Slate Marketing LLC explains how Louisville business owners should choose an SEO company.
Every Louisville business owner who searches for an SEO company gets the same first page: three directory sites, two national agencies with a Louisville landing page, and a handful of local shops with very different ideas of what SEO is. This guide is the checklist we would hand a friend. It works whether you hire us or not, and everything it asks for is answered somewhere on this site.
The short version: hire the company that shows you real Louisville rankings, reports calls rather than traffic, puts the founders on the phone, and lets you leave. Everything below is a way to test those four things before you sign.
What a Louisville SEO company should actually do
For a local service business, SEO is mostly local SEO: the Google Business Profile, the citations that agree with it, a page for every service and every city, a steady flow of reviews, and a website fast enough to convert the click. Blog posts, backlinks, and technical audits matter, but they matter after those fundamentals, not instead of them. If a proposal leads with a content calendar and does not mention your Google Business Profile, it was written for a different kind of business.
- Google Business Profile rebuilt and managed weekly
- Citation cleanup across the directories Google checks
- Service pages and city pages written for Louisville, not swapped from another metro
- A review system that asks every customer at the right moment
- Site speed and mobile usability that meet Google's thresholds
- Monthly reporting on rankings, reviews, and calls you can verify
The twelve-question scorecard
Ask every candidate the same twelve questions and score the answers. A good company answers each in a sentence. A bad one changes the subject.
| Question | A good answer | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work? | A named founder or strategist you can call | An account manager relaying to a team you never meet |
| Which Louisville searches will you target? | A written list with the neighborhoods that matter for your trade | Vanity terms, or no list |
| Where do you rank now? | Live results for their own business and clients | Reviews speak for themselves |
| How will you report? | Positions, reviews, and calls, verifiable in your own accounts | Traffic charts |
| What is the contract? | Month to month, or yearly with a stated reason and a lower price | Twelve months, auto-renew, cancellation fee |
| What do you guarantee? | A specific outcome with a remedy, or an honest no | First page for everything |
| Who owns the site, domain, and profile? | You, in writing | The agency, until you leave |
| What is included for the price? | An itemized list | A custom quote after the call |
| How do you get reviews? | A request after every job, no incentives | We can post them for you |
| What links will you build? | Local citations, partners, press, chamber | Hundreds a month |
| How long until results? | Thirty to ninety days for movement | Two weeks |
| Can I talk to a client? | Yes, here are two | No |
What a fair price looks like in Louisville
| Monthly price | What it usually buys | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Under $300 | Automated reports, thin directory submissions, little human work | Nobody, honestly |
| $300 to $800 | Profile management, citations, a few pages, basic reporting | A single-location business starting out |
| $800 to $1,500 | Everything above plus city pages, reviews, and a strategist | Most Louisville contractors |
| $1,500 to $3,000 | Multi-location work, content, links, ads coordination | Multi-crew companies in competitive trades |
| Over $3,000 | Enterprise scope | Franchises and regional brands |
Our own pricing sits in the middle of that table on purpose: the Louisville Omnipresence Build is $8,000 a year, about $667 a month, and includes local SEO, the website, reviews, Google Ads management, social, and speed-to-lead texting. The Core Local Foundation is $1,990 a year for the website and the review system alone. Both are published, which is the first thing to check about any company: if the price is a secret, the scope is too.
Contract red flags
- Automatic twelve-month renewal with a long notice window
- The agency registers your domain or owns your Google Business Profile
- A setup fee with no itemized deliverables
- Guarantees that do not name the search, the position, or the remedy
- Any offer to write or post reviews on your behalf
- Content published on rented sites to borrow their authority, which Google's site reputation abuse policy now penalizes
A worked example: two Louisville proposals
A Louisville plumbing company gets two proposals. The first promises first-page rankings in thirty days, 200 backlinks a month, and a twelve-month contract at $1,200 a month with hosting included, on the agency's platform. The second lists the searches it will target by neighborhood, shows its own Map Pack positions live, prices the work at a published rate with no contract, puts the domain and profile in the owner's name, and guarantees a Map Pack position within 60 days or works free until it lands. The first proposal is louder. The second is the one you can check.
How to check a company's claims in ten minutes
- Search their own business name plus Louisville. A company that cannot rank itself will not rank you.
- Search a service they claim to rank clients for and look for those clients in the Map Pack.
- Read their Google reviews and the replies. Replies tell you how they treat people.
- Open their site on your phone and time it. Slow agency sites build slow client sites.
- Ask for two client phone numbers and call one.
Google's short guide on whether you need an SEO and its explanation of how local ranking works are the two official references worth reading before any sales call. They describe the same fundamentals this checklist tests for.
How Slate Marketing LLC answers the scorecard
Founders Jack Moutardier and Daxton Noe do the work and take the calls. Targets are listed by neighborhood on every city page. Rankings, reviews, and calls are reported monthly in accounts you own. There are no contracts; yearly plans are cheaper and hold your territory. The guarantee is a Map Pack position within 60 days. You own the domain, the content, and the profile. Pricing is published. Reviews are earned with a request system, never posted. Our reviews and work are public, and the local SEO service page lists exactly what is included. If that matches what you are looking for, the next step is a free fifteen-minute audit where we pull your current positions live.
