Last Friday marked Site-Seeker’s seven year anniversary. Over the past seven years we have worked with hundreds of Clients and I’m happy to say that with a client retention rate of 90%, we still work with many of the same companies. That’s a tribute to all of the hard working people that have been part of the Site-Seeker team over the years. As we enter our eighth year in business, a lot has changed and the skill sets of our employees have changed to keep pace.

I recall a conversation back in 2003 with my good friend Greg Karl (employee 001 as we jokingly called him). Greg and I sat around one night trying to predict what Internet marketing would look like in five years. Below you can see our thoughts and the reality of what happened. We were spot on in a few cases, but were blind sided in a few others.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• 2003: We thought SEO would wain in popularity as pay per click (PPC) and local search grew.
• 2010: The definition of SEO has morphed to encompass the optimization of news, video, images, local search, updates (Twitter), blogs, books and all of the other media types that make up the universal (multiple content types) search results.  Yet traditional natural (or organic) textual SEO rankings are still the most coveted slots on a search engine results page.



The competitive nature of SEO and improved search engine ranking criteria has made SEO less forgiving with little room for error. It now requires that practitioners pay closer to a greater number of details. The one thing that has stayed constant is that content is king. Of all the Clients we have worked with, those that have allowed us to build better and more content (blog posts, video, images, social media content, local content, and detailed product or service descriptions) are receiving far better results.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

• 2003: PPC went mainstream with Yahoo!’s purchase of PPC pioneer Overture (formally GoTo). Click fraud had become an issue and users were unsure whether they trusted the sponsored links. Boy traffic was cheap back then.
• 2010: While click fraud is still an issue, advertisers have overwhelmingly voted with their pocketbooks that the risk is worth it. Google revenue has increased from  $1.44 billion (USD) in 2003 to $23.7 billion (USD) in 2009. That’s a 1545% increase over seven years and the vast majority of that came from PPC.



Today quality scores are everything. This makes PPC both more difficult to manage, but also provides the opportunity to generate a stronger ROI.

Web Analytics

• 2003: We had recently emerged from the dark ages of website usage data. Server-side web analytic software ruled the web and client-side solutions like Hitbox, ClickTracks and others were making their mark with improved customization and reporting capabilities. Greg, a really smart statistician, knew that focusing on conversion rather than traffic was the ultimate solution.
• 2010: Google has for years offered Google Analytics for free as a means to allow website owners the ability to demonstrate value from their PPC programs. Greg could not have been more correct, while content is king, conversion focused Internet marketing programs are the way to go and are still our focus today.

Social Media

• 2003: MySpace was launched in August of 2003 and Facebook in 2004. While blogging was growing in popularity and already impacting US politics (ask Trent Lott – recall his much blogged about comments regarding Strom Thurmond in 2002), Greg and I did not predict that social media would grow so quickly.
• 2010: Today social media is all the rage and is the fastest and cheapest way to communicate with past, current, and future clients. That said, not all aspects of social media are applicable to all every business.



In the end it’s simple, use the tools your customers use or that can otherwise positions you in the path of customers and prospects. B2B clients are best served with a program consisting of LinkedIn, blogging, YouTube, Twitter and of course reputation management. For B2C clients, swap out Facebook for LinkedIn.


With this as a starting point, you need to focus on the specifics of your business and set priorities. For example, if you are a small town dentist, or large manufacturer selling into the B2B arena Twitter might be phase two (or possibly phase never) allowing you to apply more resource to Facebook or LinkedIn respectively. I realize this is blasphemy and that the social media gods and self-appointed experts will look upon on me with disappointment, but we need to keep it real.  Remember, focus on conversions. Twitter is a great tool and can be used to quickly distribute content created in other areas (in your blog for example). Toward that end Twitter has a ton of application.

So what’s next for Internet marketing?

While I don’t have the benefit of Greg’s opinion, I predict that search engine marketing (SEO and PPC) and social media will continue to converge. Google is leading this charge by integrating Twitter (Updates) on the SERPs and facilitating continuous data visibility between your website and Facebook page via the cross platform (and same code/account) Google Analytics capability. Finally, depending on your industry mobile search is either already here or just around the corner.

Thanks again to all of our Clients and employees that have made the past seven years so enjoyable! What are your Internet marketing predictions for 2015?