Over the course of 10 years you can: create the sequel to Zombieland, bloom one singular corpse flower, build The Colosseum, or, develop one of Adelaide’s most successful digital marketing agencies. According to Jeff Bezos: “All overnight success takes about 10 years”, which feels about right. With many successes, amazing clients and life-changing experiences behind us, it’s easy to forget what went into getting us here.
We’ve gone from a team of 1 (hi Woj), to our first office in Modbury…
To an amazing team at our bigger digs in Prospect…
To our thriving team in the heart of Adelaide’s CBD.
So here are some learnings, accomplishments and straight-up shenanigans that have occurred in our 10 years of life.
Duplicate content is like the Olsen Twins
Over ten years we’ve been known to get a thing or two wrong, but we’ve gotten even more right. The first cab off the rank with a humble blog in 2011 speaks to the importance of limiting duplicate content.
‘Think of duplicate content like it’s one of the Olsen twins’
This has aged like fine wine and remains true to this day, a mere 10 years on.
“Google is looking for these twins and trying to work out which one is the better, more relevant and original twin (sometimes triplet, quad, etc). Which is it? Mary-Kate or Ashley? And… don’t forget about all the impersonators out there!”
Have a read and let us know your thoughts – how do you think this has evolved over the years?
A new brand is born
People LOVE cute robots – we’ve learned that over the years with top 10 cutest robots still being one of our highest ranking pages, a measly 9 years after publishing! The votes are closed but the search volume is high, and Wall-E took out the top position, but some writers might say that Gir was robbed…
Inbound Marketing Town officially opened
We opened Inbound Marketing Town, it’s like Neighbours except instead of Toadie you have Rand Fishkin next door. Inbound Marketing Town is our favourite place to live (be it in our own minds), where your friendly neighbours are not only good friends, but also provide a vital basic function to get you ranking on SERPs.
The Interview Round-Up – The best of the best in digital marketing
Over the years, we have interviewed some of the industry’s best and brightest! From SEO specialists to festival producers, the world of digital marketing spans far and wide! Here’s a round-up of some of the greats!
- Mike King
The first of them all! The interview that set it all in motion. We have a lot to thank Mike King for chatting with us at SMX Sydney and again in 2017 to discuss how he impacted the entire industry with iPullRank. Not only did he graciously lend us his time, but he’s also a treasure trove of information on all things SEO and hip hop.
- Rand Fishkin
How do we begin to describe this powerhouse? It was an honour to sit down and chat with Rand Fishkin,CEO & co-founder of SEOmoz to chat about about how he grew Moz to the top and again to discuss how to be transparent in an opaque industry. Rand Fishkin is one of the most insightful, intelligent and interesting minds in the business.
- Larry Kim
One of the most recognisable faces in digital marketing, Larry Kim is the founder of the pay-per-click management service WordStream and content creator extraordinaire. He’s been published in The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Forbes and Inc, it’s safe to say he knows what he’s talking about.
- Wil Reynolds
You could almost get away with calling Wil Reynolds the Robin Hood of Google. This SEO/Analytics genius fills his brain with as much business-building information as possible and passes it onto the people to make digital business growth possible for all. Without mixing his words, he talks about how he got to where he is today and being an accidental CEO. [He coined the phrase RCS (Real Company Sh*t.)]
- Lewis Howes
This is an important one! After an injury forced him to leave his professional NFL career behind, Lewis Howes has become a New York Times bestselling author, a founder of a multi-million dollar business, and the host of one of the world’s biggest podcasts – the School of Greatness.
- Tim Soulo
We met with AHREFs Chief Marketing Officer and Product Advisor, Tim Soulo, in Chiang Mai of all places to talk about everything from his times as a DJ all the way to social plugins. He’s one of the industry greats when it comes to content marketing and a master of SEMRush.
- Oli Gardner
Unbounce co-founder, Oli Gardner isn’t voted the best speaker at almost every event he keynotes for no reason. This chat summarises his extraordinary, intelligent and chaotic presence perfectly. It’s so fun you almost forget you’re learning. (He knows everything about landing pages!)
- Nathalie Nahai
Nathalie Nahai is THE web psychologist, and author of “Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion” where we learn to know who we’re targeting, to communicate persuasively and to sell with integrity. Nathalie talks about the fundamentals of human behaviour and how you can apply this knowledge to get more bang for your buck.
- Jon Henshaw
Jon Henshaw is a legend in the SEO world so it was no shock that this interview fell over two parts; some things are just too good to be condensed! Part 1 covered amazing things like what it’s like to start a digital agency and what digital empathy means. Part 2 took us through the highs and lows of agency life and what makes SEO so special.
