Frequently Asked Questions

We don't know. But we offer a free consult - as long as you need (some companies need 15 minutes, some need 2 hours to explore what we do), to help you decide if we are aligned with your expectations. 

We also have a proven track record of performance. We can provide writing samples, website samples and strategy sessions as needed to help you vet our company. You'll know if there is a good synergy when we talk for a few minutes. We're pretty sure you won't get a management team leader on the phone from our competitors. We put you on the phone or on Zoom with a business leader from our team. There are no questions that cannot be answered. 

We actually have clients in every development phase. We love working with start ups and newer businesses, as the learning curve can be shortened. You don't have to experience any failures in marketing and web footprint building if you don't want to. We can guide you from day one. A lot of our clients came to us to get their websites or marketing strategies fixed and working properly. They had hired others to help them build their web footprint first, and it didn't produce results. We have worked with over 450 companies in more than 25 industries.

We offer more website development options for less money. This is undisputed. We will even meet and beat pricing on an apples to apples basis. If you present us with an engagement letter and work outline, we will beat the price if it's from a local, proven competitor. 

We also have more impressive results. We don't employ sales people. We have low pressure meetings. We ask questions, you ask questions and we provide solutions - even if you don't engage with us. We prefer not to waste your time. 

We generally offer all mainstream coding and development platforms/languages, but a vast majority of our clients end up choosing WordPress, React/Next Js for their websites, as there are some pre-defined benefits to both options. 

We have reasonable pricing, because we only employ experts. We don't have a massive payroll of people who do basic tasks. We employ a team of 8-12 experts full-time. We work on a contract basis with writers who are proven to provide the world class content we offer. We cross train our team to ensure they can handle every facet of the business we engage in, so you don't get stuck with people who cannot help you.

Finally, we have credentialed Cyber Security and security minded team members that ensure you have the most robust protection on your website. Online threats are rampant and growing - don't get caught losing business because of poor coding practices, bad security protocols and incapable agencies. We are the ONLY agency to employ the level of security experts we employ. We mandate high level certifications for our team members. Our oversight and infrastructure is without comparison in the Inland Empire. Ask us about it. 

No. We can't guarantee SEO success. For example, we aren't google, and we don't dictate their algorithm. So, anyone who promises #1 spot is not telling you the truth. 

We can be relatively certain comparatively to your competitors where you will shake out in the SERP's (search engine ranking positions) you will land once fully indexed, but we cannot guarantee it. 

We CAN guarantee you will get significantly more traffic than you did prior for the same amount of work/budget. That is an indication of our experience and our capabilities. We can also guarantee you will be given knowledge, training (if desired) and understanding of how to improve your overall revenue through best practices in SEO. 

We are verifiable SEO experts. We run a portfolio of 50+ websites. We perform ongoing work for more than 75 clients at any given time and we have worked on the web footprint of more than 450 companies over the past 10 years as a "white-labeled" SEO, marketing and content provider, or as the lead agency. That means we either got paid by other agencies to help rank their clients or we have worked directly with those clients.  

Are you sure of what you want to accomplish? Have you explained what you expect for a website to the digital agencies that are bidding your website project?

Are you comparing apples to apples? Building a Ruby on Rails website that has load balancing and can scale out as you add concurrent users is a lot more expensive to build than simply putting up a plain vanilla blogging website. Ongoing maintenance should also be considered. 

Are you overpaying because of the brand name of the agency? Chances are, if you are getting a WordPress website, for example, you should be in a relatively tight range. Almost all of these types of websites are relatively similar in build style, time to build and templating. This means that pricing should be more consistent. If you see large swings in price points, you should ask questions. We can build a simple 8-12 page WordPress website in less than 10 hours with a single employee. Most agencies can do it in less than 20 hours. but our pricing reflects both our reduced timeline, and our advanced skills (and corresponding value/cost). Apples to apples, we are delivering a similar website to the 20 hour website, but in ten hours. 

We offer a lot more in the basic website configuration, however, and the timeline doesn't change. So get it in writing. See what it is you are comparing, and ask questions. Gauge the competency of the agency based on how they answer the questions. We can help you answer any questions you may have about websites.

If, and that is a big if - because most digital agencies don't build complete websites that are ready to operate properly - your website is built properly, you will get some decent traffic and potentially some conversions. But you need to constantly be turning over content, engaging with customers and making small optimizations on your website as you go.

