Explanation, Details, and Steps

In choosing an SEO firm and designing the best SEO campaign for your purposes, there is a lot to learn. Here and in the sub-pages of this SEO section you will find all you need to frame your decision-making process. SEO has become hot because of its effectiveness, and as with any emergent field a number of misperceptions and myths have taken hold. The detailed information on this site should dispel all such confusion and help you select an SEO firm wisely.

The DISC Edge

The DISC team has first-rate skills and experience, as copywriters and programmers, to help you surpass your competition. With our consummate programmers, we can handle any SEO-related web site, database, and server code issues.

DISC practices only ethical or "white hat" SEO. Such practices done right earn the best immediate results, and eliminate your exposure to the risk that "black hat" tactics will be detected by the search engines -- or reported by a competitor or a disgruntled employee -- with subsequent punishment by the search engines.

DISC does not require monthly retainers - because we get it right the first time. Except for very high-traffic and high-revenue sites, the time spent on tweaking an optimized page is better spent on new optimized pages or on other web marketing.

Elements of SEO

Language is the key. Rich, relevant language is the key to gaining and keeping top search-engine position. And because the on-page, linguistic component of the search engines' ranking algorithms is quite stable (as opposed to off-page variables, like incoming links), you rarely need to tweak SEO after it is implemented correctly. DISC has a few clients whose sites we've hardly touched in over five years, and those sites continue to rank superbly and pull in plenty of qualified prospects because the HTML is clean and the language remains keyed to the target market. Having said that, DISC does in fact engage larger clients in ongoing SEO and retainers -- but this usually entails adding new SEO, not tweaking what continues to work very well.

Link Popularity. Link popularity (a.k.a."PageRank") contributes to search engine rank, but its importance is often overstated. The architects of the search engines know that many sites and web pages have important new information - for example, about a product rollout or a new medical treatment - and that such pages are too fresh to have garnered many links. Many web sites with few incoming links rank at the top due to their linguistic content. The search engines first rank a sub-sample of their entire database according to on-page text matches to the given query, then they multiply each page in that sub-sample by PageRank-like factors. (“Latent Semantic Indexing” or “concept clustering” may also be applied here or, for heavily searched terms, pre-computed to contribute to the first sub-sample.) So, although incoming links are important, your first priority is to ensure that the frequency, density and distribution (fdd) of your site's key phrases optimally matches what your best prospects are typing into the search engines. This optimum fdd has changed little over the last eight years, and wont change much in the future, because the search engines long ago determined how often, on average, key phrases are repeated in natural language about a given subject.

Amplifying SEO: The Critical Conversion Rate. Half of web success entails attracting targeted traffic to your site, but the other half is converting those visitors into customers. DISC's conversion optimization services apply all established usability principles to convert the maximum number of site visitors into customers.

Ethical SEO. Professional SEO is a method of working with the search engines, not against them through trickery. Major search engines are in the business of helping people find information, and legitimate SEO professionals help accomplish this mission.

Unfortunately, some SEM vendors employ a quick-and-dirty approach that is not based on ethical, disciplined SEO techniques. Inexperienced or "clever" SEO practitioners attempt to fool the search engines by using IP cloaking, deployment of a slew of "doorway" pages that are not integral to your visible site, excessive intra-site links, and many other tricks - tactics that greatly increase your risk of being detected as a spammer and then demoted or banished. You can fool some of the search engines some of the time - but not for long. Why use risky tactics when you can use legitimate tactics that are accepted by the search engines and endure for years?

All told, there is no cheap, easy way to do high-quality search engine marketing. Over the last few years, SEO professionals have established best practices that work consistently and endure. So avoid SEO firms that promise the myth of guaranteed search engine positions. Rather than guarantees, ask for solid proof of the firm's past successes: server statistics and references you can talk to. Take extra care if the firm's client list is short or does not indicate what the firm actually did for the client.

DISC's Steps in Your Successful SEO Campaign:

Each of these steps, especially the first two, can be stand-alone services, though usually they are all done in one complete job.

(1) SEO Technical Report: in this report we will begin to understand and plan for your specific needs, and we check that your web site does not have any technical blockages that are or may soon be impairing your search engine positioning. For example, we will ascertain your server and web publishing systems relevant to SEO; whether your web site has a static and "clean" IP address for your web site (which is better for SEO); your server statistics package; number and type of incoming links to your site; extent of existing penetration by Google, Yahoo, and Bing; how your site circulates and amplifies Google's PageRank and Yahoo's equivalent WebRank; word and link order with which the spiders currently see your home page; condition of your robots.txt file; how your site handles the crucial "canonical" domain issue; the existence of broken links or bad header code that can retard SEO; and other standard pre-SEO checks. Several of these tests are crucial for ascertaining how aggressively we can pursue shorter, competitive phrases vs. longer, less competitive phrases in the SEO. It will also help us determine whether and to what extent you should do a link campaign, which amplifies SEO. About 70% of DISC's new clients have significant problems detected by this report.
$1250, can stand alone or be done to check on a past SEO job not done by DISC.

