Contact | Prices and Procedures | Home | Site Map | 
   
  [ Other Services > Other Web Marketing Services ]
 
Other Services
Blog Marketing
Copywriting
Webmaster Services
Other Web Marketing Services
Miscellaneous Services
 
 
 

DISC's Other Web Marketing Services

The web marketing services and products listed below are supplementary to DISC's core specialties in Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Usability Critiques for Conversion Rate Optimization, and Web Development. These services will either boost your site traffic or convert more site visitors into leads and customers.

As this is an extensive page, we suggest you make use of the Table of Content links below.

Table of Contents

Running and Interpreting WebPosition™ Reports

The SEM industry's standard WebPosition report is used to discover how highly your site ranks in the top search engines when prospects type pertinent queries into the search engines. The interpretation of these WebPosition reports is one of the many elements of DISC's ROI Planning and SEO Results Reports. We price this separately because customers sometimes want only this standard report.

There are several key benefits to this service: (1) You get objective, industry-standard reports on your web site's positions in the major search engines by using software that does the equivalent of days of manual testing; (2) with DISC's interpretations based on our years of viewing reports, you will learn the relative strength of your current position; (3) you will find out how well your site is positioned against those of your key competitors; and (4) you will discover whether your server architecture or site code is blocking the search engines entirely.

Options and Prices

Price for DISC to run the report and add our crucial interpretations - $150 per web site for existing DISC customers; $300 for newcomers.

Back Up to Table of Contents


Link Campaigns

Establishing legitimate reciprocal links with relevant web sites boosts your position in some search engines, and delivers qualified traffic from relevant sites.

The key word here is "legitimate." Major search engines continually strive to screen out search engine optimizers who use illegitimate tactics. The engines have enacted a variety of methods to eliminate offenders and reward professionals who use legitimate search engine language and techniques. One such method is to improve the rank of web sites that have incoming links from other legitimate web sites.

DISC will assess the potential incoming traffic from sites with whom you would request a reciprocal link, to maximize the returns on this investment.

For SEO to be successful, web sites need at least a handful of links from relevant and legitimate web sites. But many people, including some SEM pros, overestimate the importance of incoming links in boosting your search engine ranking.

Architects of the search engines know that web pages and sites continually add important, new information - for example, about a health treatment or news event. Such pages will not have been around long enough for many sites to link to them. Therefore, the search engines must rank all pages in large part by the linguistic content.

Inbound links are especially apt to improve your search engine position if you are in a highly competitive arena. Where there are plenty of relevantly worded sites, incoming links can be a critical tie-breaker. Of course inbound links from relevant, well ranked "authority" sites can bring good traffic directly, regardless of search engine position.

The down side of link campaigns is that implementing and properly managing them requires substantial time and expertise. And the returns on that effort are almost always less than those achieved by SEO, PPC, trusted feeds, and conversion rate optimization.

What's Entailed in a Reciprocal Link Program?

  • Set-up a good link page and link instruction page for prospective linkers.
  • Evaluate the quality and popularity of prospective interlinking web sites.
  • Establish the right contacts.
  • Engineer a diversified spread of key phrases throughout incoming links to maximize the boost in Google's PageRank and Yahoo's WebRank algorithms. (While adhering to etiquette specific to this kind of reciprocal link request.)
  • Ascertain the terms for your link on the partner's site - such as text-only, text/logo, placement, etc.
  • Decide on the terms for your outgoing links page.
  • Create the links to your partners and email notice that you have done so.
  • Negotiate payment terms, if one partner's site has much more traffic than the other(s).
  • Follow-up to ensure the partners have correctly linked to your site in the agreed-upon time frame.
  • Determine that your server-statistics software is set up to track results.
  • Run detailed link reports that assess the ROI of the campaign.

Options and Prices

Initial Campaign: DISC prepares your link page(s), your link instruction page with all code and confirmation instructions for prospective linkers, suggests other "link bait" your site could have, sets up tracking code, drafts your link request emails and/or letters, and then equips you with protocols to enable your team to manage the ongoing reciprocal linking campaign. We will ensure that your incoming links are well written, well disposed to the search engines, and well placed. The links will generate relevant traffic and boost your position in the search engines. Your team manages the campaign, and in the process learns a lot about your web marketing environment.
Price: $1800 to $2100.

Link Solicitation and Follow-up: The long and labor-intensive process of soliciting links from good web sites other than those of your business partners is best done by off-shore firms. DISC will select from our well-researched list of such firms the best for your purposes. We will oversee this process, ensuring quality control.
Price: $3000 to $7000, which includes costs of the off-shore firm.

Comprehensive Link Campaign Plan: DISC has and will update and customize for you a comprehensive plan, which prioritizes all aspects of a comprehensive link campaign. This includes a list of select firms, some off-shore, for performing the long and labor-intensive process of soliciting links from good web sites and for buying (as legitimately as possible) links through one or more of the best link exchanges.
Price: $2400.

Back Up to Table of Contents


Searching the Web (and Web 2.0 Social Media) for Bad Press, "Page Jackers" Stealing Your SEO, and Unauthorized Resellers and "Reps"

This service enables you to detect and deal with bad PR, misrepresentation, and hijacking of your company's code, trademark, or reputation. (On the brighter side, this report can also reveal good news about your company!)

With the rise of such Web 2.0 channels as blogs, user-generated content in the likes of MySpace and YouTube, and social bookmarking sites like Digg, assessing and influencing your brand has become a high priority. DISC's search engine expertise enables us to compile a report and action plan that can reverse and prevent damage, and even turn it into a substantial positive for your brand.

