25 Years of SEO Experience

I’ve watched the SEO industry evolve over a long time!

In 1995 I was hired as the Marketing Director for Channel 1 of Harvard Square. The company had been a BBS bulletin board service, and among the first companies offering dial up Internet access to Boston and the Suburbs. My job was to sell more services such as web design and ISDN.

As a former directory salesman, search engines immediately caught my attention.

Yahoo launched in 1994, and others quickly followed. Alta Vista, Hotbot, Excite, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves to name a few. During the 1996-97 timeframe Webcrawler search engine was among the most popular. Within a few years some of these search engines would sell for big money – and then become worthless.

I was performing SEO before the term SEO even existed. Beginning in 1996 I developed titles, keyword lists and descriptions for all of my web designs. I could affect search engine rankings by editing the webpage meta-tags. Google did not yet exist. According to Forbes: The first recorded usage of the acronym “SEO” is dated back to 1997.

Real estate was among the initial online business models and purchased BostonCondos.com in 1997. I built a map-based website with a neighborhood aerial shot I took from my digital camera. I made the map clickable and connected each Boston neighborhood to their MLS listings and then sold sponsorships ($600 year) to local neighborhood realtors, movers and mortgage companies.

BostonCondos.com needed top rankings in Google. I spent days manipulating keywords and descriptions. I began stripping out excessive keywords and lengthy descriptions; then all the content – except for a few elements like maps, advertisers and links, and left the website stripped down over the weekend. On Monday I discovered the website was now ranked #1 in Google with 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 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 company. I see SEO issues in many websites including those of large corporations. I can help your company develop a more user-friendly website and establish top search engine rankings. My experience can help you attract more organic traffic, dominate competitors, and build SEO monetary value.

I recently interviewed for what I believe was the #1 SEO job in America. I did not call them but they uncovered me in Linkedin. I was intrigued and asked why me? The Director of Marketing realized that when it comes to SEO, there are many tasks. Entrepreneurs who have built their own agency can stand back and see how the pieces fit together. I was humbled to receive that call (from Wayfair). Contact me to develop successful SEO strategy for your company. I am a specialist – and can work with both inside and outside marketing teams.

Kevin Kestyn (617) 286-3202