AN INTRODUCTION

About us

Slingshot SEO is driven by our passion for the Internet and our endless fascination with the way it’s changing the world.

Search is at the heart of how people and businesses experience the web. What happens in search shapes how the Internet (and the economy) works – it has become the lynchpin of our daily lives, the heartbeat of our society.

Search is the ultimate proving ground for the quality and merits of businesses. It is set up so that the good guys win and the bad guys are driven away.

It’s our honor to play a role in the advancement of search, namely by helping deserving brands achieve search dominance. Slingshot SEO works exclusively with “good guys,” and we help them win, the right way, every time.

Slingshot SEO VisionTo continually lead deserving brands to dominance in the ever-evolving world of search, and to share what we learn with the world.

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Why SEO?

Whether you’re a small business or Fortune 50, potential customers from Chicago to China are searching for the products and services you sell.

Having the right strategy to optimize your brand online can go a long way in determining whether your business flourishes or falters.

» First-page organic results offer more powerful branding and positioning. Some 62 percent of searchers click a first-page result, according to the DIYSEO blog. Google prides itself on delivering the most digitally relevant and useful results to searchers, so if you’re on the first page of organic results, you basically have the Google stamp of approval for that particular keyword.*

Advantages of SEO:

*For more information, visit our website at www.slingshotseo.com to see our guide on How to Value SEO

“Now, agencies don’t just have to do what they’ve always done – create ads and buy media – they must also attract, motivate, and engage specific audiences with a brand’s content. Agencies have to “earn” media for their clients in addition to buying it.” — AdAge Digital (Dec. 2011) 

“Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.” — Google Webmaster Guidelines (Dec. 2011)

Why Slingshot SEO?

Slingshot SEO’s results are driven by a tireless passion to master the science of search. Unlike other SEO companies, Slingshot SEO offers you not just guidance and experienced advice on how to approach your brand’s digital presence – we also execute on those plans. And perhaps most importantly, SEO is the only thing we do – we don’t build websites or offer email marketing or sell toasters. We just do SEO. And we do it well.

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How do we do it?

At Slingshot SEO, we practice a methodology to get to the science of search engine optimization. We’ve broken this applied methodology, CLASS, into five buckets to help you easily understand how it impacts your SEO success. Each CLASS element — Content, Link Graph Optimization, Architecture, Social and Strategy — provides our clients with strategic insights to begin building a solid and successful SEO campaign in a field defined by constant change.

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CONTENT

We’re Here to Help You Be Successful, Not Replace You

SEO begins with great content. Search engines read exactly what your site says and determines whether it’s worthy of ranking or not. Slingshot SEO is dedicated to providing highly relevant content that users and search engines love from inception through placement, saving you time and internal resources. In fact, a recent study by MarketingSherpa states, “76% of B2B companies say content creation is very or somewhat difficult to create.”

Content Creation was found to be the MOST effective of all SEO tactics.”- Marketing Sherpa 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report

OWNED CONTENT

RICH MEDIA

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LINK PROFILE

At Slingshot SEO, we often compare links to references on a resume. Just like references, great links are an endorsement of content. Our team of dedicated experts seeks out the right relationships for your brand, turning them into digital signals that show relevance to search engines and result in better rankings.

“Why bother with a number that’s at best three steps removed from your actual goal, when you could instead directly measure what you want to achieve?” — Susan Moskwa, Google Engineer 

You Don’t Need To Hire a Researcher, That’s Why We’re Here.

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ARCHITECTURE

Even the best content with all the right endorsements won’t help your site if it’s preventing the search engines from understanding its pages. Our team ensures that your website is speaking the same language as the search bots and then makes only the recommendations you need, with your resources in mind, to achieve success.

“94% of organizations say that SEO has become a more important lead source over the last 12 months.”- Marketing Sherpa 2011 Search Marketing 

Leave It to the Experts

Site-wide & Templates Analysis

Canonicalization

Internal Link Structures

Site Tree Design

URL Optimization

Page Speed

Google Webmaster Tools Audit

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Web 2.0/Social Graph

SOCIAL

Are social signals around your brand sending the right message? As search engines grow more sophisticated, the conversations happening around your brand will have greater impact on rankings. Social signals go far beyond popular social media sites, and Slingshot SEO can help guide your social team to engage their audiences in ways that help search engines understand the importance of your brand.