One disadvantage of having strong search engine position or a successful company is that such achievements can attract offenders. Web-based offenses against your company include (1) bad word of mouth, PR, or even libel posted on blogs, web sites, and Web 2.0 media; (2) trademark violations in PPC advertising and web sites; (3) duplication of your site for capturing credit card orders; (4) copying your site's SEO; and (5) duplication of your site by a competitor or angry customer as a ploy to prompt search engines to demote or banish your site because of duplicate site spamming.

A growing specialty within the SEM field is "SEO PR." SEO and PPC experts are uniquely qualified to unearth the abuses listed above. For example: several years ago, DISC was compiling a quarterly web marketing report for one of our SEO clients. We discovered an offender who had found our client in the search engines and then copied the client's site but changed the contact info so that he could take orders and credit card numbers. The offender probably planned to disappear after getting enough card numbers and cash - or perhaps ship bogus product and keep the scam going as long as possible. In any case, DISC scared him off. Another example entailed a misspelled domain name containing a simulation of the client's site and contextual PPC ads, some of which linked to competitors. This case required legal action.

DISC's abuse report can also help you to detect and address misunderstandings, rather than abuse, by franchisees, distributors, dealers, or retailers.

Price for comprehensive search and report: $1200 to $2100.

Back Up to Table of Contents


Privacy and Security Statements and Certification

Every commercial web site should have a professionally crafted privacy/security statement, and many sites benefit from third-party privacy and reliability seals of certification. Such statements and seals help distinguish your company from your competitors, gain user confidence, reduce liability, and increase your web site's conversion rates.

This is no trivial matter. In fact, according to one Pew Internet & American Life Project study, 9 out of 10 users who do not shop online are dissuaded by fear that their privacy will be violated. A flurry of articles in widely-read consumer magazines (Consumer Reports, for one) have joined tech magazines in offering tips to help shoppers evaluate which sites pose a threat. It has become a necessity to address these privacy and security concerns.

A privacy statement that meets the criteria of the BBBOnline's application for a privacy seal is not only a great step forward in and of itself - but it also lays a solid foundation for applying for the BBBOnline privacy seal. After all, 84% of online shoppers in another survey agreed that the recognition of companies on the Web by a reputable third party (such as the Better Business Bureau) would make them more confident about buying.

There are three types of online security issues:

  1. Identity verification ("Are you who you say you are?")
  2. Security of information transmission ("Can someone hack into this online store and get my credit card number?")
  3. Privacy of personal information ("Will you sell or rent my name to mailing lists?")

The first two pertain mainly to e-commerce sites. Both can be addressed with a "security certificate," which confirms the identity of the company issued the certificate and protects information transmission via SSL encryption. Once you provide a copy of your business certificate - attesting that that you are who you claim to be - the security certificate can be installed in a day or two.

The third issue pertains to any site which collects user information, whether through an online form, cookies, or a shopping cart. This issue can be addressed with a "privacy statement" and/or a "privacy seal" issued by BBBOnline or Etrust.

While the privacy statement should be written in plain English, it does touch on technological bases such as cookies, encryption, and other technologies used to gather information and protect it. DISC can write a privacy statement for you that will meet the requirements of a governing body such as BBBOnline, so that when and if your company decides to go for a privacy seal, the privacy statement is already up to snuff. We recommend this for any site collecting sensitive information, whether it is an e-commerce site collecting credit card numbers or a brochureware site collecting names, phone numbers, or email addresses.

Options and Prices

Privacy / Security Statement: A privacy and security statement explains what information is being collected by your site, how it's being collected and safeguarded, and how it will be used. It is a binding legal document, an explicit statement made on behalf of the site owner to the site user. (It does not, however, provide your site with the third-party authorization and approval that a privacy seal does.) It is simply a page of text accessible from any page of your site. View an example: http://www.pvteye.com/privacy.htm. DISC's labor fees in evaluating your site's eligibility and writing and posting the statement to your site: $700 to $1200.

Privacy Seals: A privacy seal is a small graphic containing the logo of the issuing body (e.g., BBBOnline, Verisign, or ETrust). Placing such seals on your site shows that you have met the industry-standard requirements for privacy. Both BBBOnline and ETrust allow consumers to log complaints against member companies, and then resolve the disputes. We recommend BBBOnline, primarily because its reputation predates the internet. To apply for a BBBOnline privacy seal, you must (a) be a member in good standing of your local BBB, and (b) have a privacy statement and web site that meet the approval criteria. The application must be submitted with two non-refundable fees: a $75 application fee and an annual fee to maintain the seal. This annual charge ranges from $200 to $6000, depending on your revenue. ($200 for $1 million in revenues or less; $6000 for $2 billion or more.) Applying for a reliability seal (discussed below) from BBBOnline can cut this fee in half. DISC's labor fees in evaluating your site's eligibility, applying for the seal, and placing it on your site: $700 to $1200.

Reliability Seals: In a survey of web shoppers conducted by Greenfield Online, 84% agreed that the recognition of companies on the Web by a reputable third party (such as the Better Business Bureau) would make them feel more confident about buying. The BBBOnline Reliability Seal has been reviewed and approved by PCWorld and Money Magazine. It shows that you stand behind your products and services. This can help address the biggest concerns for online shoppers today - lack of customer service and poor order fulfillment. The application must be submitted with two non-refundable fees: a $75 application fee and an annual fee to maintain the seal, based on a sliding scale dependent on company revenue. This usually ranges from $150 to $900, and it can cut the cost of the privacy seal in half. DISC's labor fees in evaluating your site's eligibility, applying for the seal, and placing it on your site: $700 to $1200.

Back to Table of Contents

 

 
    413-584-6500   Contact Us   www.2disc.com