With 2026 fast approaching, we, like many others, have taken the opportunity to look back at our year. In general, 2025 was a lively year for us. We successfully pivoted our approach amongst the latest AI Search and LLM hype, all whilst onboarding a brand new service - brand PR - and updating our proposition to match. SEO has received so much more attention this year than it has in the past 5+ years, which has been a great resurgence for the industry, but comes with its challenges.

Starting The Year On A High

2024 was a decent year for the agency, and as we headed into the new year, we knew we had to plan for the agency’s future. Some would say a new strategy and a new chapter for NOVOS. We called it NOVOS 2.0. At the time, we said:

But not all plans go to plan. SEO changed way faster than our original strategy accommodated for, meaning that we had to think on our feet and pivot to stay ahead of - dare we say it - AI Search. That didn’t just mean changing our SEO approach; it also meant changing the way we presented our PR services, whilst ensuring the agency’s day-to-day operations remained sound during this critical time.

Sam, Co-Founder and Managing Director of the agency, said:

"You outline plans to expand services, and then everything changes. We’d earmarked “GPTSearch” for the end of next year, but this technology is moving fast, and luckily, the size of the agency combined with our specialism means we’re set up perfectly to pivot quickly and adapt - we’re very proud of how open-minded and creative the team has been with regards to this new world of SEO.

New services require new investments, so balancing this while maintaining strong profit margins for the Employee Ownership model has been very challenging, but we can look back at the last 4-5 months in particular as a big success. In summary, a challenging start to the year, but a rewarding year-end."

The Digits That Defined Our Year

Numbers aren’t everything, but we still enjoy looking back at where we are now vs. at the start of the year. From an agency perspective, a lot has changed.

We launched our Substack at the end of 2024 and have grown it to 700+ followers made up of marketing professionals from the world’s biggest eCommerce brands, including Asda, Elf Beauty, Garmin and Oh Polly.

Our vision for our Substack was to cut through the LinkedIn noise and give eCom leaders long-form content to actually learn and be able to answer their boss’s questions. Highlights include:

But that’s not all. In a snapshot, 2025 has been one of our strongest years yet, with significantly lower client churn, record-high hiring, and more sponsorships than ever before:

15 new clients onboarded
1,201 new community members
20 Substack articles written
4 global events sponsored
20 client meals hosted by NOVOS
2 client socials with 11 different eCom brands that attended
337,361 messages sent by our team

Our PR Wins

In 2025, we built 1,803 backlinks and secured 1,800 pieces of coverage across a range of high-authority publications, achieving an average domain rating of 65 and an average Relevancy Score of 63. MSN, Newsbreak and Yahoo UK were our top publications of the year, with our highest coverage in February, March, and May.

A Year of SERP-Rising Moments

Our SEO team continued to push the boundaries of search throughout the year, too, and welcomed two new team members to support the department's growth ahead of 2026. In fact, 100,160 Slack messages were shared across 126 channels. The team have also raised 790 technical tickets, completed 426 content briefs and created 228 SEO reports. Wild.

For now, it’s over and out for 2025. Our team will be taking a well-deserved break from Friday 19th December, and will return the first full week of January.

See you on the flip side!