2000 was the year the Internet came of age

2000 - This was the year it all changed. It was taking up to three months to get new websites into search engines, add URL functions simply did not do the task. Companies were paying good money for websites and optimisation and we were quoting 3 to 6 months for indexing!!

Websites that were already in the index were flying, we worked in vertical markets as it was easier, but there were problems, this was now the era of the expensive website that didn’t work in search engines due to the design trend. Clients would not let you alter the website by adding content or text links, it was almost blasphemous to suggest it. This was the age of flash animation, JavaScript rollovers, animated gifs even music intro's!!!

There was only one way forward at that time, we decided to create flat html versions of our client websites, full of text and then get those listed in searches, easy!!
We found that you could now get indexed in search engines in a week but only if you had a link from a successful website inside the search engine database. The spiders followed the link and you were indexed from the inside out. Life was rosy, our client base was doubling every three months and most other agencies were still waiting months to get people listed.

We had it cracked and the world was our oyster In addition we already had realised getting listed in the OPD would boost your rankings and so all our website 'clones' were entered and added. We thought that our knowledge was supreme and that this was the way forward, ethical SEO was starting to rear its head though!