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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
- Identity verification ("Are you who you say you are?")
- Security of information transmission ("Can someone hack into this online store and get my credit card number?")
- 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.
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