25 Years of SEO Experience

In 1995 I was the Marketing Director for Channel 1 in Harvard Square. The company was among the first to offer dial up Internet access to Boston and the Suburbs.

As a former directory salesman, search engines immediately caught my attention. Yahoo had launched in 1994 alongside other search tools like Alta Vista, Hotbot, Excite, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves and Webcrawler. And more.

I was performing SEO before the term SEO existed. In 1996 (27 years ago) I was performing SEO by editing titles, keywords and descriptions in an attempt to get my web designs to rank higher. I could affect search engine rankings by editing the webpage meta-tags. My target search engine was Webcrawler, popular with college students at that time. Google did not yet exist. According to Forbes: The first recorded use of the acronym “SEO” dates back to 1997.

Real estate was among my initial business models. After purchasing the domain name BostonCondos.com in 1997, I built a map-based website with a neighborhood aerial shot I took from my digital camera. I used Front-Page image maps to make the map clickable and connected each Boston neighborhood to a page with their MLS listings, and then sold sponsorships to local neighborhood realtors, movers and mortgage companies.

BostonCondos.com had top rankings in Google. I spent many days manipulating meta-data and content, eventually stripping out excessive keywords and lengthy descriptions. Then I began removing some of the site content, leaving few elements like maps, advertisers and links. I left the website with minimal content over the weekend. I returned to my Government Center office on Monday to discover that bostoncondos.com was now ranked #1 in Google the with the keywords ‘boston + condos’. The Condo Purchase Requests poured in almost immediately, up to 25 a day. Thereafter I studied white hat SEO and ran bostoncondos.com as my main business for many years, eventually selling the site to a realtor and establishing my SEO Agency in 2007.

Today all major companies have huge SEO departments. Still, my experience can provide direction to any size business. I see SEO issues in many websites – including those of large corporations. I can help your company develop an effective SEO program and establish top search engine rankings. My experience can help you attract more organic traffic, dominate competitors, build SEO monetary value.

Recently I was called and interviewed for possibly the #1 SEO job in America after they uncovered me in Linkedin. I was intrigued and asked why me? The Director of Marketing knew there are many facets to SEO. Entrepreneurs who have built their own agency truly understand the intricate complexities and how the SEO pieces fit together. I was humbled to receive that call from Wayfair; a company that held $6B in yearly SEO monetary value.

Contact me to develop successful SEO strategy for your company. I work with small to medium size companies and can work with outside marketing teams if required.

Kevin Kestyn (857) 265-9206