Forthea Wins Three 2026 US Search Awards

If you want to know what an agency really values, look at what it chooses to measure. At the 2026 US Search Awards in New York, Forthea took home three wins: Best Use of Search – B2B (PPC) with Cemex Direct, Best Use of Search – Real Estate & Property with Embrey, and the Emerging Talent Award for Senior SEO Specialist Sydney Martin.

Each award came down to the same thing: connecting search to a number the business cares about, whether that was online orders, lease applications, or AI visibility that turns into leads. Here's what each campaign faced, what the team did, and what the results say about how Forthea works.

The ChallengeThe StrategyThe Results

B2B PPC: Selling Concrete Online on a Sub-$1,000 Monthly Budget

The Challenge

Cemex Direct allows contractors to order ready-mix concrete online, which is unusual in the building materials industry. Forthea's goal was to generate calls, form submissions, and online orders from small contractors in the San Francisco Bay Area using a non-brand, Search-only Google Ads campaign. The target was $20 or less per conversion, with a monthly budget of just $600 to $1,000. This was a tough limitation. The campaign missed out on an average of 80.88% of eligible impressions due to budget limits, and it didn't generate enough conversion data for Smart Bidding to learn effectively.

The Strategy

Forthea fixed the structure rather than asking for more money. In July 2025, the team moved the Bay Area campaign into a portfolio bid strategy (Maximize Conversions, $20 target CPA) alongside Forthea's Fresno and Southern California non-brand campaigns for Cemex Direct. With all three market campaigns in the same portfolio, conversion signals were pooled. Ad groups were tightly themed around transactional terms such as "order concrete online." Responsive Search Ads led with the online ordering benefit. Forthea tracked total purchase value, so revenue was measured, not just leads.

The Results

$6,902.98 in ad spend produced 316 conversions at a 27.45% average conversion rate.
Average cost per conversion dropped from $29.65 before the portfolio switch to $19.39 after (a 35% improvement). The best month was December 2025 at $15.29, which was 24% below target.
10 tracked online orders worth $18,670.22, a 2.70x purchase ROAS, peaking at 9.51x in October 2025.

The entry was also honest: 96% of conversions came via phone calls, and only online purchases reported revenue. That kind of transparent attribution is precisely what you want from a B2B PPC agency. Read more of Forthea's latest B2B PPC case studies and resources.

The Bottom Line

Is Forthea the Right Partner for You?

You're likely a good fit if:

You need to prove marketing ROI to leadership, not just report traffic.
Your budget is tight, and every dollar has to do more.
Your market is structurally difficult: a niche B2B category, a hidden or suburban property, or a crowded local search results page.
You want your brand to appear in AI Overviews and LLM answers, as well as in the traditional blue links.

The ChallengeThe StrategyThe Results

Real Estate SEO: A Turnaround Without a Rebuild

The Challenge

The Artesian at Bee Cave is an Embrey luxury apartment community in the Texas Hill Country, outside of Austin's core rental market. The area is predominantly homeowners, and the property is well hidden from freeway traffic, so organic search is a key demand channel. Organic search visibility dropped further in mid-2025 as local search results shifted in line with Google algorithm changes.

The Strategy

In October 2025, Forthea ran a targeted content refresh instead of rebuilding the site. The team:

Ran a keyword gap analysis against top competitors.
Moved targeting away from congested Austin head terms toward Bee Cave, Lakeway, and Hill Country searches.
Rewrote the copy, headers, and metadata on priority pages.
Re-pointed internal links toward floor plans and application pages.

Content was repositioned for renters-by-choice and corporate relocation prospects. No paid media was used.

The Results

Forthea's May 2026 SEO report shows 2,391 organic sessions (up 16.3% YoY) and 188 organic conversions (up 22.9%). Page 1 keywords increased from 53 in March 2025 to 73, and the number of keywords in positions 1–3 more than doubled, from 12 to 26. Just as importantly, the campaign was measured on Application Starts and Application Finishes, the metrics closest to leasing revenue, rather than on sessions. See more of Forthea's multifamily marketing work with Embrey.

