Why You Should Know Wpromote

Meet Mike Mothner, the founder and CEO of W-Promote, a full-service online marketing firm that serves about 2,000 clients across the world but mostly in the U.S., ranging from small local businesses all the way to Fortune 500 companies.

Who was your first client?

Mothner: Our first client that we helped with SEO and online marketing was a fingerprinting company, for people who need to get security clearance. Read More

Social Good Infographic

Being social and spreading the word isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A new graphic to show us how social media can lead to social action for social good.

“We came up with the concept of “Social Good: Taking Social Media to Social Action” because the fusion of entrepreneurship and social good is such an amazingly exciting trend. We wanted to shine the spotlight on these generous brands (some of which people might not already know about), and show exactly how much they have given back,” a spokesperson for Wpromote told What’s Trending by email. Read More

Mike Mothner SMW Advisor Interview

Michael Mothner is an advisor for SMWLA and along with his company Wpromote and ONEHOPE Wine is hosting the “Social Good” Party and presenting a panel surrounding Social Good: Taking Social Media to Social Action.

Michael is a serial entrepreneur and Internet pioneer, having founded his first software company at the age of fourteen. In 2001, out of his dorm room at Dartmouth College, Michael founded Wpromote, Inc. where he is currently the President and CEO. Michael is an active member of the online marketing community and was featured by Inc Magazine as one of “30 CEO’s under 30 To Watch” and was the recipient of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Entrepreneurial Spirit Award. Read More

How Transparency Saved My Business

As CEO, I am essentially in “sales” every day; selling the vision of the company, the culture, the products and the future to employees, partners, clients and investors.

When there were challenges, however, I simply tried to solve them myself. 2010 was a huge year of growth and expansion, doubling our workforce and incubating two new companies, but it led to working capital challenges that I had never experienced before. I put on a happy face while my stress level grew inside, and it became a very lonely place. Read More

Giving Back: Wpromote Staff Clean the Beach

A new initiative brought Wpromote staffers to Manhattan Beach to collect trash along the shore near Rosecrans Avenue last Wednesday.

Clad in white T-shirts donated by Manhattan Stitching Company, the employees spread out over the sand, scrutinizing it for trash to pick up, record on a Heal the Bay Cleanup Data Card and then dump into a white Heal the Bay trash collection bag. Read More

Inspiration This Tyme: Michael Mothner

Hi folks, our Inspiration This Tyme is Michael Mothner. Micheal is a serial entrepreneur.

and Internet pioneer,having founded his first software company, Wpromote at the age of fourteen.In 2001, out of his dorm room at Dartmouth College, Michael founded Wpromote, Inc. where he is currently the President and CEO. Read More

Online Marketing Tip You Can Implement Today

CBS writer Donna Fenn catches up with Michael Mothner, serial entrepreneur and Internet pioneer who founded his first software company at the age of fourteen (yup, he’s an Upstart!). In 2001, out of his dorm room at Dartmouth College, Mothner founded the online marketing company, Wpromote, where he is currently CEO. The company has been recognized four times by Inc. Magazine on its annual Inc. 500|5000 list, which recognizes the fastest growing companies in America. Mothner offered to share some great online marketing tips with his fellow entrepreneurs. Read More

Mike Mothner on Startup series

Mike Mothner, Founder and CEO of Wpromote, started his business out of his dorm room in college. Today, Wpromote is a leading search engine marketing agency with 70+ employees managing more than 3,500 clients spanning a wide range of industries and verticals in over 70 countries worldwide. Mike was excited to stop by The Startup Cafe to chat about the early days of Wpromote and to provide some SEM tips for Startups. Read More

SEOAudit Tool

Wpromote SEOAudit Extension for FireFox

Once you have this plugin installed, you can right click on any page to access it. It quickly pops out a list with all sorts of useful info like page rank, domain age, links to robots.txt and sitemap files if it can find them and other metrics of admittedly varying usefulness. This tool is great for an on-the-go audit or any time you just need a quick info grab on a site – you can also export to PDF (yum!). Read More

WSJ on CouponPal piece

Launched in October 2010, CouponPal is a website dedicated to helping consumers find the very best deals and discounts on online products. Couponpal.com, the brainchild of Wpromote’s Scott Elling, was created to compete and eventually outgrow some of the larger coupon sites like retailmenot.com and couponcabin.com by better communicating the usefulness of coupon codes and providing customers coupons when they need them, without being pushy or intrusive. Read More

Wpromote Incubates CouponPal

Wpromote is a pretty cool company for a couple of reasons.