Build Relationships Among Several Media, Not Just One

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STRATEGY

Without clearly defined goals, it can be tough to navigate the strategic and tactical decisions that must be made nearly every day to achieve SEO success. Slingshot SEO offers world-class consulting by a team of SEO experts that execute a full CLASS strategy to help drive rankings and traffic and help you make the right calls with the right data to show real results that matter.

Research

Recommenda tionsExecution

VALUE

We’re Here to Help You Meet Your Goals

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Custom pricing

Slingshot SEO’s Pricing Algorithm

The core components of the Slingshot SEO CLASS methodology are comparable to those used by some of the best e-marketers in the world. We did a study on what these successful e-marketers did right in organic search and have since used this knowledge to launch successful enterprise SEO campaigns for hundreds of clients. This data-driven knowledge led to a defined SEO Pricing algorithm to deliver to our clients. 

We’ll analyze 3 areas: • Your owned content vs. your top competitor’s within each element of CLASS

• The amount of earned media required to become relevant for category keywords and sub-category keywords

• The amount of quality content required to become relevant for a keyword category

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Our story

Slingshot SEO is one of the country’s leading and fastest-growing search engine optimization firms. It employs more than 100 search experts from its headquarters in Indianapolis and locations across the country. Innovation is Slingshot’s hallmark. With its own in-house Research & Development Department delivering unique reports about the SEO industry, Slingshot SEO is well-regarded as a thought leader in the ever-changing world of search engine optimization. It is the first SEO firm to hire an Editor-in-Chief who oversees an internal team of writers and we were ranked #58 on the Inc Magazine Annual List of 500 fastest growing companies.

The roots of Slingshot SEO can be traced to the late 1990s when three high school buddies - instead of delivering pizza – used their after-school time to earn money through banner advertising on the automobile websites they designed. Long before search engine optimization was an industry, Kevin, Aaron, and Jeremy were building websites and ranking them highly on the most prominent search engines of the era. After going their separate ways and graduating from college, the three “got the band back together” in 2006 to form Slingshot SEO.

The History

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Our founders

Aaron AdersAaron is a co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Slingshot SEO. Building on more than a decade of Internet marketing experience, Aaron has contributed in many roles including Graphic Designer, Project Manager, Systems Analyst and Chief Operations Officer.

Aaron earned a Bachelor of Science in Pre-Medical Biology at Indiana University in 2004. During the following years, Aaron traveled the country working at Watson Pharmaceuticals in Phoenix, Arizona, and later for an environmental abatement company in Miami, Florida. He

was even accepted into medical school in 2006. It was at this time that he received a call from an old friend, Jeremy Dearringer, about an SEO opportunity, and Slingshot SEO was born.

Creating and managing proprietary software and processes is at the core of his contributions at Slingshot SEO. As Chief Strategy Officer, Aaron will continue to steer the strategic vision behind Slingshot SEO software and business processes.

Fun fact: “My eyebrows sweat when I eat sour candy.”

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Our founders

Kevin BaileyKevin is co-founder and President of Slingshot SEO. An Indiana University graduate, Kevin has more than fourteen years of Internet marketing experience involving organic search engine optimization, eCommerce, conversion rate analysis, statistical analysis, affiliate marketing and web design.

Prior to co-founding Slingshot SEO, Kevin spent two years working within the technology related intellectual property strategy practice of CRA International, a publicly traded consulting firm in Chicago Illinois.

Kevin’s core responsibility at Slingshot SEO is to manage the company’s overall strategic objectives while also spending time on the sales side building new client relationships. He is responsible for finance, conversion rate analysis research & development and statistical analysis.

Fun fact: “When I was 17 I tried to build a YouTube style video website called CrazyVideos.com and got sued by my web host for going over the bandwidth limit of their advertised ‘Unlimited Bandwidth Plan‘.”

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Our founders

Jeremy Dearringer

Fun fact: “I wanted to name my first born kid Texas Chainsaw Dearringer.”

Jeremy Dearringer is a Co-Founder and the Chief Research Officer at Slingshot SEO, an award-winning and nationally recognized SEO consulting and internet marketing firm. A Purdue University graduate, Jeremy launched his entrepreneurial pursuits by developing several e-commerce shopping sites offering products ranging from silk plants to motorcycle parts. During that time, he also built one of the largest online motorcycle community forums and a number of blogs to generate affiliate ad revenue and support his e-commerce ventures. These successes, starting during his high school years, have

given Jeremy in excess of 13 years of experience in search engine optimization, keyword research, link building, web design, conversion rate optimization, social media, management and logistics.

