Ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Ethical Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Executive Summary
Hello. I'm Rob Laporte, DISC's CEO and founder. After working as a marketing executive for five years after college, I spent six years studying and teaching the
Renaissance honor code at the University of Massachusetts in the early to mid 1990s (my bio and the DISC in the Media
page has more details). DISC is deeply committed to upholding the
utmost ethical standards while running a profitable business. We at
DISC also believe that the vast majority of business people are honest
and ethical; it's just that bad news dominates the press. An emphasis
on ethical practice permeates all facets of DISC: how we relate to
prospects, clients, and partners; the way we treat each other; our
approach to working with the major search engines; and our support of
the SEM industry.
It is unfortunate -- though not surprising in a
young industry with a shortage of qualified suppliers - that there are
some unethical or incompetent SEM firms. The good news is that
the industry has matured to the point where standard, effective, and
ethical practices have been established and are used by all the truly
professional SEM firms.
DISC meticulously practices ethical and standard steps in SEO, PPC, and all other web marketing services. Our ten-year client list, testimonials, and many good references attest to that.
Sincerely,
For options and pricing, please see the yellow table at the bottom of the section on Explanation and Details below.
Explanation and Details
In general, ethical search engine marketing means two things: (1) working with
the top search engines to help them in their mission to satisfy
searchers, and not trying to "game" the engines by using such tricks as
IP cloaking, rapid redirects, and orphaned doorway pages; and (2) focusing SEO efforts
on what human viewers can see in your web pages.
The most important part of SEO is your site's copy writing
-- what both humans and search engines value most. Some less visible
text is treated to SEO, like keyword meta-tags, HTML titles, file and
folder names, alt tags, and the like, but ethical SEO never abuses
hidden or semi-hidden text placement.
How can you evaluate the ethics of an SEM firm? Here are some guidelines:
Client List. How many clients
are listed? Does the list specify what was done for each client, or
merely list companies' names? (The firm may have done very little SEM
for a given "client.")
Proof of Results. A good SEM firm should also be willing to email you reports for any previous customers.
References. When buying any service, take the time to speak with several references.
Tactics. If you are concerned
about ethical behavior, you should shun firms that engage in SEO
tactics forbidden by the search engines. These practices include IP
cloaking, various rapid redirects, orphaned doorway pages, and multiple
duplicate or semi-duplicate web sites or pages.
"Guarantees." If one reads the
fine print on most placement guarantees, it is usually apparent that
the firm's ethics are lacking. For example, some firms use
Pay-Per-Click, rather than SEO, to get "guaranteed" placement for which
you pay dearly with each click. We at DISC have seen other deceptions
in the fine print. Even if the firm is trying to be honest in their
attempt at guarantees, it is a misguided, and ultimately unethical,
approach. Here's why:
(1) They are not motivated to bring you enduring success; a fleeting boost is all they need to get a per word payment from you. (2)
They are nearly always biased to guarantee phrases that are less
popular and thus easier to position for, rather than the most relevant
and competitive phrases that are critical to your business. (3) Some contracts require ongoing payment for maintaining strong position, whereas legitimate SEO done right the first time brings
benefits you own in perpetuity. (4)
By focusing on a handful of words for short-term positioning,
guarantee-firms fail to create a diversified linguistic portfolio that
can position many other relevant words and phrases. Succinct, relevant,
yet varied language is most likely to endure the search engines' future
fine-tunings (for example, latent semantic indexing).
Off-Shore Subcontracting. It's
understandable to off-shore programming tasks but not SEO, which
demands a high level of verbal acumen that very few non-native speakers
have developed. (It's even difficult to find Americans who loved
college English courses enough to tackle SEO.)
Do-It-Alls. Avoid the
one-person firm who claims to be able to do it all well. SEM is
complicated and impinges on so many different areas of expertise --
programming, HTML, copywriting, graphic design, server log analysis,
ROI bid management of PPC campaigns, conversion rate optimization, etc.
-- that it is hardly credible if not outright unethical for a
one-person shop to claim complete professional SEO services.
DISC's SEO Prices
The minimum cost for DISC to implement a complete SEO job for one web site is $6000.
This assumes that the site requires no SEO-related redesign or
recoding. As some redesign and recoding usually is needed, typical
entry-level SEO jobs cost about $7000. DISC's average initial SEO job costs about $12,000.
Some parts of a complete SEO job can be done as a stand-alone service, as noted in the main SEO page. However, a complete SEO job is best.
An initial engagement for larger jobs range from $20,000 to $50,000
per web site. Often larger clients, after seeing our superb results, have DISC do more SEO than initially contracted.
DISC's proposals and phone conversations will provide more details and answer all your questions.
DISC offers rock-solid proof of our years of superb results
in all of our services, in the form of detailed ROI reports delivered
to actual clients. We need a signed NDA in most cases, so we offer this
proof only to people who have received a proposal and remain interested
in DISC’s services.
DISC's estimates in our proposals are firm. We do not exceed them unless you add more work. If you have us do work that is not specified in contracts,
it is billed at these hourly rates:
- $75 per hour for HTML programming
- $100 per hour for graphic design
- $175 per hour for database work and non-HTML programming
- $175 per hour for SEO, PPC, and other SEM
- $175 per hour for general consulting and training
- To learn about DISC’s pricing philosophy and practice, and our account management structure and workflow, please see our Prices and Procedures page.
For a list of all of DISC's service prices, without descriptions, please our "Sell Sheet." For the client who wishes to invest in search engine marketing on an ongoing basis, DISC offers our premier monthly retainer service.
Please click here to request a proposal. The RFP form takes less than 3 minutes to fill out. Thank you!
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