1. A lot of smart people work there.

2. Wpromote was founded by a Mike Mothner, a natural entrepreneur who started his first business in middle school, and then Wpromote in his dorm room at Dartmouth College in 2001.

It’s no surprise that one of those brainy employees should come up with a great website idea and Wpromote agree to incubate the business, providing the financial and human resources to get it going. Read More

Organic Search Gains As Complement To PPC

Marketers have long favored paid search because of its immediacy and measurability, but that preference has begun to shift to organic search, slowly but necessarily, according to industry experts. Still, these two channels remain locked in a tug-of-war over budget allocation.

Lee Moore, IBM's search program manager, says that organic search needs to be central not just to a company's search marketing but to its entire digital marketing oeuvre. Moore compares a company's digital marketing presence to a target, saying that organic search is the bull's-eye and paid search is the next outer ring, followed by social and the other digital channels. Read More

Mike Mothner feature in the Entrepreneur Series

Entrepreneurial companies today can't be ignorant of the acronym SEO any more than they can P&L.

Search engine optimization has become a necessity for companies to be found online and to secure new customers. It's also a moving target, with Google engineers changing the rules of the game (a.k.a. "search algorithms") to stay a step ahead of the millions of people and companies trying to game their system. Mike Mothner, founder and CEO of Wpromote, which helps small firms as well as large brands with online marketing and search optimization, gave us his perspective on the ever-changing world of search and what small businesses need to know to stay competitive. Read More

Ad Experts Eye Lebanon's Online Market

BEIRUT: This is the year advertising will transform and campaigns will be forced to evolve in the way they do things, said Michael Mothner before an audience of Lebanese business owners and advertising agents at the Monroe Hotel in Downtown Beirut Thursday.

Lebanon might have the slowest Internet in the world, but the country is considered a trend setter in the region, and advertising experts from abroad are eager to tap into this nascent market. Read More

Small Business Competitiveness Depends on Superior Search Engine Results

Entrepreneurial companies today can't be ignorant of the acronym SEO any more than they can P&L.

Search engine optimization has become a necessity for companies to be found online and to secure new customers. It's also a moving target, with Google engineers changing the rules of the game (a.k.a. "search algorithms") to stay a step ahead of the millions of people and companies trying to game their system. Mike Mothner, founder and CEO of Wpromote, which helps small firms as well as large brands with online marketing and search optimization, gave us his perspective on the ever-changing world of search and what small businesses need to know to stay competitive. Read More

On Top Of The World [Wide Web]

It's Friday morning, and Mike Mothner is beginning to segue from the work-hard half of his life to the play-hard half.

The blue-jeaned 29-year-old glides through his busy office suite overlooking LAX, touching base with skinny young employees wearing hip eyeglasses as he guides his $10 million-a-year, web-based corporation that has landed him on the cover of "Entrepreneur" magazine, earned him a spot on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies for four years, and made him the man the New York Times calls for analysis when Google and Yahoo threaten to merge. Read More

Hey Small Businesses, You've Got a 'Friend' in These 'Followers'

You named your small business, you set up a Web site, and you even started seeing profits from it. What's next? You could set up a profile page on a social networking site, such as Facebook or Myspace And/or you may want to head to Twitter, the member-based site that boasts of allowing you to virtually shout your company's message from a technological rooftop.

Every week, Fox Small Business Center will highlight companies that are making their brand known through social media. As small businesses, you are on the frontlines of re-starting our economy, and we want your voice to be heard Read More

Google's Farmer Update: 5 SEO Tips You Need Now

With the latest changes to its search algorithm, Google goes after websites that specialize in junk content.

Search engine optimization may not have the gravity of toppling governments or the can't-look-away appeal of the Charlie Sheen circus, but the field has been making news lately. Read More

LA Startup Spotlight: Mike Mothner, Founder/CEO of Wpromote

This week we sat down with Mike Mothner, the founder and CEO of top-ranked search engine marketing firm, Wpromote. Mike’s an entrepreneur, through and through, forming the company when he was just 20 years old.

Pitch us your company’s flagship service in 3 sentences or less. Wpromote’s flagship service is our Integrated Online Marketing Solution, which seamlessly combines PPC Management, Organic SEO, Conversion Optimization and Social Media Advertising. We work across all verticals and provide our online marketing solutions to clients of all sizes, from small local businesses to Fortune 500 firms. Read More

Business Profile: Wpromote Inc.

Companies from around the globe intent on boosting their Internet presence flock to El Segundo-based online marketing firm Wpromote Inc., says founder Mike Mothner, a local entrepreneur and Mira Costa graduate.