In 1997, Jeremy and his current business partners used their knowledge of SEO to build ad revenue generating websites and real estate websites. Their expertise and teamwork also leveraged his family’s business, one of their main clients, into a period of explosive growth during a recession. The business partners’ foundation of knowledge and passion for SEO led them to form Slingshot SEO in 2006.

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Who’s behind the scenes?

» A Slingshotter is dedicated to continually exploring new ground, staying in front of the pack, and producing impressive results for our clients.

» A Slingshotter must have the passion to learn, the creativity to explore, and the courage to add their voice to a constant and demanding conversation.

» We work hard, stay late, and have absolutely no time for negativity or passivity. We test ourselves and each other, and we love the fact that we work in an industry that is completely fluid and evolving.

These aren’t only the characteristics of our people, they are the characteristics of our brand. We value these traits in each other, our organization and our clients.

Methodical

Driven

Collaborative

Smart

Curious

Reliable

Characteristics of a Slingshot SEO employee

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Who do we serve?

We serve deserving brands. The word deserving has fallen onto hard times in recent years, because to some people it smacks of entitlement, while to others it carries the threat of unfair evaluation and judgment. But when it comes to using a search engine, everybody agrees: the best-fitting search results deserve to be displayed first. The art, philosophy and science of search are all about determining which results are best suited to be shown first.

Slingshot SEO works exclusively with deserving brands: companies whose products and services are the best fit for their targeted audiences. It’s a philosophical choice, really. When we facilitate matches between deserving brands and the world, we help the world and the “good guys” win. We become a positive force. We get to feel good about our industry, about the impact our life’s work is having, and about the precise and measurable connections between brands and customers we build. And those results are how we know we deserve to serve the clients we serve.

DIGITAL RELEVANCE FOR DESERVING BRANDS

Who are some of our clients?

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Our promise to our clients

We’re in this to see you succeed. We believe in the work ethic and merit-based worldview that built America’s greatest businesses and leaders, and we want you to join us in this way of life. We will uncover your strengths, explore your opportunities, and help you connect with your targeted audiences exactly where that connection will produce the strongest benefit to your brand. We will always be the world’s most prepared guide and partner for your brand as changes and challenges arise in the search industry. We will be accessible, responsive, proactive and results-obsessed about your business. We will help you claim and defend the market visibility your hard work has earned you, and you will get our best effort every day, every dollar.

What our clients are saying

My client has advanced their suite of products to help marketers build measurable results well beyond their competition. Promoting their brand with the assistance of Slingshot SEO has been incredibly successful. The company is growing rapidly internationally and their share of voice online dominates their industry.

We essentially went from zero rankings with a brand new company, to now being a dominate online force in our industry by ranking on the first page of Google in over 2,500 keyword phrases.

Our climb to the top (of the SERP) with Slingshot SEO has been exciting for both of us. Our rankings have skyrocketed and the site content has become more appealing to our clients. Slingshot SEO shares our enthusiasm and love of a job well done, so celebrating each accomplishment is rewarding in all senses of the word.

SEO had been a quiet corner of our marketing strategy until our traffic and conversions exceeded projections this year. Now our in-house efforts are in the limelight and we’re able to execute on our longtime SEO wish list for the site. Our relationship with Slingshot over this past year has been key – they bring great ideas to the table and make sure weremember SEO fundamentals.

—CEO, DK New Media

—Director of eCommerce

—Snr. Internet Marketing Manager

—Content Strategist

» Named one of the Best Places To Work In Indiana.

» Stay tuned for more 2012 announcements.

» Awarded the TechPoint Mira Award for Excellence, Innovation and Contribution to Indiana’s Tech Economy

» Named #58 on the Inc. Magazine Annual List of 500 Fastest Growing Companies based on a 3-year revenue growth rate of 3,596%

Word on the street

» Named one of the Companies to Watch in Indiana by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and Purdue University in Association with the Edward Lowe Foundation.

2010 2012

2011

Top 100Advertising

& Marketing

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Where can you find us?

Indianapolis*

New York

Orlando

San Francisco

San DiegoAustin

*Headquarters

Slingshot SEO, Inc.8900 Keystone Crossing Suite 100 Indianapolis, IN 46240

888.603.7337 toll-free

www.SlingshotSEO.com

8900 Keystone Crossing Suite 100Indianapolis, IN 46240

888.603.7337 toll-free317.575.8904 fax

info@SlingshotSEO.com

www.SlingshotSEO.com2012 v1