OrangeSoda Internet Marketing Blog

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Don’t tell anyone, but until now, OrangeSoda has probably not kept the fire code! We keep growing until we literally ran out of space. We got very close with our coworkers as we tried to accommodate new employees. The SEO team ended up taking over a conference room that made it look a little like we worked at a bank. We almost ceded into our own company.

Today that all changed. OrangeSoda moved offices about 5 minutes north or Orem to American Fork, Utah. We have sparkling new cubicles which are so roomy. There are balloons, the walls are painted orange, and the atmosphere this morning is festive as we set up at our new office. When we started planning the move, the office was much bigger than we needed. Now we almost fill it.

It’s great to be a part of a company that is growing!

OrangeSoda is pleased to announce a strategic marketing alliance with Google as a Google’s AdWords™ reseller. Google works more closely with their resellers help them optimize Google AdWords accounts for small or local businesses.

We manage paid search advertising for our clients on Google (answer to what is Google AdWords?), Yahoo, and MSN. This is one of the most efficient ways to advertise because your ad is shown when people are actively searching. Managing a campaign is a lot of work and to perform well you must constantly test and advertise (more on this in a future post).
To become a reseller, a business must meet Google’s requirements, including:

• Employ a direct sales force that sells to local businesses
• Have existing relationships with at least 500 customers
• Demonstrate experience servicing and supporting local businesses
• Share Google’s desire to provide a high quality user and advertiser experience

OrangeSoda is already a Google authorized company and this is a level up from that designation. Our clients will benefit from the extra resources we can utilize to maximize their campaigns.

According to Search Engine Land…”The level of support once one becomes an AdWords Authorized Reseller is fantastic…”

The biggest affiliate marketing conference - Affiliate Summit - was held in Las Vegas in February. I’ve attended several Affiliate Summit conferences as an affiliate, but I missed this one.

OrangeSoda had a booth there and we were interviewed. Jon talks about the niche that OrangeSoda fills in the marketplace. Watch the video here:

OrangeSoda has a new partner. DoodleKit, is a free website builder that offers small businesses quality web sites that don’t require high tech skills like programming. The free sites are great for hobbies or people who just need a web site. If you want to be found in search engines, their business packages are optimized for online marketing.

Once a web site is built, the next question a business owner usually asks is how to market their web site so they’re found in search engines. I spoke with Heath Huffman, DoodleKit’s Co-founder, about search engine optimization. This is the number one request from their customers - where can they get help with SEO.

Here are some SEO features that DoodleKit offers their business customers to help optimize sites for search engines:

• Image alt tags - which are words that describe an image and therefore can be indexed by a search engine. It’s also valuable for search engine optimization when you can use keyword phrases to describe a graphic.
• Google Sitemap - DoodleKit has made it simpler to create a Google Sitemap according to Google’s specs.
• Search Engine Friendly URLS - rather than long or generic URLs, DoodleKit has made the URLs reflect the title of each page. Another chance to use keyword phrases you want to rank for.
• Built in analytics - so you can see what online marketing efforts are working and where your traffic is coming from.
• Meta tags - right now you can create unique meta data for your site. By next month you’ll be able to change the meta information for each page.

DoodleKit is just a few months old and will continue to integrate good SEO practices into their product.

Most of DoodleKit’s clients ask for additional expertise. That’s where OrangeSoda comes in. We can find the keywords that people are searching for and help your businesses rank higher for those words in search engines.

OrangeSoda also manages paid search campaigns priced for the small business. Google ads help you get immediate traffic to your web site (we also run ads on Yahoo and MSN). Here’s a helpful article on the difference between SEO and PPC.

Here’s the OrangeSoda press release.

The Kelsey Group recently blogged about the local business search marketing industry. As I’ll blog about in the next post, the local internet marketing market is growing even faster than expected. More local businesses are going online, shifting their marketing budgets, especially to paid search.

Here is some good news from search engine marketing companies that focus on small businesses:

• ReachLocal has a $305 million valuation based on a $55 million round of financing
• Privately funded OrangeSoda local internet marketing company signed on a new partner: “At the same time, Orem, Utah-based Orange Soda got on the map with Freedom Communications, the publisher of The Orange Country Register.” As we mentioned before, we also won an award as the top business in Utah County based on growth.
• New York-based Yodle got $12 million in funding this year.
• WebVisible, took in $12 million in new series B funding from Sutter Hill Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, an existing investor. WebVisible customers include AT&T, Earthlink and McClatchy.
• WebsiteBiz Internet marketing agency ranked as the 87th fastest growing private company in the Southeast region of the United States and is listed on Inc. Magazine’s 2007 Southeast 500.

Also, OrangeSoda’s CEO Jay Bean made the 2008 list of the vSpring Capital Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs, also known as the v|100. vSpring is a venture capital group that provides early growth funding. Looks like they haven’t put the full list on their web site yet, so find it here.

Jay Bean, OrangeSoda’s CEO told us the good news a few days ago:

“We are very excited that OrangeSoda was named the top Startup in Utah County last night as part of the UV 50 awards.

Utah Valley Business magazine researches and names the top businesses in Utah each year. This is a great achievement being named the top startup company out of the hundreds of companies they looked at in 2007.”

The picture is the more formal one, but I don’t have a copy of the best picture, you’ll have to see on the site. So picture our founders sitting with up at the table with bottles in their hands. No, not beer bottles - bottles of orange soda.

In the article Jay admits to drinking Mountain Dew, talked about how we give away Orange Schwinn bicycles, and how revenue has grown an astounding 12,000 percent in a year and a half.

OrangeSoda started and continue to focus on internet marketing for small businesses.

I wish I could grab the great photo they took but the picture on the site is chopped up into slices. I think we better call Utah Valley magazine and pitch them our services.

We’re excited to announce that Freedom Communications - the 12 largest media company, is partnering with OrangeSoda.

The partnership means Freedom will offer OrangeSoda’s internet marketing services to their clients. Freedom is based in Irvine, California has over 100 media companies in their portfolio.

Freedom’s clients include many newspapers, radio stations and Internet businesses. Some of those include: The Orange County Register (can you guess why we chose the Orange newspaper), five CBS, two ABC and one CW network affiliates.

Freedom owns several news and information web sites which will now have access to OrangeSoda’s SEO and PPC services aimed at small businesses. Our advanced reporting means businesses of all sizes can easily track the progress of their search engines and paid search campaigns.