Agency Services
Rise Above The Fray
Let us handle everything you need to rank above your competitors.
How Will Your Business Beat Competitors and Grow Online?
With over 20 years of experience helping businesses thrive online, we’ve identified the ongoing key challenges in four core marketing service areas: Strategy, Content, Networking, and Technical SEO.
For each of those areas we have created a library of structured service modules to deliver clear results for our clients—without overwhelming them with tedious meetings or slide decks. This also helps keep our expenses down compared to other agencies!
Nothing happens overnight in the online search engines but I’m truly impressed with the results I’ve seen with GlideStep. They are consistent in communicating with me on a weekly basis with updates of ongoing improvements to my website and improvements with links on search engines.
Cecil Jennings, Owner — Cecil Jennings
Our Four Functional Areas
We invite you to browse through our library of service modules using the tabs below. Every item has an accompanying short 1-2 page report that will help keep things easy-to-digest for even our busiest clients. The days or wondering what your marketing team are up to are over!
Business & Strategy
Our agency has always been business-focused, probably because our founders were both MBA nerds. That’s why our clients benefit from ongoing consulting insights.
Value Proposition Review
Our team will examine your most prominent online marketing channels and determine how well your potential competitive strengths are represented.
Focus Groups
We will reach out to some of your recent customers and offer them rewards to complete a short scorecard about their experience. We'll then compile and analyze their feedback. We'll also request public reviews from the ones with positive experiences.
Competitor Audit
If you want to stay competitive, sometimes the best way is to creep on what your direct competitors are doing. Our team will take a deep-dive look into a specific competitor and see if there is anything we can learn to improve YOUR business.
Customer Segment Review
Our team will work to make sure your collateral is supporting the specific needs of your target customer segments throughout their key purchase stages.
Audience Interests
Let us look for the websites, podcasts, blogs, publications, and social accounts that your audience is following to help you improve your outreach or advertising efforts.
Brand Guidelines
Consistency is key when it comes to establishing a strong brand. Our team will review your digital assets to look for major issues with your logo, color scheme, typography, and overall voice and tone.
Competitive Report
This report will gather an array of high-level performance metrics about your top competitors. We'll look at search engine rankings, website speed, customer ratings, and more to help give a bird's eye view of how you're currently doing.
Review Analysis
Let our team deep-dive into the recent reviews from some of your top competitors. While this won't reflect on your current performance, it often yields some insight into what the market is currently prioritizing. This knowledge can help your team align priorities.
Content Development
Regular content creation is critical for SEO, but there is more to it than just churning out generic blog posts (don’t even get us started on AI-built content). Our team can help make sure this gets done the right way!
Post Builder
Regular content creation is critical for SEO and your marketing campaigns. We'll help create, publish, and share content that supports business objectives
Featured Projects
Highlighting our clients' recent work is one of our favorite ways to generate content because it will always be unique to your business (and it's also a great way to involve your customers).
Resource Articles
From thought-leadership to how-to articles for your audience, there are some specific types of content that work well for a lot of our clients that keep search engines (and end-customers) happy.
Networking Opportunities
This functional area is one of our favorites! It’s like getting a sales team, but instead of individual sales prospects we’re focused on helping you build strategic networking opportunities & prospects that will help your business grow.
Link-Building
Our team will survey where your top competitors are getting their best inbound links in order to identify new link-building priorities for your site.
Potential Content Partners
While our "Featured Projects" content module may focus on existing/past projects, we like to think ahead. This module lets us target potential content partners. It's a great way to find potential resellers or influencers!
Sponsorships & Advertising
For clients with advertising budgets, it can be tricky to know where to focus your ad spend. Let us help find some less-known opportunities for sharing your brand, such as smaller podcasters or website publishers.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is all of the back-end and under-the-hood stuff that most marketers don’t have the skills (or time) to handle on a regular basis. Neglecting these elements can mean ALL of your other efforts, time and money is wasted.
Security Review
While making a site hacker-proof is nearly impossible, there are a lot of steps that can be taken to improve your odds. We’ll help look for some quick wins here for you.
Local SEO Checkup
Getting your business information updated across the web and optimized for local search can be a headache. Let our team tackle this for you!
Search Console Checkup
If our tools discover potential technical problems or content issues that may hurt your search engine rankings, we can help you to resolve them.
Citation Review
Our team will work to review your existing citations in popular directories online, as well as work to identify potential new opportunities for you.
Performance Review
We will test the page loading times for your top-ranked pages. If problems are identified then we will work to find quick wins or recommend appropriate next steps.
Focus Page Audit
Our team will select a key landing page and systematically review its performance, metadata, keywords, and more to identify optimization opportunities.
Keyword Planner
It’s tough to know where to start when it comes to keyword planning. Our team can help with the research and strategy without overwhelming you in a sea of head-spinning data.
Custom Development
This special module covers occasional limited-scope custom development needs such as custom lead form development or building new website pages.
Accessibility Review
Is your site content accessible to visitors with disabilities? Our team can look for common Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors to help boost your compliance.
Broken Link Review
Our team will scan your website to make sure there are no broken links. But furthermore, we'll dive into the server logs to try and hunt down links from external sources that may need updating (and we'll reach out to try and get them fixed).
Schema Review
Schema markup can be daunting. Let us help make sure that your website is taking advantage of the various schema maps and syntax that will help various search engines parse your content.
Small Business Agency Services
How Do Modules Work?
