Insights from Nebo

SEO is changing… again.

But this time, it’s not just a tweak to the algorithm or a new best practice. It’s a fundamental shift in the way people find information in the first place.

For the past 25 years, search has followed the same basic playbook. You typed something into Google or Bing, scanned a list of links, snippets, videos, and “people also ask boxes”, and clicked your way to an answer. Brands optimized to rank. Consumers skimmed. The interface evolved, but the underlying model stayed the same.

Alysa Liu was one of the top figure skaters in the world before announcing her retirement at age 16 in 2022—she was burnt out, overworked, and wanted to experience normal life as a normal girl. Homeschooled and isolated from friendships and peers from the age of 5, she wanted to make friends, get her driver’s license, and simply “do other stuff.” 

The skating world was shocked when she announced her retirement. And all of her competitors took a sigh of relief.

In 2004, a little company called NeboWeb was born. We opened our first office on Mitchell Street in downtown Atlanta, starting with nothing but hope and optimism that we could get our business off the ground and make great work in the process. Facebook didn’t exist yet. Gmail was an invite-only beta program. Shrek 2 was at the top of the box office. We had a ton of passion and a little know-how. And we had no idea where the future would take us.  

The first Super Bowl I ever watched was the 2nd Super Bowl rematch of the Cowboys versus Steelers. The Cowboys lost. My toddler heart was broken, and I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen.

I loved the Dallas Cowboys. Each year, I’d circle Cowboys and Steelers figures in the JCPenney catalog before Christmas, hoping Santa would put them under the tree (along with other potential Cowboys presents). 

Every day, my toy Cowboys defeated the toy Steelers on my bedroom floor.

We tend to view history as a straight line of progress: an evolution from primitive to modern. But, new technology often causes us to retrieve past forms of culture in unexpected ways.

In the mid-70s, philosopher Marshall McLuhan proposed the Law of Reversal, arguing that when a medium is pushed to its extreme limit, it doesn’t just break — it flips into its opposite. 

Tuesday, January 22, 2008. “Low” by Flo Rida and T-Pain was number one on the charts and dominated the speakers of the old Nebo office. MySpace was defending its turf from a new website called Facebook, and we were all logging out of AIM and signing up for GChat. 

Businesses hadn’t made it to Facebook yet. But if Nebo had a status, it would have been this: “Nebo is about to be changed forever.” Because that day, a brand new intern walked into the office for her first day of work. 

Enter Jenn Vickery.