- Peter Meyers (Dr Pete)
“I’m not going to sit here and say content is king or sugar coat it and pretend that’s the only thing, but if you have nothing to link to and nothing to talk about then you’re dead. You have to have something.” – If you’re looking to understand where SEO is heading, Dr Pete, the creator of Mozcast, is a treasure trove of information!
Plus even more industry greats over the years:
- Paul Shapiro
- Geraldine DeRuiter
- Marty Weintraub
- Ella Huisman
- Melanie Spring
- Garry Illyes
- Ian Lurie
- Jon Cooper
- Paddy Moogan
- Jason Acidre
- Gianluca Fiorelli
We’ve told some incredible stories
It’s true when people say marketing is all about storytelling. It’s about what you weave for your customers, how you educate them and the journey you take them through your site. But sometimes, it’s just literal stories.
An online marketing Christmas carol takes us through the past, present and future of online marketing, with some ace illustrations to match.
Speaking of illustrations
At Kwasi, we work hard to make sure we’re the best in the business. That means world-class technical SEO specialists, copywriters, social media experts… and the best illustrators you’ve ever seen – Rory really proved to be the best in the business when it came to graphic design!
Back in 2013, a plea was put out to Google: let us digital copywriters write for you AND humans – we want high ranking keywords that can also be used in a sentence! Google & grammar has been a tumultuous relationship – it’s an exercise in total creativity to get these words in a working format – and it might have broken us a little. So we guess we’ll thank Google for now, because if it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have been blessed with this stunning example of apostrophe use.
We ran a marathon or two
And we had some kicker shirts for the occasion! Team activities have been integral to our culture from day dot, and if we can work an SEO pun into the process while we’re at it? Well, you’re just ticking all of our boxes.
We’ve had a lot of good chats
Have you listened to our podcast? We set out to figure out, what are some ways we currently try to understand and share the feelings of the person on the other side of the screen? As digital marketers we fill our brains with tips and tricks to beat the system, but what if we endeavored to just… Learn?
It started with a simple mind map.
From here we built The Wojcast – What Is Digital Empathy?
Have a listen and then answer us this: What are you doing in your digital marketing efforts to understand and share the feelings of the person on the other side of the screen?
We’ve grown our passion for education
From day one, we’ve been passionate about educating our clients, the more you know the more we can achieve together. We’ve educated businesses and future marketers through conferences like Search Marketing Summit, Big Digital Adelaide and co-founded professional meet-ups; workshops and business events; guest lectured at Flinders University, TafeSA and through the Speakers in Schools Program PLUS Kwasi’s own internship program.
We’ve strived for education for ourselves too, attending Mozcon, Unbounce’s CTAConf, Loves Data, Klaviyo Boston, Chiang Mai SEO Conference, Adobe 99U, Big Digital Adelaide, World Domination Summit & Google, Hubspot and many many more!
Hit new business highs
We’ve gone from strength to strength over the last 10 years, starting off as a small one-man-band and growing to become a team of 14 serving businesses around the country! We do what we do because we are passionate about digital marketing and helping businesses grow, but sometimes it’s nice to be acknowledged. Like in 2017 when we were recognised as being one of the top 25 fastest growing businesses in Adelaide!
We became Kwasi.com
Sometimes one of the best things about a business is you never know what weird and wonderful things are around the corner. 4 years ago, our founder, Woj received an email of a lifetime. Rich Kwasniewski saw a great opportunity to pass on his stellar domain kwasi.com, which had been in his possession since 1999! He found more use in the URL richkwasniewski.com moving forward, and his site is still a delight. Photo below for posterity.
Our sage advice has stood the test of time
In our passion for educating, we’ve committed to bringing you the best tips and top news for digital marketing from the internet. We don’t like to beat our chest but we’ve given out some excellent advice over the years. Here are some articles that still ring true today!
- How Inbound Marketers Can Harness the Power of Neuromarketing
- How to Exploit Eye Tracking Technology to Improve User Experience
Our article hall of fame:
- Which of these Clickbait Headlines Have Won Pulitzers? The Answers Will Shock You
- 7 Futuristic Predictions From 1968 That Came True
- A Brief History of Scent Technology
We have loved every minute of working with our local, national and international clients and have become a go-to expert in our space. We want every brand’s website to be seen as the foundation for sustainable success and inbound marketing, and we want to have fun while doing it!
Thank you to all of the clients we’ve met, friends we’ve made and out-of-this-world experiences we’ve been a part of along the way. It’s been the best ride we could have imagined! We can’t wait to see what the next 10 brings. Thanks to all our clients, past and present who have made this possible!