(2.a) CMS & Database SEO Report (for large, dynamic sites): After emailing your team a questionnaire, DISC will prepare a guide that details how to make your content management system (CMS) and database optimized for the search engines. This kind of SEO is often the single most important tactic in the SEO arsenal. It makes your web site publishing system do as much SEO as possible automatically and in perpetuity. The report gives precise instructions on making your CMS produce ideal code, layout, database structure, URL structure, and much more, so that your site is "naturally" open to search engine penetration, Google's PageRank circulation, top ranking, and subsequent new business from the search engines. This guide explains the rules, rather than having DISC implement the rules for you; however, it is usually not very time consuming for your web development team to implement these rules because they merely alter attributes of your CMS that, in most case these days, already exist. DISC is fully qualified to implement these rules for you if you prefer. Note that when your team implements, your company owns more of this important "intellectual capital." CMS SEO is often the single most effective SEO tactic, and it is done once and lasts in perpetuity.
$2625, can stand alone, and is crucial when selecting a CMS or before a major site redesign. It should be coupled with the SEO Technical Report.

(2.b) SEO redesign and recoding (for smaller, more static sites): This option is often required if your web site is small and static and therefore does not need the above CMS and Database SEO Guide. If you do get that guide, you do not need this service. Even small, static web sites often have design and code that blocks or impedes the search engine spiders. JavaScript roll-out menus, Flash, and sub-optimal URLs are some of the many blockages that DISC will help you to remove. In order to optimally open your site's design and code to the search engine spiders, we will need to help you make some simple changes to your site. Your site will look almost the same as it does now, but the changes will be crucial for SEO. This work is done once and lasts in perpetuity.
$1625, but can vary according to the condition of your site. It should be coupled with the SEO Technical Report.

(3) Keyword research: This is the heart and soul of successful SEO. Like any good SEO firm, DISC uses linguistic/statistical software to determine which keywords people are actually searching with in the top search engines and how much competition exists on the web for phrases relevant to your business offerings. By testing hundreds or thousands of relevant key phrases, we refine your keyword universe to a prioritized list of phrases with the most traffic-generating potential. We then build a prioritized keyword list for each page to be optimized. (Note that this is not a software-driven process, but a very hands-on exercise involving statistical and linguistic analysis.) Next we request your feedback on those lists to ensure relevance.
Price, combined with the next step, begins at $1625 and averages $3250. Rarely stands alone, except in tier 1 & 2 search marketing feasibility reports.

(4) SEO copywriting and coding: This is where linguistic brilliance and copywriting skill pull your site ahead of the competition, both in search engine positions and in conversion rates. DISC's highly experienced copywriters (who have published several books on business and e-commerce) rewrite your site's copywriting and some code using the optimum frequency, density, and distribution of key phrases. Body text, meta-tags, HTML titles, file and folder names, image names and alt tags, link text and alt attributes, headers and footers -- anything in your web page that required typing is treated with meticulous care, so that your site contains a diversified linguistic portfolio of high-dividend language.

Partial vs. Complete SEO. There are two levels of SEO treatment. Partial SEO covers HTML titles, meta-tags, file and folder naming, image and alt tag naming, and link text and alt attributes - but no copywriting or rewriting. Complete SEO includes all of the above plus writing or rewriting your copy to optimize the frequency, density, and distribution of key phrases. Complete SEO achieves the best possible positioning for the greatest number of key phrases, whereas partial SEO supplements and diversifies the linguistic strategy in order to position for a variety of less competitive phrases while reinforcing some of the more competitive phrases. Depending on your specific needs - which can vary per customer, per site, and per page - you can select either partial or complete SEO. The number of pages and which pages to optimize depends in part on your budget and in part on analysis of your web site's content. Blending complete and partial SEO within a site is akin to diversifying an investment portfolio. For partial SEO, DISC's rate is $200 per page with a 15 page minimum, or a 5 page minimum if you also chose the minimum 5 pages of complete SEO. Complete SEO costs $650 per page.

Format of SEO Deliverables. As the final output of the SEO process, you'll receive a set of Word documents, one per web page, containing all the optimized text and code for each portion of the page - copywriting, HTML titles, meta-tags, file and folder names, etc. Either your webmaster or DISC can place this text and code into your site.
Price, combined with the previous step, begins at $3250 and averages $6500. DISC does offer separate copywriting services.

(5) Submission and Reporting: Submissions, though crucial, have become relatively quick and easy in the last few years. In fact a well optimized site will likely be automatically and quickly re-indexed. DISC provides a detailed submission report. More important is the reporting by which you ascertain the returns on your investment in SEO. DISC uses the industry standard WebPosition Gold reports before and after SEO, as well as interpretation of your server statistics. Such reports don't lie -- SEO firms that don't deliver, don't last long (and don't publish their client lists), because these reports clearly show the extent of success. Many of DISC's clients opt for more extensive ROI reporting, which services are described in this web site's section on ROI Planning.
$1200. Does not stand alone.

DISC also highly recommends Local and IYP SEM and Set-up of Google, Bing, and Yahoo Webmaster Tools.