GSM is a collaboration of Bill Sebald and Keith Urban focusing on search marketing (SEO and PPC), analytics, and social media for lead generation and ecommerce. This includes all components of search marketing, including keyword discovery, analytics, link building campaigns, social media marketing, SEO copywriting, landing page development, microsite creation, UI, semantic coding, and more.

We have been developing and executing marketing initiatives on the web for over 13 years, for e-commerce, multi-channel business, entertainment websites (online magazines, musician/artist sites), real-estate, and brand sites. Through this time we have been consulting, working on-staff, or within an agency setting. We have a strong reputation in the SEO industry as thought leaders and curators of search marketing content.

We have optimized, supported, and/or consulted on sites from small business to Fortune 500; this includes Sports Authority, GNC, Ace Hardware, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Flavia Coffee, Dockers, Levis, Petsmart, Envy Magazine (Dallas/Houston), Sony Music, Calvin Klein Underwear, and The Art Institute.

Bill Sebald – Leads SEO and Content Marketing Department

Bill was the Director of SEO for GSI Commerce’s digital agency TrueAction, where he pioneered the SEO program, managing and supporting over 20 clients and driving high revenue for ecommerce clients.  Bill also helped build SEO tools for the country’s largest ecommerce platform, still used by nearly 80 of the world’s largest ecommerce brands.  In addition to GSI, he began Greenlane Search Marketing (in 2007) helping clients of all sizes achieve their SEO goals.  Before the company’s formal launch, Bill developed websites, taught Photoshop, and ran his own successful ecommerce and music website for 6 years.

Bill has been a blogger in the SEO space, writing at the Greenlane SEO blog, as well as contributing to Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, SEOmoz, Technically Philly, and Social Media Smart Brief.

Keith Urban – Leads Strategy and Analytics Department

Keith led Marketing Analytics at TrueAction where he spearheaded the implementation of a major analytics platform across over sixty large brands. Additionally he performed analyses to optimize all the major digital channels for a subset of those brands.  Living in the data, Keith drives the strategic planning for Greenlane clients.  Focusing on ROI and organizing high volumes of data, Keith is uniquely skilled at discovering opportunity in the data and optimizing tracking and conversion issues.

Our Philosophy and Differentiators

Today, SEO is more about optimizing for search engines on behalf of the users. In the past, deconstructing a search engine algorithm was simpler, and allowed those in the know to mechanically tweak a page and appear higher in the rankings. Engines have since monitored SEO tactics, and built algorithm updates around them. Thus, out-of-the-box SEO solutions or black-hat tactics have very little impact.

We consider SEO two distinct concentrations which rely on each other to succeed – marketing and technology:

SEO marketing develops web content that is valuable and relevant to a user, thus, provides ‘authority’ – both on and off the page. This authority is what engines are seeking to serve their users, and their algorithms are designed to find only the most natural forms. Our SEO creates user value and digital PR without ‘over-optimization’ or blatant attempts at
manipulating algorithms for the sake of higher rankings. We follow Google’s guidelines on in all our campaigns.

SEO technology speaks to the code that resides on webpages and webservers, and allows search engine spiders to get deeper into your site, find and index more content, and increase their crawl rate. While today’s engines can crawl virtually any site well, optimizing the crawl path and providing content efficiently helps engines gather information faster. A healthy site is a site that search engines reward.

We are a boutique firm.  We are intentionally small, but very nimble and experienced.  As you’d expect from boutique firms, our skills are deeply defined in specific areas.  We’re ideal for the small to medium sized business who wants to give direct attention to their SEO channel.