Wpromote offers four monthly services, customized to fit client needs and budget: pay-per-click management to design and post paid advertisements, search engine optimization to populate Web sites with content related to search buzzwords, social media consulting to design and maintain Facebook and Twitter business pages, and conversion optimization to test effective Web site wording and design. Read More

Infographic Summarizes Super Bowl Advertising Activity

Highlighting everything from the use of sex to sell, the use of celebrities to sell, the number of brands that bothered to create a microsite specific to their Super Bowl ad, the winners of Pepsi's Crash the Super Bowl consumer-generated commercial contest, the amount of money Budweiser has spent on Super Bowl ads in the last ten years, the brand that achieved the most Likes on Facebook, the number of calories one would consume if they ate one of each food item advertised during the game and MVP picks, this mega-infographic from Wpromote, Inc. is quite interesting. Read More

Make Your SEO Count with Wpromote’s New Tool

At PubCon Las Vegas 2010, Wpromote launched a Firefox extension called the SEOAudit Tool. Aaron Kronis, the company’s SEO evangelist, sat down with WebProNews to talk about what the tool can do.

The tool provides a quick and efficient way to learn about what is going on with a website. As Kronis explains, it allows users to type their url and as many competitors’ urls that they want, in order to compare data. Results include backlink information, Page Rank details, and even clickable items such as robots.txt files.

These results can then be exported as a PDF. Although the tool is similar to other SEO tools, Kronis said it is very “non-intrusive.” Read More

The Saddest Pink Infographic About Women In Tech You’ll Ever See

There was an extremely newsworthy Google earnings call at 1:30 pm today and I’d like to write about some startups at some point before the day ends so I’m not going to waste too much time with this one. But here you go before I forget, an infographic about women in tech that is pink, includes images of Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton, porn star Jenna Jameson and Snooki, and asks hard-hitting questions like “What’s your must-have bag?” and “Who is your dream man?”

Ostensibly this is holding up Google’s Marissa Mayer, Cnet’s Caroline McCarthy, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, PR consultant Sarah Evans and Net -A- Porter CEO  Natalie Massenet as female technology career role models (you can follow the flow chart to see which one you should emulate) and indeed they are. Read More

Mothner ’03 Excels As Entrepreneur

Ten years ago this month, Mike Mothner ’03 began his search engine marketing company, Wpromote, in his Dartmouth dorm room. Over the next decade, Wpromote’s office space multiplied many times, growing from 2,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet on its 10th anniversary.

“How are we going to fill this space?” Mike Block ’04, Wpromote’s vice president of client services, asked each time Mothner decided to relocate to a larger office. “Every single time we moved, it seemed like we were biting off much more than we could chew.”
Read More

Building A 10 Million Dollar Search Engine Marketing Business

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 now. I was born in Manhattan Beach, California. My parents were both teachers. I got into computers and the Internet when I was pretty young. I wrote a software program when I was 14 called Calendar Man which was a moderate success. I would come home from school and have $15 checks in the mail. Read More

How One Founder Conquered The Stress Of Running A 60-Person Company

Mike Mothner is the founder and CEO of Wpromote, a 60-person online marketing firm with several thousand clients worldwide.

With a successful company comes a lot of stress. Here's how he tackled it. Read More

How to Gain Marketing Share in an Unfamiliar Marketplace

Q. I have produced and sold a series of PR products for non-profits and small businesses such as books, ebooks, and webinars successfully in my home city. I’m looking to expand to other cities. I am wondering what are the best ways to market my products outside of my home city?

A. Search engine marketing is key
“This is a lot of what we do at Wpromote actually; with search engine marketing (such as Google AdWords, Bing and Yahoo) and social media advertising (Facebook primarily) you can target by very tight localities, with a message that can make you feel very homegrown and local, even though it is a market that you have not yet penetrated.”
Michael Mothner (@wpromote), CEO of Wpromote. Read More

CEOs: Just Do What You Say You’re Going To Do

Lack of personal accountability is a problem across the board in business, from suppliers all the way down through to clients. It’s human nature to tell someone what you think he wants to hear. But when you don’t follow through on your promises, you’re setting yourself up for bigger problems down the road.

It’s a problem that I’ve tried to get rid of at my company. We try to make it very clear what we expect from our employees and what we think success looks like. But it’s hard to ask for accountability if you’re not accountable yourself. Read More

The Man Who Walked Out on Goldman

Our Countdown to the Closing Bell team likes inspirational stories, stories that involve great risk and great reward for people who have taken that risk. Michael Mothner did just that.

