Helping deserving brands achieve exponential business success through search.
Indianapolis-based Slingshot SEO is a leader in the search engine optimization field. The company was founded in 2006 by three high school buddies who had unique after schools jobs. Instead of delivering pizza, and before Search Engine Optimization was even an industry, Kevin, Aaron, and Jeremy were building websites on their favorite automobiles and ranking them highly on the most prominent search engines of the era.
Before high school was over the founders even made websites for local realtors, such as isellindy.com, and ranked them highly for location-specific real estate keywords. After graduating college in 2003, Jeremy went to work for his father’s business, NewPro, a plant container manufacturer and distributor. At the time, NewPro was still suffering from the 9/11 recession. Jeremy was able to turn the business around using search engine optimization. Before long, business associates were asking Jeremy to do for them what he had done for his father’s business.
Jeremy left his father’s business and contacted Kevin and Aaron to “get the band back together” and form Slingshot SEO in the winter of 2006.
With record revenue, success and growth, Slingshot SEO has built one of the country’s top organic SEO firms in their six-year history with the mission of helping clients refine their online presence for maximum search engine friendliness while leveraging proprietary software and processes to dramatically increase search visibility.
Fast Facts:
- Professional strategic consulting and SEO execution services
- Based in Indianapolis, IN
- Founded in 2006 by Zionsville High School friends Kevin Bailey, Jeremy Dearringer and Aaron Aders
- FTEs – 85+
Timeline
2012: A Shifting Landscape
2012 was a year in which the SEO industry underwent dynamic change. The growing shift towards inbound marketing – the combination of search, social media and content – reached a tipping point, and Slingshot SEO responded.
By evolving our service offerings to meet the demands of the modern enterprise marketer, we were able to stay ahead of the curve while once again being named to the Inc. 500 list at #136.
Slingshot SEO was also named Fastest Growing Private Company in Central Indiana and honored as one of the Best Places to Work in Indiana.
Many of our employees were featured speakers at events like the ExactTarget Connections Conference, the Infinitive Digital Brainfest, HighEdWeb, Econsultancy Digital Cream and Miva Merchant.
2011: Inc. 500
The year 2011 was a great year for Slingshot SEO. The team was thrilled to be named No. 58 on Inc. Magazine’s Annual List of 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies based onits three-year revenue growth rate of 3,596.8 percent.
Slingshot SEO introduces its new delivery system, the CLASS methodology.
To keep up with its growing client base, Slingshot SEO opens new sales offices in California, Florida, New York and Texas to better serve all regions of the United States.
In May 2011, Slingshot SEO receives incentives from the state of Indiana and city of Indianapolis to help fortify its growth. And Slingshot SEO earns recognition from industry peers when it is awarded the TechPoint Mira Award for Excellence, Innovation and Contribution to Indiana’s Tech Economy.
2010: Growth Takes Off
2010 marks a massive growth spurt of talent and business at Slingshot SEO as its reputation spreads. Slingshot SEO is proud to be named among the “Top Companies to Watch in Indiana” bythe Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Purdue University in Association with the Edward Lowe Foundation.
Clients: 114, Employees: 54
2008-2009: Change of Focus and Venue
In 2008, the company begins to evolve. In order to better serve its clients, Slingshot decides to shift its core values from SEO, web development and design to a sole focus on SEO.
At the end of 2008, the Slingshot team realizes that if it wants to impress a big potential client, the smelly warehouse was not going to cut it. In one weekend, the founders sign a lease for their current headquarters in Indianapolis. They fill it with borrowed furniture, potted plants (using those commercial pots sold by Jeremy’s dad) and artwork, and hire a waitress from a nearby restaurant to play receptionist.
That same year, Slingshot SEO takes an innovative approach to a corporate America standard: They implement a 4-day work week. Slingshot’s team works 10-hour days instead of the typical 8-hour work day. Each Friday, the employees spend their time researching SEO, recharging and building their dedication to the field.
2008 - Clients: 148, including its first 2 enterprise clients, Employees: 9
2009 - Clients 2009: 28, Employees: 18
2006-2007: The Band Gets Back Together
Slingshot SEO is born.
After multiple businesses plead for Jeremy to do for their businesses what he had done for his father’s, Jeremy makes the tough decision to leave the family business and strike off on his own to build a search engine optimization company. Jeremy’s father, a fellow entrepreneur and creative wordsmith, supports the decision and comes up with an edgy name for the new business, Slingshot SEO. A fitting name for a company built to ‘slingshot’ brands to the top of search engines.
After completing his degree in Biology at Indiana University, Aaron reconnects with Jeremy and decides to burn somes time before entering medical school working with Jeremy to build a website for Slingshot’s first customer, Thomas French Fine Art, a Midwest fine art dealer.
On a weekend home from his intellectual property strategy consulting job in Chicago Kevin runs into Jeremy and Aaron at a party in Indianapolis. After catching up they tell Kevin that the website optimization they did in high school has never been more relevant and invite him to join the company. After a month evaluating the SEO industry, Kevin decides to join Slingshot. He develops a formal business plan and pricing model while Aaron drafts the beta version of their proprietary SEO campaign management software.
To the chagrin of his mother, Aaron soon informs the med school he was planning on attending that he will be rejecting their acceptance to build a business.
During this time, Slingshot’s core services focus on search engine optimization, web development, design.
Slingshot SEO sets up shop on the second floor of a warehouse in Zionsville, Ind. The nondescript office consists of 10 guys, two rooms, one bathroom and zero windows. According to Jeremy, “It smelled like dude.”
2006 - Clients: 2, Employees: 3
2007 - Clients: 13, Employees: 9
1998-2004: The Beginning
1998: Kevin Bailey, a sophomore at Zionsville Community High School, is on bed rest for a month with a punctured lung due to an accident on his dirt bike. Laid up with time to kill, Kevin creates a webpage all about his favorite automobile — the Dodge Viper. He sells ad space on the site and uses fundamental SEO techniques (before the world defined them as such) to earn some extra cash; the site soon ranks above Chrysler’s corporate website.
After hearing Kevin talk about earning $800 a month with affiliate banner ads on his website, high school pals Jeremy Dearringer and Aaron Aders eyes “lit up like Christmas trees.” They decide to build their own websites on their favorite automobiles as well: Jeremy picks the Hummer, while Aaron chooses the Ford Mustang. It doesn’t take long before all three websites are ranking on the first pages of the most prominent search engines of the era, earning the three the Taco Bell money they so desperately need.
1999: With college money in mind the three entrepreneurs decide to take the knowledge they’ve acquired building hobby websites and form a web development on optimization firm, Dreamworks Interactive Web Design. The company builds websites primarily for local realtors and ranks them on the first page of Yahoo for keywords, such as Indianapolis Real Estate and Indy Real Estate.
2000: The trio graduate from high school; they go separate ways to college and pursue different career paths.
2003: Jeremy graduates from Purdue University and begins working for his father’s wholesale plant container company, NewPro Containers.
2004: After a less than stellar sales year at NewPro, Jeremy begins using search engine optimization techniques to increase NewPro’s website traffic. In short order, traffic increases rapidly from 30 visits per month to 500 per month and later to 17,000 monthly.
Other businesses notice Jeremy’s success with SEO. After assisting them with web development and SEO, Jeremy realizes the obvious: He should start his own business.