FAQs

Yes, and it is worth doing. Keyword-stuffed business names and addresses that turn out to be mail drops can be reported, and they do come down. It takes persistence more than cleverness.

Sometimes, partially, and not reliably. Proximity is weighted heavily and we cannot move your building. What we can do is win your own area completely, push out as far as the math allows, and tell you honestly where the wall is. If a specific suburb is worth real money to you, the answer might be a second address, and we will say so rather than pretend otherwise.

Not necessarily. Service-area businesses can rank without a storefront, and the rules for how you set that up are specific. Getting it wrong risks suspension, which is a considerably worse outcome than ranking poorly.

Either. Most clients would rather we ran it. If you would rather keep it in-house, we will get it set up correctly and show your team what to do, and you are not stuck waiting on an agency to change your holiday hours.

We request manager access to the profile rather than your credentials. You stay the owner and you can remove us at any point.

Faster than organic rankings usually. Profile and listing fixes can move things inside a few weeks because you are correcting information rather than building authority. Reviews take longer since they arrive at whatever pace your customers arrive. If you are starting from a profile that has been neglected for years, the first month or two tends to produce the most visible jump.

Each one needs its own profile and, on the site, its own page with content specific to that location. Multi-location gets messy quickly, particularly around duplicate profiles and staff creating listings nobody told anyone about. Sorting out what already exists is usually the first job.

Absolutely! We’ve written several blog posts about it. Your Free SEO Checklist for 2023 is our most recent, there’s an article on best On-page SEO practices, and much more in our blog. We’re also happy to give you some ideas that are specific to your site; just head over to our free SEO report card, and an expert will give you feedback on your site with zero obligation.

We have had campaigns with amazing results in as little as one week. BUT…keep in mind that “amazing results” means vastly different things within different projects. For a brand new site with zero rankings, just getting indexed and seeing keywords climb hits that button, while on a mature site getting a keyword to go from #12 to #3 might be a quick win.

But to set fair expectations, organic SEO takes time. It can be months before you see the full effect of what we do. That doesn’t mean you won’t see incremental improvement (you will), it just means that it can take a while to knock out tough competitors. Rest assured, you’ll get clear, no bull reporting each month so you will always know what’s happening.

The most obvious sign will be a gradual increase in keyword rankings. We’ll track and report on a handful of phrases, and as they increase, other peripheral phrases will increase as well. All of this adds up to more traffic to your site.

But, that’s only half the battle. Once you get that increased traffic, our team jumps back in and makes sure engagement and conversion is happening. After all, any agency can get people to your site, but it’s what they do there that counts!

We will provide all this data to you using both a dashboard (that you can refer to anytime) as well as handcrafted, easy to understand reports.

Both can be effective methods of driving traffic to a website. Paid search does have an advantage in that you can get very precise about the audience you are targeting, when you try to reach them, and many other variables. But it’s hard to argue with the effectiveness of a well-done organic SEO campaign.

Most people are conditioned to ignore the paid search listings, and to skip right to the “regular” (organic) results. Think about your own habits – how often do you click the ads or paid listings? And what is your trust level with those results?

When we run a full digital marketing campaign, we will often incorporate a strategy that includes both organic and paid search. But we do this with an eye to eventually dial back that paid search spend as the organic rankings take over – increasing your ROI year after year.

Absolutely! Local SEO is specifically designed for businesses like yours. By focusing on location-based searches, you can attract high-quality leads that are right in your own neighborhood. Here’s why local SEO is crucial for your success:

• “Near Me” Searches are Booming: People increasingly use their phones to find businesses “near me,” especially for services like restaurants, stores, plumbers, etc. Local SEO makes sure you show up in these results.
• Beat Bigger Competitors: Large national chains often struggle with local rankings. Smart local SEO gives you a competitive edge, even with a smaller budget.
• Higher Conversion Rates: People searching for businesses nearby are ready to buy or visit. Local SEO connects you with these motivated customers.
• Builds Community Trust: Appearing in local search results and directories enhances your visibility and builds credibility within your community.

ForeFront Web Can Help You Dominate Local Search

We specialize in tailored local SEO strategies, including:

• Google My Business optimization
• Location-specific keywords and content
• Directory listings and reputation management

Don’t miss out on customers down the street! Contact us for a free consultation and see how Local SEO can transform your business.

The answer here might be surprising, but our extensive discovery process has been honed to identify potential pitfall areas and address them before we even get to work. We talk a lot about our 20+ years of experience, and this is a key area in which it pays off. You’ll be no one’s guinea pig; we’ve been through it all with previous clients and two decades of trials and errors. We’ve created a system that provides high ROI, clear deliverables, reasonable goals, milestones, tracking and reporting, and it’s a proven formula that has withstood the test of time.

That being said, we’ll want to make sure we fully understand how your previous agency didn’t live up to expectations, and make sure we’re the right fit to get you what you need. Simply contact us to get the conversation started.

