New Decade, New Name: Propecta is Now Profound Strategy!

I’m excited to officially release the update we’ve been working on, in some ways, for years: We are now Profound Strategy!

It definitely hasn’t taken years to just update our name; this is about so much more. We’re refreshing our externals to reflect the amazing internal progress our team has made over the past few years.

As we sat down to realign our messaging and brand with the innovative ways we’re driving consistent, reliable, revenue-focused SEO growth for our partners, we realized just how far we’ve come. We have been creating and proving some industry-leading SEO strategies, processes, philosophies, and tools over the past few years. (And our clients have been reaping the rewards!)

What’s so exciting that inspired a whole new brand? I’m glad you asked.

1. There IS a path to reliable, scalable, predictable SEO growth.

It can be done!

For years (maybe even decades), SEO has felt, to many marketers, like a game of chance. There has been so much to keep track of—so many details and moving targets—that SEO has proven unpredictable and unreliable for many marketers.

Our team has worked with clients through many algorithm updates and industry shifts, but we’ve always done it with our eyes on Google’s ultimate goal: delivering the best results to users. That long-term planning has enabled us to drive immediate results while also perfecting an SEO strategy that, now, has proven to be the solution for creating reliable, scalable, and predictable SEO growth.

It’s a two-part strategy:

1. Take a fresh look at the foundational SEO. For a long time, technical SEO was the primary focus, and website audits generated long To Do lists. When we take a fresh look at those To Do Lists, however, many of those tasks are little more than busywork. There are a million things to “fix” on any given website, but most of them don’t result in real, measurable SEO gains. We are focused on the technical SEO tasks that really move the needle—the rest is little more than distraction.
2. Create the very best content, not just “optimized” content. The nature of SEO today is competitive. Creating SEO content that wins in organic search is about more than writing “great” posts and pages, and then “optimizing” them with keywords and link strategies. SEO content that creates new leads and qualified organic traffic has to be competitive: It has to be the best on the web.

Setting a firm foundation (without wasting resources on technical tasks that don’t really impact SEO results) and consistently producing content that’s better than the best, is the reliable path to predictable SEO growth.

2. Marketers have way too much SEO information to wade through.

SEO never sits still. From Hummingbird, to Panda and Penguin, to RankBrain and BERT and countless other Google algorithm updates—organic search has been on an evolutionary fast path since the beginning. That’s great for users, and exciting for those of us who have been involved since the early days, but it’s a hurdle for many digital marketers trying to get started with SEO.

There is so much going on in the world of SEO that volumes are written about how to do it well, but modern digital marketers don’t have that kind of time.

Because digital marketing in general has been expanding in every direction as well. With more channels to consider and more of the buyer’s journey in marketing’s territory, digital marketers are busier than ever.

From the established enterprise to the latest, ground-breaking startup, growth marketers need to create big results—and many already know that SEO offers better ROI than other marketing channels—but they don’t have time for a college course on SEO.

Busy marketers in 2020 need a partner they can trust to distill a decade or more of SEO experience and expertise into a few simple next steps. They need a revenue-focused ally who can cut through the noise and reveal the fastest path to revenue from their SEO efforts.

Profound Strategy consistently delivers reliable results.

In the past several years, so many digital agencies have stepped away from SEO because of the challenges and uncertainties. They’ve shifted focus to other channels that they felt were more reliable and scalable.

During the same time, we stepped away from other digital marketing and web dev projects in order to become laser focused on SEO. For years, our team has been consistently delivering exciting SEO growth for our clients. We’re not just smashing organic traffic expectations; we’re turning SEO into our clients’ most profitable channels by driving in-market, qualified organic traffic.

This global brand came to Profound Strategy asking if we could improve on their historical YoY organic traffic growth of 10%. We outlined an aggressive SEO content campaign strategy and started publishing content in March of that year. One year later, organic traffic was closing in on 70% growth!

Our modern SEO strategies are not just philosophies that work for some clients and projects—we see our processes work for every client, in every industry and niche. When we take an honest look at the state of SEO today, the foundational work required to create results, and the practices that deliver competitive SEO content, we can create customized strategies for each client that drive consistent, measurable, revenue-focused SEO results.

Profound worked alongside this client to add our Certified Content to their existing content engine. Our Certified Content is based off of extensive market and audience research, and drives exponentially more qualified organic traffic than other content the client was publishing.

And we’re ready to help more companies and brands drive organic growth with modern SEO strategies.

