Sometimes, you look around, and suddenly you have a real company! And you realize that you need to take a step back and make sure you’re focused on your vision and why you’re investing so much time and energy. That’s exactly what I’ve done and what you’re seeing with the new site. Welcome!

When I was at Google, I realized that organizations needed education and data about how to operate within our searching culture, and that’s why I was so passionate about building Webmaster Central. Post-Google, I’ve remained passionate about that (it’s why I wrote Marketing the Age of Google — you don’t write books to get rich!) and Nine By Blue has been all about helping organizations improve their sites’ technical architecture and overall content and audience engagement strategy to better take advantage of unpaid search.

But it’s not enough. Organizations need a methodology: a clear process. You need comprehensive education and resources, in-depth training, and you need data – both to measure your search efforts and to pinpoint what issues to tackle first. I talked to and looked at specific issues for literally thousands of site owners while I was at Google, but post-Google, I’ve had the opportunity to dive in much deeper with companies and begin to understand the obstacles that go well beyond 302 redirects where 301s should be and keyword research that shows searchers are looking for “cute cat videos” when the site is full of “cute kitten videos”.

Companies have silos and have to find ways to work together well. Technology departments need to know not only what issues exist, but how to prioritize them within the larger needs of the organization. Is fixing that 302 redirect more important than fixing the broken checkout button on the shopping cart? (Well, probably not.) What is the impact? How do we change the process so that we don’t have to keep fixing the same problem every launch?

The idea behind the name Nine By Blue is that organizations can take numbers (the amazing amount of data available online) and mix in a bit of color (you are looking to connect with real people after all) and build something real and long-lasting that both your audiences and search engines love. Our new logo (created by our haiku-writing graphic designer, Ally) reflects that.

We’ll continue to help organizations improve site architecture and content strategy, but we’re now focusing more time on providing comprehensive educational resources and training, helping organizations improve process, and on providing data. We’ve developed custom reporting that incorporates data from server logs, search engine webmaster tools, and analytics to both monitor progress and identify key obstacles to search success. You need a search blueprint and to that end, we’ve developed a methodology for incorporating search into an organization and for helping you determine ROI and prioritization.

Our first step is launching this site. Watch the learning center as we begin building up resources there. And if you’re interested in training or checking out our reporting, please let me know! Here at Nine By Blue, we’re excited about the changes, and we hope that you join us change the world of search engine optimization so that it becomes integrated in development, marketing, and product strategy.