Search Engine Optimization and Placement Services

Why pay for the perfect Web site if no one ever sees it? Search engines now account for more leads than radio and Yellow Page listings. While paid search (the little ads to the top and right of the "main" search results) can offer quick placement, optimization is more long lasting with a higher ROI.

If you've ever searched for information on the Web, you know how many sites are out there and how tempting it is to give up after you've looked at a few. Well, your customers are just like you. They don't have time to sift through dozens of sites until they find what they want. This means you'd better be one of the first sites they see.

At McDougall Interactive, we're here to help you make that happen. We are not only experts in Search Engine Marketing, we are pioneers in the field. Let us help you take the guess work out of Search Engine Marketing. Our Search Engine Optimization Strategies include:

Web Site Optimization
By performing a critical analysis of your needs and researching your competitors, we'll help get you the top search engine listing you deserve. At McDougall Interactive, we don't wait until your site is produced to start thinking about search results. We always design and build your site with Search Engine Optimization in mind. This guarantees that your site will interface efficiently with search engines so that your customers can and will find you.

Link Popularity
Did you know that having external links to your Web site helps your search engine ranking? Our expert team will identify external links to your site by researching appropriate Web sites and directories. Then we'll implement those links, ensuring that your site is perceived by the search engines as being as popular as possible. The more popular your site, the higher your ranking.

Key Phrase Placement
We have extensive knowledge of Search Engine Marketing and can help you get your site ranking in the top ten utilizing your important key phrases. Key phrases are what people type into a search engine when they are looking for something on the Web . In the early days of the internet, these were often just one word and were therefore called "key words." Over time, linguistic patterns for search terms have changed, and now people search via phrases and even sentences.

At McDougall Interactive, we have long been intrigued by the psychology of how and why people conduct internet searches. By delving deeply into the minds of your customers, we can identify the terms they will most likely use when searching for your products or services. This makes them far more likely to find you.

If you choose the wrong key phrases, your efforts will be wasted. That's why we spend a lot of time up front researching the exact terms that will work for you. We also use several of the best tools available to analyze what phrases most often get queried in the search engines.

Personal Instruction
We offer one-on-one instruction in search engine and Web site maintenance if so desired.

Example of Typical Procedures and Optimization issues
Often we find that websites have structural or content related barriers that need to be addressed before complete optimization can take place. For this reason, we will have programmers and writers on hand to assist in a variety of ways. We make key phrase changes to the text (marked in red in word docs for your review) on the pages we are focusing on and we can be hired to write new pages for a fee. Typically included are basic edits to your website to add keywords in the text and code. We can easily adjust heading tags, meta and title tags, add alt tags, link text, keyword density, bulleted lists, etc., but if you have significant barriers that require advanced programming, they will need to be fixed. We will guide your programmers if we are suggesting significant changes or we can now be hired to make advanced programming adjustments by the hour/quote. If recommended adjustments are not made and new content is not added in a timely manner, your ranks will suffer. When changes are made to a site, it also takes some weeks or months to affect rankings in the search engines. So delays can end up spiraling out of control and causing both our clients to suffer and for us to be on our tip toes, knowing the clients lack of expediency will ultimately hurt our efforts. Search marketing companies generally are praying that you will provide the new content, approve a press release, add a new page etc., so that they can more easily do their job. The more content and access to make adjustments to your site, the more quickly and easily we can do our job and the more likely you will be to get the most out of us and our efforts.

Search Engine Friendly Design Quick Info

• Good Sites Have:
  • Lots of text, including on the home page (200-400 words)
  • Keyword-rich text & headings
  • Text navigation (if it uses keywords)
  • Text links to other pages (interlinking) using keywords


• Good Sites Avoid:
  • All-Flash sites / Splash pages
  • Headings / Text in graphics (Google can't read these)
  • Graphical or "Click Here" links

Initial Site and Target Audience Analysis

• Discussions with client / Q&A about the site, target audience, business etc.
• Site audience analysis
• Initial site analysis including link-popularity & search engine saturation analysis

Keyword Research

Search Engine Friendliness Analysis:

• Site design analysis
• Site architecture analysis
• Site directory structure analysis
• Site filenames analysis
• Site navigation analysis
• Site HTML & scripts code analysis
• Site content analysis

Competition and Ranking Gap Analysis:

• Initial pre-optimization site ranking report
• Competitor ranking analysis
• Competitor PR analysis
• Competitor link-backs analysis
• Competitor site search engine saturation analysis
• Competitor site SEO levels analysis

SEO Copywriting / Copy Optimization:

• SEO copywriting for existing content of the site
• Copywriting and optimization of Meta tags, Alt text and Title Attributes
• Anchor text copy optimization

Site Code Optimization
There are over 100 items to potentially address for search engine rankings and this changes over time.

• Customized optimization of important pages
• Creation of targeted, optimized meta tags.
• Implementation of optimized filenames, image names & directory names.
• Creation and implementation of customized 404 Error Page
• Handling of older file name/directory names '301 - Permanently Moved' redirects
• Creation of a search engine friendly site map
• Creation of optimized text-based navigation of the site
• Optimizing inter-linking within the web pages of the site
• Controlling content headings through optimized CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
• Addition of robots.txt file for excluded content
• Domain names and server analysis

Hand-Submissions of the Home Page To Major Search Engines And Directories:

• Pre-selection of most appropriate site categories and submission text
• Hand-submissions to free search engines & directories (Links usually make this unnecessary)
• Hand-submissions to paid directories
• Submission to Free trade-specific search engines, directories and yellow pages

Ranking Reports

• Monthly Detailed Ranking Reports: after first indexing of site across various Search Engines
• Evaluation of pre-optimization and post-optimization ranking, web stat and visibility analysis

Service Deliverables:

• Site and audience analysis report
• Final selected keyword phrase list with supporting research
• Pre-optimization ranking report
• SE friendliness current status report of problems
• SE friendliness deployment recommendations
• Competitor analysis
• Gap analysis and recommendation report
• Copywriting report
• Site optimization report
• Post-optimization ranking reports

Quick tips and process info:

Optimizing Titles and Descriptions

This is not only for ranks but for increasing click through rates. Novice SEO’s just stick key phrases all over the place, but experts do it in a way that is as subtle as possible and helps conversions, when possible.

Copy (Text) Optimization

We edit your existing text to add keywords. We mark up word documents in red indicating suggested places where we would add keywords or modify the copy. You then either approve it or work with us to finalize the text changes before we make it live on your site. We also have a senior writer on staff that is available for paid writing / content development projects.

Recommendations for Content Development

Content is King in the world of search marketing and we tirelessly brainstorm ways to develop new content that will be informative to your visitors and allow new ranking possibilities.

Support for Programmers and Site Manager Questions

Review of edits to the site and comments on how to adhere to our suggestions. When we are not making the changes suggested to the sites code, we often see significant issues with programmers. They often require significant rounds of explanation to make the correct adjustments and regular site reviews to make sure optimization not only happens but does not get deleted is critical. We often uncover new code issues along the way that are not always easy to detect immediately. These include iframes, hidden frames, invisible text generated by previous unethical SEO’s etc. We have seen such things as 1 pixel gif links littered throughout a clients code, linking to their old SEO companies gambling sites etc.

*sites/clients with hundreds of keywords in product databases etc. can use our recommendations to address keywords in bulk, site wide.