Apr 09 2008
About
Mary Song, President & CEO
Mary Song was the woman behind Beach Houses Magazine and Rent101 one of the founding sites of Homeaway.com, an online marketplace connecting travelers with vacation rental owners, tenants with landlords, and buyers with sellers. Beach Houses Magazine was a print and online publication that was acquired along with Rent101.com.
Before starting Rent101, Mary’s entrepreneurial spirit and vision created a small business that purchased and renovated investment properties. Purchasing her first investment property at the age of 19 Mary learned rental marketing through hands on management. Under Mary’s direction, this small business more than tripled it’s cash income and saw equity growth of 300% in five years.
After receiving her degree in Computer Science at 22, Mary went to work in the computer industry first as a programmer/analyst and then as a project manager on financial management applications including designing the budget making system for the state of New York. Mary was asked to run for Mayor of Saratoga Springs in 2001 and worked on a state wide campaign for New York State Comptroller and continues to work on several political campaigns. In 2003 Mary Song opened a real estate brokerage firm to compliment the Rent101 online presence. Saratoga Realty Ventures was sold in 2005 so that Mary could focus completely on search marketing.
Michael Gualano, Director Business Development
Michael Gualano is responsible for the development, integration and implementation of customer and business strategies. Michael has 10 years of online marketing, sales management and customer relations experience.
Prior to his current position, Michael was Manager of TripHomes.com; an online marketplace in the vacation rental space under HomeAway Inc. Michael’s responsibilities included, business development, inventory expansion by geography, and revenue generation through leads and internet traffic.
Before HomeAway, Michael was Sales Manager at Rent101.com, the leading online portal for professionally managed vacation rentals and one of the founding sites of HomeAway.com. Michael’s responsibilities at Rent101.com were focused towards new business development, B2B sales and customer relations.
Michael brings large corporation and small privately owned employment experiences to all situations. Michael has worked as Regional Sales Manager at Verizon Communication, and Professional Channel Sales Manager at The Thompson Corporation which are both publicly traded companies.
Recommendations:
Mary’s in-depth knowledge of SEO helped us overcome some very big hurdles at Vovici. She was able to not only provide valuable insights to problems on our existing website, but was able to put us on the path to even higher search engine rankings. Her work on our existing PPC campaigns helped get our budget and conversions back in order. To top it off she is a pleasure to work with and I would recommend her to anyone.
Jessica Mays - hired Mary as a SEM Consultant in 2007. Global seo strategist
HomeAway
Mary is one of the pioneers of Search Engine Optimization. As the owner of Rent101.com, Mary first attracted our attention because of the superior search position she had achieved for a site that was both smaller and newer than many of its competitors in the VR Market.
Carl Shepherd, Chief Development Officer, HomeAway, Inc.
Mary has in-depth knowledge of SEO and is excellent at providing advice surrounding the subject from a third party perspective.
Erica Chang, Deputy MD Europe, HomeAway
It was a pleasure to work with Mary. I learned a lot from her and am pleased we are still in touch after HomeAway.
Adrian Land, SEO - Europe, HomeAway
Mary was a huge asset to HomeAway. She has a detailed knowledge of SEO tactics and strategy, and I would recommend her without reservation to any web-based business that needs someone to “roll up their sleeves” and get their site optimized for greater levels of search engine traffic.
Brian Sharples, President and CEO, HomeAway, Inc.
I knew of Mary’s work even before I ever actually met her. I saw the websites she worked on grow very rapidly in rankings on the various search engines. Everyone in the our industry needed to know who was the mastermind behind those #1 positions for the most coveted search terms–it was Mary! Who would have known that just a few short years later I would have the pleasure of meeting and working with Mary. Mary’s extremely knowledgeable in Search Engine Optimization. Whatever website Mary works on will surely gain strength and rankings!
Christine Hrib Karpinski, Director, Owner Community, HomeAway.com
It was a pleasure working with Mary on a 6 month SEO engagement. Her knowledge of SEO is amazing and her thought and action process on overcoming hurdles was perfect. We had some intense challenges that spanned multiple sites, countries and languages and worked through the issues together. I not only learned a great deal from Mary, but also gained an industry colleague. I highly recommend Mary for challenging SEO initiatives.
Sean Stahlman, SEO Engineer, Avenue A | Razorfish (Microsoft)
Consultant
It has been great working with Mary on our SEO / SEM strategy. Because of Mary’s expertise and hard work, we were able to see real results for our business.
Lara (Sedar) Wood
Mary is one of the most intricate business women I have ever met and had the pleasure to work for. As founder of Rent101.com, her unique and innovative ideas make her an asset to any organization. She is driven and methodical at achieving business and personal goals.
Michael Gualano, Sales Manager, Rent101.com