Yes. We build world class e-commerce websites. Our strength lies in the completeness of our deliverable. We do not build a simple shell of a website. 

We also future-proof our E-Commerce website builds. We prioritize headless commerce, and high end integrations so you don't get shoehorned into a slow, hard to manage website structure and can pivot with technology improvements. 

We add significant content and optimize the proper pages and aspects of the website to ensure you actually get traffic and have a reasonable opportunity for conversion.

Make sure you know what to expect from a deliverable when you are contemplating an E-commerce build. Agencies have vastly different ideas about what should be delivered. Make sure that you are getting the type of deliverable you are set up for and comfortable handling. 

The answer to that question can be complex and multi-faceted, but here are some concepts that may make sense to think about when building or revamping a website.

• A website is not just a pretty brochure. It needs to be integrated into real-world channels of marketing, corporate needs and existing infrastructure
• Hosting matters. So does website speed, and security. Don't skimp on any of these.
• If you build your website like a large enterprise does, at the beginning, you are helping your bottom line more than you know. Don't skip out on anything that is legitimately necessary, and which can provide great value in the future, even if it's a bit more money up front
• You will need to use the website. Don't let your agency build you something that is hard to understand, difficult to use or requires undue stress or excessive cost to maintain or update
• Your website is a constantly evolving piece of marketing collateral that will need to be paid attention to
• People, scripts and activists will try to harm your brand even if they don't know you. Protect yourself properly and take ongoing security seriously
• You need to be available, speak up and make clear what your expectations are
• Your agency will not volunteer a lot of information generally, as they are more comfortable with laying low and billing monthly invoices than being proactive. Agencies are generally reactive. Be clear in your needs
• WordPress is not the only solution
• Neither is HTML/CSS
• Optimization and content are usually more valuable and important than looks - that doesn't mean you can settle for an ugly or hard to use website, but plan accordingly
• It is not ridiculous to expect your digital agency to work hard for you
• Find out what you are getting, ask about what will be billed separately, and understand why you are being charged what you are being charged, because the industry is made up of a lot of different types of personalities and some developers have compromised ethics, morals and standards relative to premium digital agencies
• It's a large, complex and important undertaking to build a competent website - partner with the right partner. Your sister's nephew in law may well be brilliant, but when he goes to college, will your business be up a creek?
• You're competing against everyone. From everywhere, and you need to adopt best practices to please the search algorithms. Make sure you understand what is necessary to succeed and get free traffic, and then convert that traffic. It's not the "wild west internet" it once was, where throwing some words and a picture on the website meant you became a millionaire

There are hundreds of other concepts that should be discussed over time with the right partner. Let's chat. You can ask as many questions as you want.

Overwhelmingly the most popular types of websites are WordPress and HTML/CSS/Java driven websites. WordPress is built in PHP and utilizes a dynamic modulation, to allow you to drive the website experience with content like blog posts. Unfortunately, WordPress is often used for businesses that don't need or won't use dynamic content-driven website architecture, and it has some drawbacks if that is not the use case. Nevertheless it is extremely popular because it is popular, and it has a lot of modification capabilities and support in the open source community. 

It is not hard to find "developers" or template driven builders to service the website. Therefore it's important to know what you are getting if you intend to use it properly to market your business. It is not a bad website CMS, and we use it for a large majority of our customers because they understand it, it's widely able to be utilized, and it has a relative easy to moderate learning curve. Wordpress can be a very good place to start for many business website needs.

HTML/CSS/JAVASCRIPT sites are front end driven and usually provide a more static environment that is less "weight on the page" and faster. it delivers specific content on specific pages and it is easy to configure and maintain. 

For E-Commerce, there are basically three big players right now (and some vocal mid-range players with some popularity):

WooCommerce (built on WordPress)

Shopify (proprietary and built on their infrastructure)

Magento (Comprehensive but harder to maintain and optimize)

The smaller players also include Joomla, Big Commerce, and others. 

