Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 7)

Sramana: What role do inbound links to a site really play? There seems to be ambiguity and controversy around link-building techniques. Mike Mothner: You can have 10 experts in a room and get 10 different answers, hopefully with some overlap. Fundamentally, the best links are those which are not negotiated or traded for.

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 6)

Sramana: In general, what metrics do you track and optimize against? Mike Mothner: We always want to have a metric to use to track effectiveness. That metric will vary from client to client. We can track when somebody purchases a product, when somebody fills out a lead form, phone calls by using different numbers for

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 5)

Sramana: When you do get a list that includes all of the long tail keywords, how do you prioritize that list? How do you manage lists that have tens of thousands of keywords? Mike Mothner: We group keywords semantically. We will focus on the major keywords individually which are determined by search volume. We will

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 4)

Sramana: As you were going through this process, you likely found there was a multivariate optimization algorithm that could apply. How do you feed that algorithm? How do you decide which keywords should even be considered in the beginning? Mike Mothner: That stage of the process involves creating a net of keywords. We call that

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 3)

Sramana: How much did you charge your first client? Mike Mothner: Our fee back then was $250 a month to manage her budget. Her budget was $1,000 a month.

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 2)

Sramana: So you graduated from Dartmouth, turned down Goldman Sachs, and decided to focus on Wpromote. What was your next move? Mike Mothner: It was June of 2003, and I moved back to L.A. I had a good idea what I wanted to do to expand Wpromote. I was using PPC to drive an organic

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Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business: WPromote CEO Mike Mothner (Part 1)

Michael Mothner is the founder and CEO of search engine marketing firm Wpromote. The company has maintained over 2,700% growth from 2003 through 2007. Michael has a degree in economics and computer science from Dartmouth College. Sramana: Mike, what is your story leading up to Wpromote? Where are you from? Mike Mothner: I am 29

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From 0 To 31 Million Dollars With Search Engine Marketing & Inventory Financing: Kim Pedersen, CEO of 1000 Bulbs (Part 6)

Sramana: In 2004, after you received inventory financing, were you still getting 80% to 90% of your business through pay-per-click marketing? Kim Pedersen: Yes. That is not true today, but at that time it was. Search engine marketing is key for us today. We take 99% of all sales orders on the Internet today. We

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