks, hosting companies, universities, etc. to exchange links, logos, and articles with them.

With these achievements, we plan to reach the following indicators by March-April 2023:

  • Impressions of our pages in Google = 1 500 000+.
  • Сlicks in Google search = 5000+.
  • TOP 3 = 3%+ of the semantic core.
  • Positions in the top 10 = 7%+ of the semantic core.
  • Positions in the TOP 30 = 15%+ of the semantic core.
  • In the TOP 50 = 20% of the semantic core.
  • In the TOP 100 = 45% of the semantic core.

The Primary Advantages of Our Service

Verified data only

The main feature of our ratings is a verified portfolio. We do not believe in the usual words and eloquent speeches. We see what the company is doing and how effective and prospective results it causes. For instance, if the company worked with Laravel, we would list the company at the top of the companies that work with the Laravel framework. If it is impossible to check whether the company really worked with Laravel or not, you will not see it at the top. The IT rating is principally different from the analogs you can find. In comparison with IT rating, other rating systems do not check the true information, so any company can classify itself in any category. Moreover, unscrupulous companies may add to their portfolio projects that were made by other teams and that have nothing to do with them. A demand for verifying every portfolio fully excludes cases like that.

AI-based solutions

The second unique feature of our ratings is our Al-based recommendation algorithm that can offer you companies, resources, and stack technologies based on your own personal preferences. Preferences can be determined based on a user’s experience of using our platform.

The third but not less important feature is digital ecosystems. The goal of its creation was to provide a complex of essential and convenient services and a high level of partnership. It forms a crystal-clean and honest competition among IT companies, helping to reach another level in the digital technology market and strengthening their positions.

Also, our ecosystems expand the audience; not only top managers and directors can use our services, but also novice specialists. For them, we created special articles and courses that might help them gain experience and become professionals. Also, we offer a vacancy section that might help find a job.

The methodology and evaluation process

  1. Analysis of parameters in the algorithm.
  2. Evaluation of the reliability and quantity of customer reviews.
  3. An overview of the company’s portfolio.
  4. The number of published articles and real projects.
  5. Visibility of the agency domain in search engines.
  6. Prospects for further development of the company.
  7. Participation in competitions.
  8. Previous customer experience.

Our ranking algorithm is based on a fair and transparent formula. It allows you to identify the most trusted service provider. Our innovative algorithm based on a mathematical formula helps you choose the best service providers. An overview rating is an effective tool for the quick selection of IT companies depending on your business objectives, scope, and budget. We provide an opportunity to compare many competing agencies and evaluate the benefits of partnering with them.