October marks MoreVisibility’s eight year anniversary. We’ll save the party for our ten year milestone. In the meantime I thought it would be interesting (or maybe therapeutic) to share a sense of what the ride has been like.
Early on, it seemed that our biggest challenge was getting business owners to understand that they could develop a foundation and a presence online. “Proof of concept” took a lot longer than many of us expected, as companies were very reluctant to divert their marketing dollars from other mediums they felt more comfortable with. Nonetheless, enough businesses were willing to experiment with SEO to fuel our early growth.
The dot com bust proved to be the next bump in the road, as it provided companies who had remained on the sidelines with a seemingly rational excuse to stay the course; i.e. the internet was a fad that would soon disappear.
Over the next few years, traditional business fundamentals began to take root. The “burn rate” philosophy gave way to the necessity of the bottom line and marketers were forced to seriously assess how a website was going to pay for itself.
It still wasn’t smooth sailing though, particularly because while there was a new found interest in making sure that a website could be profitable, the tools to figure out whether a site was actually working- and what marketing programs were performing (well or poorly) were either quite rudimentary or so complicated that no one could glean any valuable data in a timely manner (or at all).
What we’ve seen over the past few years is that the percentage of companies who have bought into the concepts of SEO & SEM has increased exponentially. This is due both to the greatly improved analytics solutions available, like Google Analytics and to the fact that most companies are seeing their competitors stake out territory on the internet. Many companies have been able to progress to the point that their websites are integral revenue drivers for their organizations.
While it may seem like we as a company and as an industry have come so far, in fact I believe we’re just getting started. Loads of challenges and great opportunities are in front of us. It’s a matter of looking at each website very closely and crafting a strategy that both makes sense and that all parties involved can follow. We look forward to continuing to help our clients navigate these waters to achieve the most favorable results for their websites.who