Vastly, the technology is changing to be a headless architecture. This means that you structure a website on the front end of the site (what the customer sees) and drive it outside of the native environment of that front-end library or CMS, using things called API's which basically utilize bigger services backed by larger companies to drive services and dynamic environments that change in "near time" to serve the proper content and experience. These API's are maintained by bigger, more well-funded companies (for example Google, Microsoft, Reddit, Facebook, Shopify, Fed-Ex, or big industry specific players). This allows you to serve the right things to the right user at the exact time they want it. It is relatively secure and driven by the user and maintained by a smaller team than what it would take to replicate such an experience with a development and programming team. It is also "future proof" in the sense that as your company or business changes or your user experience needs evolve, you can attach a different, or more complex implementation of an API to drive that need. What you see on the front end is not necessarily proprietarily tied to the backend (the data that provides the experience). This gives companies more freedom. 

It allows for faster, more interesting experiences for consumers. Think Netflix, for example: they serve a customer based on preferences stored in a database that is tied to the login information, which then uses complex services to drive new content suggestions, route to the fastest server for that user, and to deliver the experience that user expects - all driven by automated, algorithmically driven API's that deliver exactly what is expected based on past experiences. This allows Netflix to show more content, in a way that is speedy, doesn't bog down their infrastructure, and still delivers exactly what the customer expects. The load balancing, stream quality and suggestion engines are all driven by these microservices and automated, "triggered" events and code interactions. Parts of this type of architecture is actually SERVERLESS! It's jsut reliant on virtual containers and code interactions. This is all driven in a hybrid environment including the cloud. 

Because of the changes in technology, building an experience "like" Netflix is significantly less expensive than even a few years ago, and large cloud computing providers like AWS and AZURE and Google can help businesses (even small businesses) offer enterprise level experiences to customers. 

From a development perspective, this type of integration is more expensive than an open source solution like WordPress, but can be integrated into the overall needs of the business and their consumer. For instance, one might spin up a server on AWS LightSail that hosts a WordPress environment and use lambda and other stateful or stateless, server-driven, containerized or serverless, data driven solutions to improve the real-time experience. This can support many thousands of users concurrently if needed to, because not only can a website scale up in real time using computing on demand resources, but also can scale out as you grow in user base. While this may all seem like buzzwords and fancy talk, these are real-world solutions that provide streamlined, efficient and comprehensive experiences to consumers on behalf of businesses, through third party service providers. 

Sometimes a business just needs a way to connect with consumers (think WordPress or HTML/CSS/JS); sometimes they need lightweight, dynamic, data driven applications that require things like headless Shopify or Next.Js with React Native; and sometimes they need enterprise solutions that require a mix of code languages, libraries and API's all integrated to deliver big datasets, or experiences to a lot of users efficiently. 

It's a discussion that is far bigger than a few paragraphs. Luckily, with the right agency, you can expect to tell your account representative what you want to accomplish, listen to ideas and architecture that is available, and eventually come to an agreement on what is needed to accomplish the goals you set. We can help you flesh out the options and deliver on expectations. Let's Chat!

100% of our copy in any content format is original. We verify the content at multiple levels prior to the editing process. After editing, a team lead checks against all known references to determine that the content is standalone, original content that has never been produced anywhere in digital format. 

We provide a guarantee for originality and zero conflicts. You can view it HERE.

Each content project has specific needs. We place a top team lead with your account the moment you engage with our company. In all cases this is a senior management level representative. Together you will map out a plan for your content needs. This team leader will ensure that you get exactly the content you desire. Together you can determine the best practices for your industry, digital or offline needs and general marketing planning for the content. This will help to determine the appropriate length of content. 

Some content may be a few words to a dozen words, like a meta description for SEO writing for a product, or for an Alt-Text for a picture. Some content may be multiple pages of highly technical content and exceed several thousand words, or serve as part of a much longer conglomeration of content on a subject.

All content types take different times. What you can be sure of is that we meet our deadlines. Once a timeline is established, you will receive content on regular intervals or by a set deadline, based on the timeline agreement you are in agreement with. Generally no content will take longer than 1 month from start to finish, unless it is part of a real-time endeavor to produce real time content in a lengthy format over a set interval. 

Most content can be produced within 2 weeks.  

Revisions are determined by the type of content. Generally once you agree to a content schedule and receive a round of content and return feedback, you will not need to have revisions going forward -- this is because we take our learning curve seriously, and craft content that drives revenue. We provide a satisfaction guarantee, which ensures you will be happy with the content you receive, even if it means we must do multiple revisions on it. 

