An internet marketing service near me should cover five jobs: get you found in Google Maps and search, give you a site that loads fast and converts, run paid ads when you need volume this month, answer the leads those channels produce, and report cost per lead. Olive Group does that work from Tacoma for businesses across Puget Sound. Call 844-441-0058 or Talk to Olive Group.
Most owners we talk to aren't shopping for tactics. They have a phone that used to ring more, a competitor who shows up above them in the map pack, and a website somebody built in 2019. The fix is usually boring and sequential, not clever.
What an internet marketing service near me actually includes
Here's the full scope of work. Not every business needs all of it on day one, and any agency that sells you all of it on day one is selling a package, not a plan.
Local SEO and Google Business Profile management
Local results come down to three things: relevance to the search, distance from the searcher, and prominence — how well known and well reviewed the business is. You can't move your shop, so the work goes into the other two. That means correct primary and secondary categories, services listed one by one, photos that aren't four years old, review velocity, and consistent name, address and phone across the directories that matter.
On the website side it means a real page for every service in every city you serve. We learned this the hard way on our own site: "kent seo" was ranking on a Covington page. Kent needed its own page. One page can't own two cities, and Google will pick the wrong one if you make it guess. Our local SEO and AI search services page covers how we structure that.
Website design and development
Traffic dies on slow, confusing pages. Google's Core Web Vitals treat a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less as good (web.dev). Beyond speed: a phone number in the header that's tappable, a form above the fold, service pages that answer price and process, and proof that you've done the job before.
We build on WordPress and keep it maintainable, so you're not paying a developer every time you want to change a headline. See how we approach web design that pays for itself.
Content marketing
Two kinds of pages earn money. Service-by-city pages catch people ready to hire. How-to and comparison articles catch people still deciding, and they're what AI answer engines quote when someone asks a question instead of typing a keyword. You need both, and you need the second kind to link to the first.
Paid search and paid social
SEO compounds. Ads start Tuesday. If you need leads before the SEO work matures, Google Ads fills the gap. You set an average daily budget, spend runs higher on busy days and lower on slow ones, and it evens out over the month. The budget is yours, held in your account, on your card. Management fees are separate.
Lead capture and follow-up
This is where most local marketing money leaks. You pay $60 for a click, the call comes in at 2:40 on a Thursday while you're on a roof, and it goes to voicemail. The caller dials the next result. Columa, our AI receptionist, answers the phone, qualifies the caller, books the appointment and texts you the details. You can see what it does at columa.ai or read about our AI marketing and AEO services.
Monthly reporting
One page, monthly: calls, forms, where they came from, cost per lead, and what changed on the site. Not a 40-tab dashboard nobody opens.
How the work runs, month by month
A reasonable first 90 days looks like this.
- Weeks 1–2: audit. Current rankings, top competitors by keyword, Google Business Profile gaps, site speed, tracking setup. You should get a list of specific problems, not a grade.
- Weeks 2–4: fix what's cheap and broken. Titles and meta descriptions on pages already ranking, missing categories and services on the profile, call tracking, forms that don't fire. On our own site we had roughly 450 queries sitting on page one but only 75 clicks in 28 days. The first lever wasn't more content, it was titles.
- Month 2: build the money pages. One per service, per city you actually serve. Internal links from the blog into them.
- Month 3: turn on ads if speed matters, keep publishing, and start reading the lead data instead of the ranking data.
Local SEO results tend to show up in the 3-to-6 month range, sooner on map-pack work, later on competitive service keywords in Seattle and Bellevue. Anyone promising faster is guessing.
What it costs
Start with the budget question before the vendor question. The frame we use with owners is 5% to 10% of revenue for all marketing — everything, not just agency fees.
Run the math on your own numbers. A contractor doing $800,000 a year at 8% is about $64,000 annually, or roughly $5,300 a month for everything: agency fees, ad spend, software, print, sponsorships. A shop doing $250,000 lands near $1,700 a month. If the quote in front of you eats that whole number and leaves nothing for ad spend, it's the wrong quote.
