Bytes.co Wins Gold & Platinum at the 2026 AVA Digital Awards
The results are in, and we are incredibly proud to share that Bytes.co has brought home a Gold and a Platinum trophy from the 2026 AVA Digital Awards!
These international accolades recognize our excellence in search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), highlighting our team’s obsession with beating the search algorithm and moving the needle for our clients. These awards represent two projects we’re particularly proud of: our work scaling Tony’s Train Exchange with SEM and our mission-driven SEO strategy for Age Well.
About the AVA Digital Awards
The AVA Digital Awards is a competition that recognizes outstanding achievement by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design, and production of media that is part of the evolution of digital communication.
Administered by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP), the awards are judged by industry veterans who look for work that sets a new standard for the digital world. Platinum winners are the elite, scoring in the 90-100 point range, while Gold winners represent the top tier of industry excellence.
Age Well: Gold Winner in the SEO Campaign Category
We were awarded the Gold Award for our comprehensive SEO work with Age Well, a Vermont-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting the aging population. Committed to enhancing the lives of older adults, Age Well provides a variety of support services, including home care coordination, caregiver support, nutrition and wellness programs, and other resources. Their mission is to help empower older adults to make informed decisions about their health and lives so that they can age with dignity and independence.
Our SEO project with Age Well started during their website redesign with us in 2022. Their main goals included optimizing the site structure for scalable, long-term SEO success, improving visibility on key services and programs, and growing and sustaining high-quality organic traffic over time. By layering SEO into the website build process, our digital marketing team helped to inform the new website build from the ground up, ensuring that the final product would follow SEO best practices in every way, including the sitemap, navigation, page structure, and metadata.
Post-launch, our team then continued with ongoing SEO management, primarily focusing on optimizing on-page content, blog posts, and new page build-outs along with technical cleanup.
To learn more about our SEO work for Age Well, please visit our case study.
Tony’s Train Exchange: Platinum Winner in the SEM Campaign Category
Earning the top-tier Platinum Award, our campaign for Tony’s Train Exchange showcased the power of a refined Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy. Since 1991, Tony’s Train Exchange has partnered with leading Digital Command Control (DCC) manufacturers while also designing and manufacturing its own digital components for model railroading. Based in Essex Junction, Vermont, Tony’s Train Exchange serves model railroaders worldwide, shipping locomotives, rolling stock, scenery, layout components, electrical systems, and DCC solutions across the globe.
In late 2024, our digital marketing agency worked with Tony’s Train Exchange to scale revenue through targeted Google Ads campaigns, timed ahead of the holiday season. Since launch, these SEM efforts have driven meaningful growth in overall site revenue and delivered strong returns on ad spend (ROAS).
Celebrating Our Award-Winning Digital Marketing Specialists
These victories are a testament to the talent and dedication of our digital marketing specialists, Shea Lincourt and Tyler Leyboldt. Their hard work and insightful strategies are the driving forces behind these projects, and without their dedication and care to our clients’ success, these accomplishments would not have been possible. A huge congratulations and our thanks to the both of them for their time, attention to detail, and for raising the bar for what we can achieve as an agency.
Bytes.co: Providing Holistic Digital Marketing Strategies
Taking home both Platinum and Gold at the 2026 AVA Digital Awards is a momentous milestone for us, as this is our third year in a row being honored at this competition. While we appreciate the hardware, the real prize is seeing our clients’ sustained growth in organic visibility, search traffic, and eCommerce revenue.
As we look ahead through the rest of 2026, we remain committed to setting new benchmarks in digital marketing and pushing the boundaries of what our clients can achieve. We’re already back in the data, looking for the next breakthrough that will help our clients outpace their competition and define their own categories.
Are you ready to turn your digital presence into an award-winning success story? We love a good challenge. If you’re looking for a team that treats your growth as their own, let’s start a conversation.
