This month marks the anniversary for my 10th year in business and the 1st year of my blog. Both of these events have been monumental in our success. In honor of this celebration, I’d like to share my all time

Top 5 Things I Love about Search Marketing:

5) Quantifiable nature of the business. If you are gaining awareness, increasing visits, improving conversion and growing sales, you’re succeeding. Search can be the most quantifiable of all marketing efforts if done properly.

4) You don’t step in the same river twice. Search marketing is a swiftly moving, ever changing discipline. I don’t know how you could ever get bored as a search marketer.

3) Interesting history. I watched 28 up the other day, a documentary about the interviews of a handful of people on their 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th birthdays. I would love to see some research body do this for search marketing. How can you predict where it will go? It’s driven by part legacy, part innovation, part perspective and part sheer will.

2) Relative newness of the discipline. Traditional marketing and advertising have tried and true practices and standards. Search marketing is finally becoming standardized, but as new strategies emerge we are challenged to work them into the search marketing mix.

1) The people. Search marketers are by nature, exciting, innovative, interesting creatures. They are the first to share their new findings and the last to disparage. They are some of my favorite people on the planet.

Thank you to the following:

My children, Marcus & Taylor for putting up with my travel, my crazy schedule, having to share my home office with your music room before we had a real office and for accompanying me to California many times to go to Disneyland;)
Dallas & Roxanne for helping make the family schedule work
My parents and family for helping me through the good times and the bad times, I love you
My friends for their support (and martinis)
The nay sayers for teaching me the value of perseverance
Dave Edwards for great business advice
My co-workers for their faith that we were working towards something special
Avery Dennison for the opportunity to work with such a fantastic company
Print and Mail Center for exploring the unknown together
Cathedral Ridge Winery for coming back;)
EZkem Lab Services for being a great collaborator
Vineyardview for teaching me that I love search marketing and I hate running a B & B;)
Copper West Properties for your patience and faith
Swaddlekeeper for the cutest product ever
Hitchsource for your innovation
Monster.com for making me your PR person and hooking me up
Kiplinger Magazine, Glamour Magazine and The Oregonian for the great articles
SEMPO for creating a standard for the industry
SEMPDX for creating a local membership of search marketers, for making me an Advisory Board member, for the trip to Chicago, for the speaking gig at SearchFest, to your board members (Todd, Ben, Scott, all) for their great mentoring and mostly for being such a great group of professionals

I am grateful. Here’s to another 10 years!

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