How we work
Run by a working builder. Your first 90 days mapped before you sign.
S4 Media isn’t an agency. It’s a working custom home builder — Bryce — running the same SEO and site playbook on your shop that he runs on SwagerBuilds.com. You know what ships each month before you sign, and you see the results in your own Google account, not a black-box dashboard.
The primary differentiator
The person building your site actually swings a hammer.
Every S4 Media build is run by Bryce Swager — an active custom home builder in Eastern Idaho. Not a growth strategist. Not an account manager. A guy who framed a house last month, wired his own JobTread, ran his own GBP, and built the site that ranks his own shop.
That matters for two reasons:
- We use the same systems on your site that we use on ours. SwagerBuilds.com is the reference build. When something works there, it goes into the S4 Media playbook. When something doesn’t, we cut it.
- We know what a trade owner actually needs from a website — because we needed one first, and every agency quote came back at $10K–$15K. We built ours instead. That’s where S4 Media came from.
If you’d rather work with a marketing agency that’s never held a lead form open in a spam folder — we’re not that.
The first 90 days
Mapped before you sign. No mystery months.
Most shops that have been burned by an agency were burned the same way: money went out every month and nobody could say what came back. So we write the first 90 days down before you pay anything.
- Month 1 — Foundation. Target keyword brief signed. Site built or audited. Business listings cleaned up so your name, address, and phone match everywhere Google looks. Google Business Profile rebuilt. Search Console and analytics wired to your own accounts.
- Month 2 — Content and profile. Service and area pages go live. Schema markup added. Weekly Google Business Profile posts start. Review request system handed to your office.
- Month 3 — First ranking report. We open your Search Console together and look at where your target keywords actually sit, what’s moving, and what we’re changing next.
After that, every month gets a report on the same terms: keyword positions, map visibility, traffic from Google, and exactly what shipped.
What you pay and when
So you know what to expect on your card.
Setup is charged at signup along with your first monthly. Monthly runs on a 30-day cycle from there. Hosting, tools, and third-party costs are on us throughout.
- T1 — Starter: $1,000 setup + $250/mo. At signup: $1,250.
- T2 — Growth: $2,500 setup + $500/mo. At signup: $3,000.
- T3 — Partner: $7,500 setup + $2,500/mo. At signup: $10,000.
The setup fee is non-refundable once work begins. No long-term lock-in on the monthly — if you want to stop, tell us and we’ll stop billing. You keep the site, the content, the Google Business Profile, and the schema. It’s your business, not ours.
How we pick keywords
Locked at kickoff. No moving the goalposts.
Your target keywords are written into a brief we sign together at kickoff, and we report against that same list every month. We scope them honestly:
- Locally-modified queries (“[trade] [city]”, “[trade] near [neighborhood]”, “[service] [region]”) — where a well-built local site can realistically compete.
- Long-tail service queries (“[specific service] [city]”, “[emergency service] [region]”) — lower volume, higher intent, faster to move.
- National head terms — we’ll tell you straight if a term isn’t winnable in your market, rather than take your money chasing it.
We measure in Google Search Console — your account, your data. You can log in and check any time without asking us.
Straight talk on timing
SEO compounds. It doesn’t switch on.
Anyone who promises you a specific ranking by a specific date is guessing. Google changes, competitors move, and markets differ — a plumber in a town of 4,000 and a builder in a metro are not the same job.
What we will tell you: the foundation work lands in the first 60 days, movement usually shows in months 3 to 6, and the compounding shows up after that. If you need leads this week, run ads — we’ll say so. What we build is the side you stop renting.
What we ask of you
This works when you hold up your end, and it’s a short list:
- Sign the target-keyword brief at kickoff (30 minutes, one call, done).
- Get us brand assets, project photos, and any testimonials in the first two weeks.
- Don’t run a competing agency on the same domain at the same time.
- Answer approval requests within a few business days so work doesn’t stall.
That’s it. We handle the rest.