How we work

Run by a working builder. Your monthly bills from Day 1. If we miss the milestone in 90 days, monthly stops forever.

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. Every tier is backed by a Day-90 cash-flow promise: you pay setup and monthly from signup. If we haven’t ranked you inside 90 days, monthly billing stops permanently. Hit the milestone by Day 90 and monthly continues.

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 90-day promise

Monthly bills from Day 1. Hit the milestone in 90 days or monthly stops forever.

Here’s the exact wording:

Setup fee is non-refundable and charged at signup. Monthly billing starts immediately at signup and runs every 30 days. First 90 days: if we haven’t gotten you into Google’s top 20 for at least 3 of your target keywords (top 10 for T3), monthly billing stops permanently — no future billing, no refund of prior months. Hit the milestone by Day 90 and monthly continues. Hosting, tools, and third-party costs are on us throughout.

Plain English on each piece:

“Target keywords” are defined upfront in a written brief that we sign together at kickoff. No moving the goalposts — the list is locked before day one.
The milestone is tiered. T1 and T2 hit when 3 of your target keywords sit in Google’s top 20 (page 1 or 2). T3 hits when 3 of them sit in the top 10 (page 1 only). We measure in Google Search Console — your account, your data, no black-box reporting.
You pay setup and your first monthly at signup. Then monthly runs on a 30-day cycle. If we hit the milestone by Day 90, the cycle keeps running — same monthly, same cadence, indefinitely. If we miss it, monthly stops on Day 90 and never charges again.
No refund on Days 1–90 monthly payments. By Day 90 you’ve paid 3 monthly cycles (roughly). Those stay with S4 Media — that’s how we cover our costs while we do the work. What you’re buying with the promise is a hard stop at Day 90 if we haven’t delivered, not a refund of prior months.
Setup fee is non-refundable. T1 is $1,000. T2 is $2,500. T3 is $7,500. Non-refundable in every scenario.
Every tier gets the promise. T1 ($1,000 setup + $250/mo, top-20 milestone), T2 ($2,500 setup + $500/mo, top-20 milestone), T3 ($7,500 setup + $2,500/mo, top-10 milestone). Same Day-90 mechanic across all three.

What happens on each outcome

Two scenarios. Both spelled out.

Scenario 1 — Milestone hit inside 90 days. Monthly billing continues on the same 30-day cycle you started at signup. Nothing changes on your end — the subscription just keeps running. This is what usually happens on a well-scoped local build.

Scenario 2 — Milestone not hit at Day 90. Monthly billing stops permanently on Day 90. No future monthly charges will ever hit your card. You keep the site, the content, the GBP, the schema — everything we’ve built. The setup fee and the Days 1–90 monthly payments stay with S4 Media. We shake hands and move on.

The point: the promise is a Day-90 fork. Two paths, clean line between them. No trial mechanic, no 6-month watch-window, no extended free work. Either the milestone hit and we’ve earned the ongoing monthly, or it didn’t and the monthly stops for good.

Cash flow, spelled out

So you know what to expect on your card.

Here’s what the first 90 days looks like on a T2 build ($2,500 setup + $500/mo). Same shape at T1 and T3, different amounts.

Day 0 (signup): $2,500 setup + $500 first monthly = $3,000 charged.
Day 30: Second monthly = $500 charged.
Day 60: Third monthly = $500 charged.
Day 90 — check-in:
Milestone hit → $500 charged as normal, monthly continues on Day 120, Day 150, and so on.
Milestone missed → No charge on Day 90. Monthly stops permanently. You’ve paid $2,500 setup + $1,500 monthly ($4,000 total), and nothing else ever hits your card.

Same shape at T1 ($1,000 setup + $250/mo): $1,000 + $250 at signup, $250 at Day 30, $250 at Day 60, then either continues or stops at Day 90.

Same shape at T3 ($7,500 setup + $2,500/mo): $7,500 + $2,500 at signup, $2,500 at Day 30, $2,500 at Day 60, then either continues or stops at Day 90.

Why 90 days and 3 keywords

Because that’s what “the site is working” actually looks like on Google.

Ninety days is enough time for a properly-built site + GBP + schema to move into the top 20 (T1/T2) or top 10 (T3) for a well-scoped, locally-modified query — but not enough time for a national head term to page 1. So we scope the keywords honestly at kickoff:

Locally-modified queries (“[trade] [city]”, “[trade] near [neighborhood]”, “[service] [region]”) — these should hit the milestone in 90 days if the build is right.
Long-tail service queries (“[specific service] [city]”, “[emergency service] [region]”) — these should also land in that window.
National head terms (“[trade] website builder” without a geo modifier) — we don’t put these on the promise list because 90 days isn’t fair to either of us.

The written brief gets specific: which queries, which pages target each one, which local variants count. At Day 90 (and at each check-in in between), we open your GSC together and count.

Why we can offer this

Two reasons:

The playbook works. SwagerBuilds ranks for the queries we said it would. Idaho Pest and Lawn ranks for the queries we said it would. When we control the site + the GBP + the schema + the internal-link mesh, the tiered milestone in 90 days on a well-scoped local query is the baseline, not the stretch.
Selection effect. A shop with a real service area, real photos, and a phone that gets answered is a shop we can rank. We’re filtering for the operators the playbook actually fits.

What we ask of you

The promise is real, and it depends on you holding up your end:

Sign the target-keyword brief at kickoff (30 min, one call, done).
Get us brand assets, project photos, and any testimonials within the first 2 weeks.
Don’t run a competing agency on the same domain during the promise window.
Keep the monthly card current through Day 90. After that, either it continues (milestone hit) or it stops (milestone missed) — either way you don’t have to do anything.

That’s the list. If you do that and we miss, the Day-90 stop is automatic. Simple.

Ready?