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Sax man gaga for Google hits

Sound of Money: Dominic Cucinottis' Salem business climbed onto a Google Top 10 hit list. (Staff photo by Faith Ninivaggi)

A few years ago Dominic Cucinotti was ready to bail out of his business. Sales were sour for the 57-year old crafter of saxophones and owner of Dominic's Music in Salem. But after raking in the revenue over the last couple of years and earning a reputation with top sax players at Las Vegas' The Mirage and Caesar's Palace, Cucinotti is hitting a high note.

It's all thanks to Cucinotti's coveted spot on the No. 1 online search engine: Google.

"Some people who order from me say: 'I'm only calling you because you're No. 4 on Google,'" Cucinotti said.

Cucinotti hired local search engine marketer John McDougall, of Gloucester-based McDougall Interactive, to get his music store some big band attention on Internet sites like Google and Yahoo! The result: type in the keyword "saxophones" next time you're on Google and Cucinotti is fourth in line out of about 3,650,000 results.

McDougall is part of a growing movement of marketers - called Search Engine Optimizers - dedicated to getting their clients noticed on the Internet's top search engines.

In an increasingly Internet-driven market, companies are investing top dollar to make it onto search engines' front pages. McDougall offers packages between $1,000 and $30,000.

Of course, a business can skip to the front of the line by using Google or Yahoo's pay-per-click services, which display sponsoring companies at the top of the results page. But as markets grow, so do the service rates, McDougall said.

Like any public relations firm, SEOs use buzz terms, compiling hundreds of potential keywords to throw on client's sites. Eventually that list gets boiled down to between 10 and 20 phrases and terms.  Other factors, such as how many times other pages link to a company's site, all play into how much love you get from search engines.

Staying on top is tough, since Google often changes-up its indexing process, sending SEOs scrambling to maintain position in what's been termed the "Google dance" by industry insiders.

Getting placed at the end of the line is the kiss of death for anyone's page, McDougall said. "It doesn't matter if you're on page 200."