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to build tools, iron out processes, perfect strategies, and update messaging. We hit the ground running with several new client projects in the past two months, and we’re restarting our own content creation in order to share what we’ve learned!

But why change the name?

Every marketer knows that a name, in itself, is not what makes or breaks a brand. Slack, for example, is an awesome tool for work teams, but I probably never would have named a collaboration tool after the “slacker” on the team!

We came to the point, however, where we didn’t feel that our name was serving our team and our brand like it should. There’s some nostalgia in it for us, but it’s time to move on.

And with all of our internal growth and development over the past several years, it was definitely time for an outward-facing update that reflects how far we’ve come! As we’ve made plans to share our SEO insights and strategies with more clients and partners, we realized it was time to make a change.

How We Found Profound Strategy

As most marketers know, naming anything—a product, service, or entire company—is a process. We talked to several professional namers who taught us a lot and shared some really interesting insights. Of all the namers we interviewed, our team choose Mark Gunnion to lead us through the process because of his rich experience and clear process—and honestly, he is just a joy to work with.

If you having a naming project – whether for a company or a product – we strongly recommend Mark! He has packages ranging from simple and budget-friendly to complex and in-depth. You can learn more about his process and find contact information on his website.

One of the biggest things we learned about names, is that no name is going to jump off the page as amazing and perfect. A name can do many jobs for a company, and we needed to prioritize the jobs we wanted the name to do for us.

What jobs will the new name have, that it needs to do REALLY well? In working through Mark’s process, and as a result of multiple meetings with our stakeholders, we determined our name needed to:

1. Communicate itself and its spelling, by sound, on the first try.
2. Look, sound, and feel different from the competition.
3. Sound like it looks – especially since it lives largely online.
4. Not fight with our mission or branding.
5. Serve as a “shelf” in people’s minds, on which to stack positive associations.
6. Represent us, linguistically.
7. Project a tone and personality appropriate to our organization.
8. Differentiate us from the competition in an online search
9. Be flexible enough to serve as the company expands into different specialties, technologies, and opportunities.
10. Be beautiful.

This is not a complete list that every name needs to do for every company. Rather, these are the jobs we determined that a name needed to do for us.

As we dove in further, a few preferences about names themselves also surfaced. We wanted a name to:

• Be evocative — We didn’t want a name that is simply descriptive of our company. We didn’t want anything trendy.
• Use real words — We knew we didn’t want to make up another modern-sounding nonsense word.
• Reinforce our value — We needed a name that echoes how our clients and partners feel after working with us—that describes our value.

We looked at hundreds of words, concepts, and variations. I won’t bore you with the big list, but let me tell you, it was work! We also had our legal team review multiple options. Ultimately, we landed with what has become my absolute favorite: “Profound Strategy.” We feel that it evokes an appealing sentiment about where our team has come from, what we do, and our focus headed into the future.

We’ve been in the SEO space for a long time, and we’ve seen many agencies and marketers disappear. As we’ve continued to develop and hone winning strategies, we’ve noticed more and more that when we’re in the room with clients and partners, the perspective we bring is … well … profound.

The strategies and processes that our team bring to the table are practical, measurable, and future-oriented. They strike a chord with a lot of people, for which we’re grateful. Our clients see consistent results that make our contacts look good within their own organizations.

Is your SEO ready for 2020?

We’re just a couple weeks into the new year, and 2020 is already looking awesome.

First, because there finally is a clear path to reliable, scalable, and predictable SEO growth. We’ve charted it over and over again, and we’re looking forward to doing a lot more of it. We’ll be relaunching this space in order to share some insights that will drive your SEO strategy into a new decade.

Second, because our clients include some of the most talented, creative digital marketers out there. They’re too busy to learn SEO all over again, and Profound Strategy has developed campaigns and projects that plug right into whatever they’re doing. SEO in the era of A.I. algorithms and ever-increasing competition is no small task, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made simple.

So if you’re already working with our team, thanks for being awesome (and keep an eye on your mailbox). If you’re not, and you’re interested in what the path to reliable, scalable, predictable SEO growth might look like for your company, get in touch and we’ll set up a no-obligation call to talk about it.

Nate Dame

CEO and Founder

Nate is the founder and CEO of Profound Strategy, a results-oriented SEO consultancy trusted by forward-thinking companies, including a few of the world's largest B2B and technology brands. Profound Strategy builds holistic SEO strategies, supports internal teams, and offers full-service execution to create an organic search presence that generates significant revenue.

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