Marketing Partners Offers Optimization Services

October 16, 2008; 03:27 AM

Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) October 16, 2008 -- In making the announcement to expand his agency's services, Starr remarked," I see far more Websites than the average person, and most, rather than being a dynamic business builder, are merely a passive 'Internet brochure.' People are just now coming to the full realization that a Website can open your window to the world, in terms of significantly increasing qualified visitor traffic without resorting to expensive - and so often ineffective - advertising."

A longtime veteran of the "marketing wars, Starr prefers the term Website optimization to the more commonly-used term, search engine optimization because he feels it is more descriptive of the full benefits associated with he process he calls the "art and science" of building Website visitor traffic.

Starr feels optimization is an idea whose time has come and that the Websites demanded by today's highly competitive marketplace represent the "fourth-generation" of the medium, and they are required to do a much bigger and more important job than their predecessors.

He details his outlook on the state of the Website art this way:

First generation: "In the beginning, most people thought all they needed was a bare bones site of a couple pages, or, even a flashcard for purely defensive purposes, and printed collateral materials were depended upon to do the heavy lifting. Then, more comprehensive Websites were developed as it became apparent that the strong preference of greater numbers of prospective customers and prospects was to learn of a company's capabilities and offerings by consulting the Web, and brochures were beginning to diminish in importance."

Second generation: "As people looked around, they began to notice that their more progressive brethren were becoming more generous in the amount of information their sites were providing, as well as being more creative through sites that were more attractive, better written and more easily navigated. As a result, depending on the field represented, brochures were being relegated to, at best, 'coffee table pieces,' or, at worst, were used as merely 'file fodder.'"

Third generation: "This was the dawning of the e-commerce generation. People, in droves, were coming to the realization that things actually could be sold through the Internet. What heretofore had been referred to as the information super highway, considered by many traditionalists to be a fairly ambitious appellation at that, had added a fast lane called direct sales. And, concurrent with this, the non-commerce or informational Websites were becoming ever more sophisticated, visitor-friendly and compelling. Alas, the brochure, except for rare applications, had been replaced as corporate king of collateral."
Yet, for all its potential power, Starr calls this third generation of Websites the "If you build it, they won't necessarily come" phase. He compares the vast majority of today's Websites to a "billboard in Nebraska - nice, but nobody sees them".

Fourth generation: Starr sees this as the "jockeying for position" phase, in which competitive necessity, further fueled by a "soft - at best" economy makes it mandatory to wrestle the spotlight away from all of a company's competitors by
"climbing to the top of the search engine ladder." He is quick to add that doing so involves a "moving target" and day-to-day positioning effort designed to gain the favor of the major search engines.

Thus, the advent of his company's Website Optimization Initiative, a new service being offered to Marketing Partners' current clients and prospects. Starr says the his agency's service includes an initial free, no-obligation Website analysis, and features three levels of service, each complete with monthly "analytics" and search engine ranking reports.

About Marketing Partners: The agency was established by Allan Starr in 1976 in Phoenix, and has served a diverse local, regional and national clientele ranging from one-person startups to the Fortune 500. Tel. 602-266-4121 Marketing Partners Press Release