Searchology's innovative approach to digital marketing and commitment to transparency have earned them a spot on the list of the top Most Innovative Digital Marketing Companies in the USA for 2023. They have been recognized for bringing truth and transparency to digital marketing since 2009.
Searchology was founded in 2009 with the primary mission to provide truth, transparency, and honesty for all digital marketing-related things.
They are not a typical agency. Being a small team makes them nimble, responsive, and proactive. They have done away with funneled departments and usual bureaucracies that hamper many larger agencies. And that’s what separates them apart.
They specialize in several services:
- Paid Search
- Digital transformations
- SEO
- Content creation, ideation, and distribution
- Local Search and SEO
- Tracking/reporting/and digital analysis
- Social media – paid and natural
- Internet reputation management
- Digital marketing and strategy
- Website design/user experience [UE/UX]
A visionary founder with big contributions to the industry
The founder of Searchology, Alton J. Duderstadt II, has over 20 years of digital marketing experience, equating to over 40,000 hours in nearly every business vertical imaginable.
Alton J. Duderstadt II’s biggest contributions have come from ideation that never transferred to his bank account. Several examples are rolling up, packaging, and offering local listings and prominent local listing pages in the early 2000s. He worked for a Chicago-based internet marketing company. He provided the framework and idea for selling IYPs (Internet Yellow Pages) and full reporting and managed services around this type of localized SEO. Unfortunately, the parent company took the idea and sold it to a company that would eventually help create bundled local listings and associated reporting suites. Companies like WhiteSpark, BirghtLocal, and other local listing companies would not have existed without the original idea of packaging them back in the early 2000s.
Other contributions include his tenure at Columbia College Chicago as an adjunct professor of Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, and Social Media for Business. From 2011 to 2015, Alton shared his knowledge of digital marketing with graduate and undergraduate students at Columbia. Several of his past students eventually joined the ranks of digital marketing experts. At the time, it was one of the first, if not the first, college-level program in the United States.
The Future of Industry and AI
Alton J. Duderstadt shares with us how he sees the future of industry and AI:
I’ve long attempted to withhold from trying to predict the future of digital. However, we are in a unique time of crisis and opportunity. ChatGPT, Google, Microsoft, and others hold the Sword of Damocles over both the future of search engine marketing and humanity at the same time. AI will change the future of search, how individuals use search and blur the lines between truth, reality, and humanity.
For the entirety of human existence, great works of literature, art, philosophy, and science have been driven by great women and men. Now, AI threatens to turn great achievements into artificially manufactured works. The real question is, how can we, as humans, control the emergence of a technology that is hardly understood and driven by those without the willingness to control outcomes?
On the one hand, AI (artificial intelligence) may provide us with unique opportunities to improve the future of mankind via breakthroughs in everything from medicine, technology, science, and much more. On the other, big tech companies have long been known to ‘move fast and break things.’ The future of SEO, digital marketing, paid search, and all aspects of our current existence now depends on the necessity of restraint, prudent decision-making, and judicious rollout of future iterations of AI technology.
As for the future of Searchology and digital marketing… we must and will adapt to new technologies, AI, and, more importantly, what we give back to Internet users. While Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other primary search engines control what we see… those that market for clients fulfill search engine results pages. Thus, what we do as digital marketers are just as important for transparency, quality content, and honesty as it pertains to what the Internet users eventually consume. The burden of our collective future, as it pertains to digital, will eventually rest on the integrity of both BIG Tech and what we, as marketers, put into the Internet.
Lastly, as history shows, those that can embrace the future, and future tech, are bound to be rewarded. The immediate impact for digital will be on search engine optimization, content creation, content distribution, audience targeting, and digital advertising. AI will and can be used for all of the aforementioned, and while many will use this new[er] technology to improve search engine results, the challenge will be getting clients to accept and adapt to these technologies as well. There is and will remain, barriers to entry, and much will rely on how well WE, as experts in the digital space, are willing to educate and be transparent about what lies ahead.
Knowledge is power
Searchology has long kept on the bleeding edge of technology and education. Their primary goal is to keep their clients abreast of the “AI Revolution,” Google Algorithm updates, and other changes in digital marketing. While on its face, it may not seem like a BIG plan, but based on experience, some digital agencies choose to keep clients in the dark or, at the very least, at a great distance from the reality of our changing space. Knowledge is power. Thus, the more knowledge agencies retain without sharing… the more perceived (real or imaged) control they can keep on their client base. Thus, the real benefit to Searchology clients and the real movement into the future is and must be based on information, education, planning, and action.
The approach that drives success
Their approach is a simplification. They simplify their process, workflow, client services, reporting, and educational approach. Streamlining their systems and implementation saves time, resources, and sanity.
Clients find their approach much easier to digest, understand, and interpret based on our straightforward approach.
Irresectable value proposition
Their value proposition is treating their clients as they want to be treated.
They do not require extensive contracts or withhold critical information from their clients for any reason. Some agencies hold admin access to various digital properties and channels. That can make transparency and accountability vague and translucent. Further, they understand the better their performance, the more food they can put on the tables of their clients and, thus… themselves.
Partnerships are not necessarily their primary propelling drive of innovation. Education, relentless attention to updates, algorithm changes, and, more importantly, AI. As such, they consistently remain on the cutting edge of what they can use to drive results for our clients.
Partnerships do play a role in driving new opportunities, of course. However, those partnerships fall into two primary categories. 1. Tools and reporting systems. 2. Trusted partnerships with additional service partners where and as needed.