SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/04/13 -- Covario, Inc., the leading independent search marketing agency and technology provider, announced that James Latham has joined the company as its advisory chief marketing officer.

Latham was formerly the CMO of OpenText, Canada's largest software company, and previously held the strategy marketing and analytics leadership role for McCann-Erickson's Relationship Marketing division.

He will be building upon his existing role on Covario's advisory board to provide strategic marketing advice and counsel. Latham has served on the board for the last six months. In his expanded role, he will extend his expertise to the company's marketing team to explore new market accelerators both for the Covario search marketing agency and for the company's Rio SEO platform of search and social software tools.

"Search has become an integral part of the marketing discipline," Latham said. "It is tightly connected to content marketing, social engagement, and customer contact. With the world's Search Agency of the Year (according to OMMA), coupled with patented technology from Rio/SEO -- the only leader cited in the recent Forrester Research Wave of SEO platforms -- Covario is uniquely positioned to expand rapidly on key trends in social, mobile, and local search capabilities required for effective content marketing."

"I am delighted to have James as a key advisor and marketing strategist for the company," said Russ Mann, chief executive of Covario. "He represents an expanding group of advisors and executives helping to propel Covario further and faster. James brings extensive content marketing and management experience to our rapidly growing organization."

Latham holds a Bachelor's degree in computer science from The State University of New York, teaches global marketing on occasion at the Masters for International Management, and is currently doing research in international marketing at Boston University.

About Covario

Covario is the world's leading independent search marketing agency. The firm was selected by OMMA as both the 2012 and 2011 Search Agency of the Year. Covario is also the parent company of Rio SEO, the leading software provider of SEO, social media, and content marketing automation tools. Headquartered in San Diego, Covario has about 250 team members worldwide who are also concentrated in Beijing, Chicago, London, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Seattle, Singapore, Tokyo, and Toronto. The agency's growing customer base includes world leaders in technology, consumer electronics, retail, ecommerce, financial services, media, entertainment, publishing, and consumer packaged goods. More information is available at http://www.covario.com.