Emerging Talent: How Forthea Builds Strategists, Not Just Specialists

Sydney Martin went from Junior to Senior SEO Specialist in four years. Her story is essentially a roadmap of where search is going:

AEO results ahead of the market: for B2B manufacturer GMN Bearing USA, her answer engine optimization program moved AI Overview rankings from 163 to 425 (+161%) and increased LLM-referred sessions from 392 to 552 (+41%, H1 2026 vs. H1 2025).
Scale under pressure: she co-led the SEO foundations for 130 multifamily properties in six weeks, using AI tools (including Claude) to build a repeatable agency playbook.
Technical depth: she has managed more than five website migrations across B2B, ecommerce, and real estate.
Multiplying talent: she mentored nine interns over two years and ran three internal knowledge-transfer workshops. Two of the accounts she ran, Embrey and Mitratech, won US Search Awards in 2025.

For clients, this matters because the person running your account is being developed to think about revenue, AI search, and scale rather than just checklists. Find out more about the Forthea team and approach.

What These Wins Reveal About How Forthea Operates

"Results" means sales

Forthea's stated philosophy is "To us, results means sales." Every campaign above was measured against a commercial outcome. For Cemex Direct, that was online orders and revenue. For Embrey, it was applications, the step before a lease. For GMN, it was AI visibility, which generates leads.

Measurement comes before media

Ph.D.-level data scientists run Forthea's analytics practice, which covers media mix modeling and multi-touch attribution. Per his Forthea bio, founder Chris Pappas set out to make marketing "more understandable, measurable, accountable, and cost-effective," and "since 2006, Forthea has been helping clients approach marketing from a quantifiable and verifiable direction." Purchase value tracking on a sub-$1,000 PPC account is that philosophy in action.

Structure beats spend

Neither campaign won by spending more. One pooled bidding signals across markets; the other refreshed existing pages instead of rebuilding them. Constrained budgets and difficult markets are where careful diagnosis matters most.

Focused teams and senior attention

Forthea caps client teams at 10 clients per team so that strategists can go deep on each account. Its own talent development, from intern to senior specialist, means that depth compounds over time.

Built for AI search

Forthea treats AI search as a measurable channel, with dedicated AEO and GEO services and dashboards that link AI answer visibility to leads and revenue.

Talk to an Award-Winning Search Team

Three 2026 US Search Awards are recognition. The real aim is your next quarter's revenue. If you're looking for an ROI-driven digital marketing agency that links search to sales, request a free strategy consultation with Forthea or call 713.568.2763. You'll get a genuine audit, a measurement plan, and a roadmap that's directly linked to your business objectives.

Author Ralda Robles
Category Paid Media|SEO
Published Tue Nov 10, 2026

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About The Author

Ralda

Robles 5th year Forthean

Specialist, SEO & Corporate Marketing

Ralda is a University of Houston graduate with a Bachelor's in Strategic Communication – Integrated and a Minor in Business Administration. Her passion for digital strategy and copywriting began during her time as a social media marketing manager. Captivated by SEO, she now focuses on driving results by keeping up with the latest search engine developments. Outside of data scraping, she enjoys updating her personal social media blog, taking her dog on long walks and creating tantalizing flavors in the kitchen.

Three Wins, One Philosophy: Forthea at the 2026 US Search Awards

B2B PPC: Selling Concrete Online on a Sub-$1,000 Monthly Budget

The Challenge

The Strategy

The Results

The Bottom Line

Is Forthea the Right Partner for You?

Real Estate SEO: A Turnaround Without a Rebuild

The Challenge

The Strategy

The Results

Emerging Talent: How Forthea Builds Strategists, Not Just Specialists

"Results" means sales

Measurement comes before media

Structure beats spend

Focused teams and senior attention

Built for AI search

Talk to an Award-Winning Search Team

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