Welcome to A1 Search Engine Optimization Services

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In the beginning, there was Altavista...

Altavista was the first full-text search engine and was a product of Digital Equipment Corporation, a once-proud Massachusetts pioneer of computer manufacturing and networking. When I worked for DEC in 1984, I had an email address, CAPUTO::PSYCHE (no "@" back then) and we had a system called DECnet that was essentially a precursor to the internet we know today, at least the BBS/Blogosphere part of it. But DEC was very bad at the marketing thing, and were eventually taken over by Compaq (since eaten by HP), who didn't know what they had with Altavista either. So, they sold it off to internet boom-bust baby CMGI, who pretty much kicked the ball into the gutter themselves.

Back in the nineties, we essentially did search engine optimization targeted at Altavista, and we did pretty well with it, although Altavista kept losing ground in the search engine wars. We focused on having well designed sites with easy-to-understand navigation and robust, well written copy as content. This philosophy has continued to be the central organizing principle of our SEO methodology. Content is KING. Particularly unique, well composed, thematically coherent content that is effectively interlinked with the rest of the significant web sites that cover that topic, at least in a non-competitive way.

And then along came Google...

Google is now the 800 pound gorilla of the Search Engine Optimization world. They have been able to squeeze money, relevance and moral authority out of the internet like no one else has even come close to. We focus most of our search term optimization efforts at pleasing the ever-changing PageRank algorithm because we feel that the rest of the search world, admit it or not, is following Google's lead as closely as possible in many ways. The recent cooperative arrangement between Google, MSN, and Yahoo to standardize essentially on the Google Sitemaps Protocol pretty much reinforces my long-held conclusions on this point. You gotta focus somewhere, and Google is clearly the best choice available.

And Google likes well written, well interlinked, moderately verbose, easy-to-spider content that's updated with moderate-to-high regularity and has good inbound and outbound links to and from highly relevant web sites that cover the same basic topics.

So... that's what we do here.

Our process for maximizing the organic search rankings that your site will then justly earn consists of the following steps:

• Business Marketing Analysis - Review your business and discuss with you what your marketing goals and budget are for the upcoming six, twelve, and twenty four month time horizons. We discuss who your customers are now and who they are likely to become over time. We review your existing web strategy and presence and consider its strengths and weaknesses. We present our findings to you in a report that summarizes our conclusions and gives relevant examples of similar businesses (including your direct competitors) and what they are doing to attract customers on the web.
  
• Keyword Analysis and Research - Based on our knowledge of your business operations and objectives, we start with a list of terms (keywords and keyword phrases) that you supply, and then use a variety of internet research tools to determine the frequency of those terms. We then seek out all the associated relevant terms that have any noticeable footprint in that part of the "search-o-verse" (search universe) that has any meaningful connection to your client's or potential client's aspirations and desires. We report to our client both the frequency worldwide of the terms listed and the number of bidders and the valuation per click according to Yahoo Search Marketing.
  
• Site Analysis and Optimization Plan - Based on our research and your marketing goals, we then examine your existing site in detail and propose specific solutions for each page that exists and any that we think should be added. If we are to be the prime implementation contractor (as opposed to an in-house team) we will make recommendations about what should be done were we to take over management and promotion of your web site, and how much each of our specific recommendations will cost. Otherwise, we will create a complete technical plan regarding what needs to be added, deleted, changed, etc. on the site that you can give to your existing web development team. All of our Site Optimization Plans will include our recommended text for the Title, Description, Keyword, and Alt tags for each given page in the site. We will also note where the copy needs to be edited, augmented, or substantially developed and expanded as we determine is appropriate.
• Topic Research and Content Development - Often the best way to significantly expand a web site's organic search footprint and relevancy scores is to create a substantial body of content that is particularly attractive to your targeted customer demographic. Based on our Site Analysis and Optimization Plan, we will develop relevant content modules that may resemble either Newsweek articles or Encyclopedia Britannica (or Wikipedia) entries or Blog articles or some other relevant and attractive presentation of the content desired. This includes researching topics, composing text, and finding or taking attractive, relevant, photographs that will add to the page's meaning and also have search-snagging captions and Alt tags.
  
• Reciprocal Link Development - Search out and post messages and comments on friendly topical blogs. Find other sites with "resource links" pages that are appropriate to your industry and actively engage those sites to permanently add your site to their list. We review all recommended link exchanges with our client before initiating any contact, so as to avoid any possible problems with this process.
  
• Search Engine and Index Submission - According to our time-honored manual process, we submit your site to the top 35 or so search engines and human-moderated indexes in a methodical, trackable way, and report back to you when each of the engines has added you to their index.

We design our recommended action plans based on your specific site's marketing budget, goals, marginal return, and customer demographics.

Let us review your site and put together a comprehensive proposal, and we think you'll clearly see how Organic Search Results from effectively planned and implemented Search Engine Optimization Services can be one of the best advertising values available anywhere.

For example, we helped optimize the #1 site on Google for the term "Air Cleaners" - www.AirCleaners.com (note: all claims made here of this nature are true when published and have been consistently true for many months, minimum, but Google can be a fickle mistress, so please let us know if our rank has fallen unbeknownst to us)

Considering that the term Air Cleaners costs about $2.00 a click if you bid for it on Yahoo (Overture), and there are some 18,000+ searches for that exact term each month internet-wide, and my client gets the top organic ranking for free, you could say that the term optimization in that ONE case alone is worth from $13,000 - $26,000 per month, compared to paying for the placement via bid-for-click syndicates. (Estimate range based on 36% - 72% click-thru rate for having the first organic term.)

Your results may vary, but spending money on SEO is clearly a cost effective marketing strategy. Organic rankings are something that you can deliberately design and build your site to achieve. Usually the process is: design and build once, maintain and update consistently, and reap the benefits of the increased relevancy rankings from then on. The search engines, particularly Google, reward substantive efforts in this area with long-term ongoing paybacks.

Please call David Caputo or Tessa Surgies at 413-532-6440 or 800-472-3765 if you would like to discuss your site's search engine optimization and web promotion needs.

Our first hour of consultation is always free.

Just remember... A1 Makes Search Taste Good! sm

A1 Search Engine Optimization Services is a subsidiary of Positronic Design, Holyoke, MA.

Positronic Design has been creating and optimizing high quality web sites since 1996.




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