Revisions requested that require major material changes to the original content type, intent or subject matter may require an additional fee to enact. This is determined on agreed upon goals and objectives.

Our process varies by the type of content you need and the amount of total ongoing content you require. You can view some concepts about how we onboard and work with clients HERE. 

You will retain the rights to the final delivered content. This may be used in any format you choose.  

If, in the course of preparing our team to produce content, you need signed documentation to protect disclosure of proprietary or trade secrets, whether this information is for internal or public facing purposes, we can provide a general Non-Disclosure agreement.

Alternatively we can review and agree to a realistic NDA. We are in the business of meeting our clients' wishes related to their business - our team will never share confidential information with any third party. Any information we collect or learn in the course of working together, will remain private.

Yes. We routinely provide alt text, and description, and title content for those working on full optimization of their digital assets or offline visuals. 

Yes. We can provide imagery to help complete content campaigns or portray the prosper scope of a particular project. We can also provide other ancillary services like video, etc. We have access to premium quality stock images and have creatives that can help you find the right visuals.

We have the capability of producing bulk content, but only with a dedicated forward plan in place to determine the goals of the content and navigate potential concerns with our input. We reserve this right to ensure the highest quality content can continuously be delivered to our clients. 

In other words, we don't produce content just to hit a word count. We write content that has intent. We can help you understand why this makes the most sense over the long-term if you would like. 

Because we provide a large amount of copy at such a high level, we set our client interaction standards extremely high. We expect you to be able to meet with us as needed to ensure accurate, top quality content can be produced at all times. We may require more questions to be answered than some other service providers in our space, or that you spend more time with us to get project planning in place and serve as an auditor of agreed upon goals. 

We understand how valuable your time is, and we ask that you plan to spend several hours over the course of a typical engagement to allow us to properly serve you. 

We have a work flow that optimizes your time for oversight, so you do not have to spend a ton of time doing our job for us. Note: we have MILLIONS of written words in top SERP's on the internet - we are professionals with real world experience in fulfillment of content creation projects.

We have multiple ways to work with us in an ongoing, or one-off methodology. You can find descriptions of these options HERE.

By taking a look at our past experiences and our data. We always track every campaign utilizing multiple third party tools and performance metrics in addition to agreed upon internal and proprietary analytics and consumer data which can indicate the success of a given campaign. 

Potential Clients can request an extensive list of samples to review.

Generally, we write content upon the background of search engine optimization. But we write first and foremost for interaction, education, reader engagement and maximum value of the content. If you don't have a marketing team, we can help you create a marketing plan to help improve these needed metrics.

Every single piece of content is optimized and offers suggestions on how to stage it on your website or in your creative - but we leave the ultimate decision up to those who will market the piece. We can also create multiple versions of the same original content concept for different applications and optimize the overall message to correspond to your needs for specific channels.

If you order articles, blog content or Key Page content from our company, we include headings, titles, and other suggestions to ensure you have access to our 'wordsmithing' from an SEO perspective. Our team has several, proven high-level SEO professionals that edit and collaborate on every single project we send out. In fact our management is as big a stakeholder in our success as a content creation company as our writers are.

We are a truly hybridized team that aims for real-world results in the form of world class content. Rest assured you are getting more than just words on a page.

If you have an analytics team or in house IT departments, you can schedule an appointment to talk with us and them, and together we can uncover some of the concerns your organization may not even know about. 

We can perform a third party audit, if you aren't sure you have enough data about the threats. 

We can also show you verifiable real-world real-time threats to help you understand what is lurking out there. 

We can also walk you through the attack vectors that you have in your business or digital footprint. 

Simply asking a few questions, we can help you realize how easy it is to be compromised. 

If you need to test your existing security we can offer penetration testing. Though, we find that many small and medium sized businesses are not even implementing base level best practices for cyber security concerns - and that is a very good place to start before we get too advanced.

The threat is real, we deal with it daily, and we have specialty infrastructure set up to test solutions and weaknesses, so we don't have to allow our business clients to stay in vulnerable positions. 

Sure. There are economical solutions. But Security for your business data, digital assets, client information and general cyber security solutions are not a one-size-fits-all type of implementation. 