Listen to his story of how he was in his final round interviews at Goldman Sachs (Goldman! The place so many Wall Street-bound college grads are dying to go!) when a sharp-eyed GS executive picked out something special about Mothner's resume and called the kid's bluff. Read More

It Doesn’t Take a Million…

Here's how four ultra-successful twentysomethings leveraged their brilliant ideas into major businesses online. And how you can, too.

Marketing Guru for the Digital Age
Michael Mothner was on the last round of interviews for a coveted job as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. The managing director looked over his résumé and noticed a company called Wpromote, which Mothner said he had started and had some success with as a sophomore at Dartmouth in 2001. "To call my bluff, he asked why I would want to work for Goldman if my company had been successful," says Mothner, now 29. "That was a defining moment for me. I stood up and said, 'You know what? You're right. I don't think this job is right for me.'" Read More

4 Ways to Master Social Media Marketing

Real-world examples of employing the best tactics to engage, enthrall, and expand your customer base online (without looking like a jerk).

More than one in six marriages over the past three years were the result of relationships begun online, a recent study on social media and dating behavior found. When so many people are turning to the Internet to find soul mates, you can rest assured they are looking online for everything else – from their next pair of Oakleys to a new optometrist – and if you are a business seeking customers, you are well-advised to look online, too. You've heard it before: Social media is no longer an option; it's a necessity. Read More

5 Secrets to Selecting Highly-Effective SEO Keywords

How many keywords should you assign to each page on your website--and how should you pick them? An Inc. 500 CEO offers his advice on SEO.

If there is a single concept that is the driver of much of the Internet’s growth over the past decade – not to mention nearly all of Google’s annual revenue of $25 billion – it is the concept of keywords. Keywords are what we type in when we are searching for products, services, and answers on the search engines, an act that Americans performed 15.5 billion times in April 2010 according to ComScore, the web research firm. Read More

8 Ways to Optimize Video Content For Search

Optimizing video for search is easy to overlook and incredibly important. An Inc. 500 CEO tells you how to do it right.

To say that online video is a phenomenon could only be called an understatement. Every minute, YouTube users upload another 20 hours of video, and every day the site streams 100 million videos.

Yet when it comes to using online video content to help bolster a website's search engine rankings and drive more traffic to it, there is shockingly little definitive direction on how to do this effectively, despite the fact that according to a recent Forrester Research study, videos are 53 times more likely to generate a first-page ranking than traditional SEO techniques. Read More

Google Learns Lessons in the Ways of Washington

After Google and Yahoo announced an advertising partnership in June, letters from consumer groups and advertising associations poured into regulators, urging them to support or block the proposed deal.

Among the complaints from lobbyists to government officials were letters from several farm groups, including the National Association of Farmer Elected Committees and the National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade Association. They said that because farmers use the Internet, they were worried about a Google-Yahoo monopoly. Read More

Advertisers Give Thumbs-Down to Google-Yahoo Deal

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said Thursday that his company’s search deal with Yahoowas a win-win-win: a win for the companies, a win for the publishers and a win for advertisers.

Advertisers don’t seem to agree.

“There’s an appeal in terms of ease of management and optimization” of online campaigns, said Aaron Goldman, vice president for marketing and strategic partnerships at Resolution Media, an Omnicom agency that does search marketing. “Of course the downside is, in that environment, what is Google’s motivation to continue innovating, to be more transparent with data, which is something that’s been a big knock on them for a while? What are you going to do, not use them?” Read More

Michael Mothner: Targeted Online Marketing

Michael Mothner is CEO of Wpromote, a top search marketing firm, which employs integrated search solutions for businesses ranging from start-ups to global corporations. Mothner talks about the value of starting early and diversifying his company. Read More

Internet Useful Tool in Drawing Business

The Internet has become virtually ubiquitous. And small businesses have noticed.

As a result, small companies often promote themselves online with their own Web sites. Web designers are plentiful.

But Wpromote in El Segundo will design your Web site and help draw online traffic from potential customers.

Known as search-engine marketing, Wpromote uses its knowledge of how key words typed into online search engines such as Google or Yahoo generate results.

Interview with Mike Mothner, Wpromote

We've been seeing an interesting growth in the number of search marketing firms in Southern California -- which help companies with advertising their companies and products on search engines and with search engine optimization. Fast growing Wpromote is one of the companies we ran into recently, and was just ranked very highly by Inc. 500 in its list of fastest growing private companies in America. We thought it would be interesting to talk to the 's CEO, Mike Mothner, about the El Segundo-based company. Mike spoke with Ben Kuo. Read More