Our Agency Services are designed around Modules. Each module has a unique workflow and typically involves several hours of effort from our team. But they usually all follow the same general approach:
1) Discover Opportunities
Most of our modules begin with an analysis of your current state, whether we’re auditing a landing page, reviewing a marketing campaign, or discovering new backlink opportunities. This discovery stage may include an initial overall grade.
2) Work On Top Priorities
Once we have identified the opportunities, we will create a list of priorities and action items that our team can start knocking out. Some things may require your approval, but most tasks are things we can complete without bothering you.
3) Deliver Actionable Insights
Once we’ve completed everything we can, we’ll deliver a final report that summarizes everything we completed as well as anything that might require further review from your team. In the end, you’ll always know exactly what our team is doing for you every month.
What Makes Our Services Different?
There are a lot of amazing marketing tools and website platforms out there to choose from, so what makes GlideStep different? We are a service, not a DIY tool. We don’t think you should have to spend your valuable time struggling to become your own designer, programmer, marketer, or search engine expert.
Every client is different, and needs are constantly evolving. That’s why you will have a dedicated account manager regularly adjusting your production schedule each month. However, if you’d like to get a rough idea of how your plan might scale or adapt based on your budget and needs, check out our planning tool and start designing an Agency Support plan that works for your business!
FAQs
General
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Is there a long-term contract?
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Nope. We're month-to-month around here. You can change your service plan at any time before the next invoicing period begins. If we are hosting your website, just please understand that site migration is not usually something that may require at least a two week notice.
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What is the pricing for these services?
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Our SEO services leverage our PRO Module service, so that means things start at $600/mo. You can add more modules if you have the budget and would like for things to progress more quickly. More modules means more work can get done every month!
It is also common during our Link-Building efforts that we will find opportunities for listings that can be purchased. These costs are in addition to our services, and you will always have the final say in what we pursue here. Some clients like to just set aside a dedicated "link budget" and let us do our thing, while others prefer to manually review every opportunity. We are flexible though, so whatever works for you here!
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Does this mean GlideStep will write our blog posts?
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Short answer is YES!
Whenever you can have a short phone call to chat about a topic or even provide a rough draft for us to process, that's always likely to generate higher quality content and long-term results. We have found over the years that the reality for many small business owners is that they simply do not have time to be running a blog on top of their day-to-day responsibilities or lining up monthly interviews with our team to share source material for their blog. Our solution has been to develop a "Content Builder" module that allows us to generate two simple blog post drafts for you, whether you have the time to help contribute source material or not.
These posts will be text-driven and will only have a simple stock photo (unless you provide a custom image for us). You'll always have a chance to revise or edit anything our team puts together, so the final editorial power rests with you! But one way or another, our goal is to get fresh keyword-friendly content on your domain.
Accounts & Billing
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Can we pay with a credit card?
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Yes! For payments over $1,000 we do require a 3% processing fee for credit card payments. We also happily accept check payments. Invoices will be posted upon the completion of the service period or project phase.
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When does the service period begin?
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In most cases, we can start a new plan at any point during a month, and billing cycles will always be based on the calendar month. If we do not feel capable of reaching our support time budget within the current period, we may recommend post-dating your service start date or pro-rating the first month's service.
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Can I change my service level or cancel?
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Yes! You can scale your service plan up or down, pause, or even cancel it. We must receive your request before your next service period begins. If we have initiated production on any modules for the following period, you may be invoiced a prorated amount for the following service period.
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What is your refund policy?
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We'll always work to earn your business, and will work with you if you ever decide it's not working out. But please understand that we do not offer refunds.
Scope
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What happens if we need extra help during a service period?
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If extra work would be needed beyond the scope of your service plan, we will either provide you with an estimate for the extra work order or help coordinate with a third party vendor of your choice. You will always be given advance notice of any out-of-scope work requests. We don’t believe in surprise invoices.
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Do monthly support budgets rollover?
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No. Your support budget does not roll over month-to-month. The support budget at each tier is intended as a cap to our monthly efforts that are more open-ended in nature.
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Are the features described in each of the service areas unlimited?
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No, these support functions are not unlimited. Many of these areas can scale dramatically depending on the website, so we have a maximum budget of 3 hours total time allowed per module, including all core reporting, quick fixes, and follow-up meetings.
Expectations
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Will this make my website #1 in Google?
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There are no magic bullets or sure-things when it comes to marketing. Please understand that there are myriad ever-changing factors that determine search marketing performance, and specific rankings are never guaranteed. Our team will constantly strive to maximize your ROI and ensure that our efforts as well as any results we are seeing are clearly communicated to you on a regular basis.
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How long will it take to become first in the rankings?
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While we be making consistent efforts to build your SEO rankings, we cannot predict what will happen with the rankings. Your competitors may be making similar efforts, or they may hire someone who actually hurts their rankings. Search engines are also constantly changing their algorithm which is a whole other factor!
The time it takes to outrank your competition will ultimately depend on the gap between your site and theirs in a number of areas. We can look at a custom competitive report to get a feel for what to expect here, but we cannot emphasize enough that even this is subject to change.
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Can you help ANY business get to the top of search rankings?
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Remember, search engines are inherently competitive. Even if you're doing everything right your competition might also be stepping up their game. Just like staying on top in your industry in the real world, it takes work to do the same in the virtual world and there are unfortunately no guarantees. Anyone that tells you otherwise is either out to take you for a ride, or is into some dark magic that will be the end of us all.