Three things move price more than anything else:
- How many city pages you need. One location in Tacoma is a different build than eight cities from Olympia to Everett.
- Whether the site gets rebuilt. Fixing a decent site is cheaper than replacing a broken one.
- Whether ads are in the mix. Ad budget is separate from management, and in competitive trades the ad budget is usually the larger line.
We quote after the audit, not before, because the audit is what tells us which of those three apply. The free SEO audit gets you keywords, competitors and a scope without a commitment.
How to choose a provider near you
Ask these before you sign anything.
- Who does the work? The person in the sales meeting and the person writing your pages are often different people in different time zones. Ask which.
- Who owns the accounts? Google Ads, Google Business Profile, Analytics, the domain, the hosting. All of it should be in your name. If you leave, you take it with you.
- What happens to a lead at 6pm? If nobody has an answer, you're buying traffic, not customers.
- How long is the contract? Month-to-month after an initial build period is reasonable. Twelve months with a cancellation fee is a retention strategy, not a strategy.
- Do they guarantee rankings? Google's own guidance says to be wary of any SEO who guarantees a #1 position (Google Search Central). Nobody controls the algorithm. We don't guarantee rankings, and neither should anyone quoting you.
- Do they know the area? Kent, Federal Way and Auburn are three different markets with three different competitor sets. A vendor who treats "Seattle metro" as one place will build one page for all of it.
Why "near me" matters for your rankings too
The same search you're doing right now is the search your customers do. Distance from the searcher is part of how local results get sorted, which is why a Tacoma plumber outranks a Bellevue plumber for a Tacoma searcher even with a weaker site. Your job is to be relevant and prominent in each city where you want work, and that requires a real page per city with real local detail, not a template with the city name swapped.
We build those pages for clients across the Puget Sound cities we serve, including Seattle, Tacoma, Kent, Covington, Auburn, Federal Way, Bellevue and Olympia.
Getting started
Send us your site and the three competitors who keep beating you. We'll come back with what they're ranking for that you aren't, what's broken on your end, and a scope with a number on it. Call 844-441-0058 or Talk to Olive Group.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long before an internet marketing service produces leads?
Paid search can produce calls within days of launch, assuming tracking is set up correctly. Local SEO typically takes three to six months to move meaningfully, with Google Business Profile improvements showing sooner than competitive service keywords. Most of our clients run ads during months one through three while the organic work matures, then reduce ad spend as rankings hold.
Do I need a local agency, or will a national one work?
A national firm can run competent ads. Local SEO is different, because distance and local prominence factor into the results, and the competitor set changes city by city. Someone who knows that Kent, Auburn and Federal Way are separate markets will build separate pages for them. Someone selling "Seattle metro" as one territory usually builds one page and splits your rankings.
What should a small business budget for internet marketing?
We use a simple frame: 5% to 10% of revenue for all marketing. Applied to a $500,000 local business at 8%, that's about $3,300 a month across everything, including ad spend, software and agency fees. Trades with high job values often go higher. Start with the percentage, subtract your ad budget, and what's left is your services budget.
Can you guarantee I'll rank first on Google?
No, and you should walk away from anyone who does. Google's published guidance specifically warns about SEOs who guarantee a number-one ranking. What we do commit to is a defined scope of work, monthly reporting on calls and forms, and cost per lead you can compare against your close rate. Rankings are an input, not the deliverable.
What happens to leads that come in after hours?
That's what Columa handles. Our AI receptionist answers calls around the clock, asks qualifying questions you define, books appointments into your calendar and texts you a summary. For service businesses, after-hours and on-the-job calls are usually the single largest source of wasted ad spend, because a missed call is a customer calling your competitor.
Do I own my website and ad accounts?
Yes. Your domain, hosting, Google Ads account, Google Business Profile and Analytics stay in your name with you as owner. We work inside them with access you grant and can revoke. If you decide to move on, nothing gets held hostage and nothing needs rebuilding from scratch.