DISC integrates enduring SEO into the very DNA of your website and company, achieving efficiency and great results.
This page is written by DISC’s founder and Chief Business Development Officer, Rob Laporte.
I’ve loved SEO for over 23 years and I like to write, but here’s the bullet point summary:
- SEO is more asset than ad spend.
- SEO is very complex, rewarding exceptional minds.
- Yet your team can learn and do parts of SEO.
- SEO is still the wild west, and the journey requires a savvy guide.
- A lot of SEO can wait until later if ever, and DISC prioritizes carefully.
- SEO done right can perform for years after completion.
- Integrating SEO with other marketing maximizes your ROI.
This page frames SEO and DISC’s approach. The SEO Procedures page shows our process.
- SEO is more asset than ad spend.
Like a new factory or machine, SEO delivers value way beyond year one. After the initial push, costs decline substantially.
- SEO is very complex, rewarding exceptional minds
. . . and, sadly, marginalizing, if not criminalizing, too many others. Articles claiming SEO is easy or “dead” are link bait or snake oil, pandering to wishes and fears. Predators and charlatans abound in SEO. Look, websites are complex, and Google is humankind’s most complex entity ever. So of course syncing the two is difficult. Ever paid a lawyer? Well, consistent success in SEO requires at least as much education and experience as lawyers need. Excellence is rare. I am grateful daily that the perfect industry for my talents arose after my perfectly suited 15 years of pre-web work. I can send you volumes of client results, and you can talk to plenty of those clients.
- Yet your team can learn and do parts of SEO.
To cut costs and build value inside your company, DISC will give you as much of our intellectual capital as makes sense for your team.
- SEO is still the wild west: The journey requires a savvy guide who quickly earns your trust.
Most businesses have gotten poor SEO work because unlike law or medicine, there’s no equivalent of the ABA or AMA. Anyone can profess expertise. Too many SEO article writers play to readers’ deep wish that SEO is like changing your car’s oil: read the manual, focus for a while, and you’re good. Well, the manual is about 80,000 mostly technical pages, and you’ve got to practice it all a few times first.
- A lot of SEO can wait until later if ever, and DISC prioritizes carefully.
Ideally SEO informs every part of your website: server setup, CMS selection and configuration, writing, InLinks, and the dozens of crucial parts within those areas. Like a chessmaster who sees a board and quickly knows what to do, my decades of pattern recognition in SEO enable pairing down to essential next steps. (However, it takes several hours of data gathering to assemble that chess board.) My protege and successor, Jack Fox, has proven in his many months here that he has the right stuff to master this advanced skill of prioritizing.
- SEO done right can perform for years after completion.
SEO has long been much more technical than mere “content marketing” and keywording, important though SEO writing still is. But the other side of that coin shines with a bright promise: the value of technical SEO persists for years. Setup of inexpensive auditing software and periodic expert review will prevent declines and seize new opportunities.
- Integrating SEO with other marketing maximizes your ROI.
SEO is almost always worth doing, but how far down the priority list you go depends on your budget, the ROI of other marketing channels, and your in-house skills. In your case, maybe usability enhancements or PPC or CRO testing or some non-web marketing would be more cost-effective than priority 3 SEO tactics. “Wisdom in Web Marketing” means humility and data-responsive flexibility in prioritizing among all marketing options. DISC’s long history in most web marketing areas, our focus on ROI projections, and my pre-web marketing background, synergize your marketing mix.