You need to know where you stand. When you have a good idea of the threats you are actually facing, and the foreseeable future road map, you can properly identify the best solutions. 

An example might be: Many WordPress Websites for small and medium businesses can have problems because they are on shared hosting platforms, or have servers set up improperly, or without security best practices. We offer managed hosting that can solve most of those problems for a fraction of the costs of rebuilding a web presence because you were hacked. But The small and medium sized business does not live or die by a WordPress website. In fact, it may not even be the best solution for many businesses - we build world class websites, and WordPress only fits for some of them. 

In another example, you may be in a sensitive industry that is getting a lot of aggression from hactivists or politically or ideologically motivated bad actors. Combatting someone with a fundamental drive to take out your company may not be easy. It can get expensive if they are dedicated enough, but it pales in comparison wit the costs of not combatting the threat. Let us help you fix these types of security issues if you are facing them. 

Yet another example may be that you have grown substantially, and you need help building a team to combat persistent threats. We can help you plan, meet framework requirements and get into compliance. It's what we do.

Got some amazing programmers that build a solution for your customers? Are they performing secure code review? Are they aware of best practices not only for the code language, but the endpoint inclusions, links and networking interfaces?

Growing and need help managing new onboarding and employee access? We can help you set up your active directory on Azure, or improve physical facilities security - we do this stuff at scale, and you can benefit from our costs of doing business, which are likely to be lower than yours as a "new" business looking for services. 

Why pay a dedicated $100k+ employee and become reliant on a single point of failure, when we can implement a foolproof plan to help you maintain bulletproof security for much less cost.

The long answer short: There is no single solution for cyber threats. So you need to know what you realistically face and plan for that, while looking toward the future to ensure that you have the right solutions within reach to combat threats as they evolve.

We are a single provider for everything security, marketing, and web related for your small or medium business in Southern California. We can offer solutions that no other digital agency can offer. In fact, we are willing to bet that the extent of your current digital agency's "security solution" is a plugin for your website. 

That's not a sustainable or realistic security solution for your business. The cost of a data breach or a ransomware attack is significant. It can bankrupt a business in short order. Don't get caught off guard. 

We have the best trained staff of any Southern California Digital Agency. We are not a dedicated MSSP, or a SOC as a standalone service provider, but we offer competitive services that coordinate with our client's needs. We can, however, act as an MSSP, or a SOC solution for your business, or help you stand one up. We have credentials that are security specific and real world experience in combatting threats on the internet.

We are also a business consulting company. We know marketing, SEO, website development and other aspects that can help you succeed. Having a full solutions provider offers economies of scale and cross functional experience and knowledge that you cannot get with only a dedicated security firm, or a dedicated marketing firm. We provide complete solutions and we are more reasonably priced because we do not employ a large staff. We ONLY employ experts, and we cross train our low-turnover staff to understand how to provide full breadth solutions to small and medium business. We don't add payroll or unnecessary staff to serve clients and we build only the exact solution that makes the most sense for you. 

We have gotten very good at getting rid of frivolity and unneeded services. We can solve problems inexpensively through impressive automation and world class planning.

We are really good at what we do. Call us and get real answers to your questions, then compare the level of knowledge and experience with your existing service providers. We are happy to help, and would love to work with you. 

We hate to answer a question without absolute confidence. But every solution is different. The costs are fluid in some circumstances, in real-time defensive work. The costs for hardware and software solutions range in price wildly. 

Here is what we can say: MOST SMB's don't' require tens of thousands of dollars in security solutions for their website and premises needs. Usually it's less than a few thousand dollars a year for the ongoing monitoring and servicing - at least for simple security needs. 

This can range upward. We can beat any service provider's price, and we will turn down work we cannot excel in. We may have to help a business by advising them on how to build an in-house solution because the threat is bigger than the company thought. This can be a larger initial cost. Sometimes we are not the right solution provider, even though we are a security centric provider. As such, we cannot comment on what a solution might cost from another provider. 

In a world where hardware can cost between $50-$75,000 USD for TCP/IP infrastructure on a per piece basis, we can offer exceptionally value oriented price points. We can usually also offer training and solutions that are one time fixed costs, if applicable. 

Simply put: Everything is variable and requires a baseline audit to know true costs. But we can offer better pricing than any of our competitors, except on some proprietary hardware solutions (we cannot control distribution channels or pricing for proprietary hardware solutions from name brand providers).

Many times, solutions can be made in the cloud, and costs of ongoing services, while potentially more than expected, are still usually quite reasonable; we can help you manage your cloud infrastructure to ensure that your costs are kept low. We can help train your team to handle the workload and we can securitize the setting and access as needed to keep you secure.

Another intangible that comes with cyber security, is the non-economical costs of implementing a solution or multiple solutions. 

Generally, simple concepts like security awareness training can be pretty easy. A few long lunches on premises and some access to online resources can be cost effective and easy to implement. 

But employees don't like change. They are also focused on getting work done - they don't love pausing what they are doing to help contribute to security needs. 

It can be a bit hit or miss, depending on how well the implementation is planned. If it'd done right it can be quite easy. If it isn't it can be annoying. Still necessary, but annoying. We have done this a lot, and we have streamlined the process. We can implement impressive solutions quickly and without hiccups. We can also help to train your workforce and monitor the ongoing landscape to help ensure it is an easy process going forward, too. 

We tend to be a bit more blunt when it comes to realistic expectations because we'd rather under promise and overdeliver. Most of our implementations are very smooth.

There are no guarantees, but we do this frequently - we are prepared to improve the implementation process relative to industry peers. 

We have a blog category for this, that is directly relevant to small and medium businesses in Southern California and the 5 counties we generally serve locally. 

We will also update links throughout our security related pages (including this one) that go to third party resources that are considered world class. We do not profit from these links and they are there to help educate you.

One important third party link example might be the Mitre ATT & CK page.

We have set pricing. We offer very specific reporting and give a deliverable for every charge we make to your SEO account. 

We are much more reasonable than other Nationally capable digital agencies. We are competitive to local providers, but we offer MUCH MORE value for the dollar than our local competitors. That’s because our team has experience in facets of business that other digital agency teams don’t have. We have team leaders that know your industry, have experience managing large assets, have experience in SMB culture and operations, including technology, HR, finances and biz dev. 

We don’t employ random SEO’s. Our SEO’s adhere to a stringent game plan driven by data and reinforced by our learning model of internal websites that help to prove concepts and provide feedback on new initiatives. 

Long-story short, we will beat any competitor digital agency price point on an apples to apples basis. But you’re not likely to have to worry about that, after a single phone call you’ll understand why most digital agencies cannot compete with us on SEO services at all. We do more for the same money, and provide real world revenue and ROI. 

That’s the beauty of SEO, it’s a level playing field, generally. You have every chance that your competitor does to compete in the industry. Sometimes you aren’t doing what you need to from a baseline perspective and that’s why it seems difficult. 

We help you establish best practices, understand your starting baseline and create a plan to ensure success based on an ROI basis. We don’t throw money at solutions that don’t work for your business. 

We help you understand how to build strong traffic in-roads, and what to do with that traffic once it’s established. We also focus on getting you appropriate traffic that removes themselves from the situation if they aren’t qualified as a conversion potential. We write content to improve your overall credibility, and show your expertise. We help you understand how to maximize ROI based on the right solution at the right time. 

We help you compete by picking your battles and building your brand, rather than trying to get cheap, non-converting traffic. 

We have companies that compete on local and global levels using all different types of proven SEO implementations. Let’s talk about what you want to accomplish, and we can provide a game plan for you.

We only employ white hat techniques that won’t jeopardize your online footprint, brand or company in any way. Our team only utilizes best practices and pivots quickly to rectify any borderline initiatives as they may have been established prior to our taking you on as a client. We provide an initial audit to ensure you are already in compliance with industry accepted white hat principles and best practices. 

This ensures that your company will not be penalized for poor techniques, technology or oversight.

We have seen it take 10 days, and we have seen it take 180 days to start getting realistic traffic. It’s not a perfect science and because we are not a search engine company, we cannot guarantee results. But generally, with a proper campaign and best practices, along with a properly structured website or web application, you should be able to see benefits from an SEO campaign within 90 days or so. 

Any company that states they can achieve better results in less time than we state here is not being realistic and will likely be looking to exit after taking a hefty up front fee to perform sub-par work. Real world SEO work that showcases world class content, technical work and proper planning, takes some time and will yield great results.