There’s more than 200 factors that Google takes into account within their algorithm, so it could be a number of things. Our experts are well-versed in isolating the issues and implementing a strategy to get your site ranking. But keep in mind that some phrases may simply be out of reach – for the time being. Depending on your site’s domain authority, you may need a comprehensive, long-term strategy to set you up for success. Other times, it’s just that your site isn’t representing the search criteria well enough, which we can fix. Contact us and we can take a look – for free.

In most cases, we can take over the management with minimal effort.

Our initial task is to do a health check of the existing campaigns. Once we complete an audit, we’ll be able to determine if we can simply optimize the foundation of the campaigns that have already been created, or if there is an opportunity to maximize performance by building the campaigns from the ground up.

Not at all. We are a certified Google Ads partner, but our crew is equally adept at all facets of paid search. This includes:

• Social Media ads
• Display Ads
• Google Shopping
• Native Ads
• Local service ads
• Remarketing/Retargeting
• Video ads

Contact us to learn more.

Yes, the majority of our clients are not local to Columbus. We serve businesses across the U.S. and have done international work as well. We’re based in Dublin, Ohio, but our work has never been limited to our backyard.

We use industry tools, including search trends and the performance & keyword planner by Google, to determine the market and price for the keywords we’re targeting. This will let us know a broad range of results (clicks, impressions, conversions) we may be able to expect in accordance with our daily/monthly spends. From there, we can focus on the human element to ensure our clickthrough rates are high and work our magic to nurture the campaign and bring our CPC below the industry average.

Nothing. We’ll take a real look at what your site needs and give you an honest assessment — whether you end up working with us or not. No follow-up harassment, no drip campaign, no sales pressure. Just a clear picture of where things stand. Simply contact us to get started.

Paid search can produce results within the first few weeks. Organic SEO takes longer — typically three to six months before you start seeing meaningful movement on competitive terms. We’re always honest about timelines because over-promising on them is one of the most reliable ways to destroy trust with a new client. You’ll know exactly what to expect and when.

AI is already affecting search, and we’re here for it. The quest to appear in AI results is all based on the content on your site, and we’ve long been a “content-first” agency. We continue to take that approach, and have adapted our SEO tactics and techniques to better take advantage of AI opportunities. You can get much more in-depth with our AI and SEO blog post.

Absolutely — this is actually one of our most common arrangements. We work well with internal teams, often stepping in to handle the pieces they don’t have the bandwidth or specialization for. We can also train your staff if that’s the better long-term play. The goal is always whatever actually works best for your business.

SEO is the long game. It entails building organic rankings that pay dividends for years if done correctly. Paid search (PPC/Google Ads) is faster, but requires a perpetual ongoing spend. Most of our clients benefit initially from running both: paid search fills the gap while organic rankings build, then (and this is where most agencies drop the ball) reducing your dependence on paid over time. We manage both in-house, which means the two strategies – and strategists –  actually talk to each other.

If your SEO is being done right, most of the groundwork is already there. AI visibility adds a layer on top: schema markup, content restructured for extraction, stronger authority signals and ongoing monitoring across AI platforms. We fold that into your existing plan rather than treating it as a separate product with a separate invoice.

There’s no single lever. It’s a combination of restructuring key pages so AI tools can extract clear answers, adding proper schema markup, strengthening the authority signals (author bios, credentials, third-party citations) that these tools weigh when deciding what to trust, and then monitoring how your brand actually shows up across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity so we can adjust. Anyone promising a guaranteed spot in a specific AI answer is overselling it.

We run consistent prompts across the major AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) tied to your industry and services, and track whether, how, and in what context your brand gets mentioned. It’s newer territory than traditional rank tracking, so we’re upfront about what’s measurable today versus what’s still catching up.

Some of what’s being sold under those labels is hype. But the underlying shift is real: a meaningful share of searches now end in an AI-generated answer instead of a list of links. Getting cited in those answers now, while the space is still forming, is a real head start. We’d rather help you build that groundwork early than watch you play catch-up in two years.

Pretty much, yes. “AI SEO” is the plain-English umbrella term most people search for. AEO and GEO are the more technical names for two specific pieces of it: structuring content so it gets pulled into a direct AI answer (AEO), and earning a spot as a cited source inside a longer AI-generated response (GEO). We use all three terms because that’s genuinely how the industry talks about it right now, but it’s one connected service, not three.

Worried is the wrong word, but you should know whether you are being named. Assistants are answering a real share of local questions now, and they tend to return one or two businesses rather than three, so the gap between being included and being left out is wider than a ranking drop. The reassuring part is that most of what earns you a mention is the same work that earns local rankings, so this is not a separate budget. The part worth acting on is measurement, because a caller who found you through an assistant looks identical to a caller who typed your name in, and you will not spot the trend without looking for it deliberately.

SEO focuses on ranking your pages in traditional search results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is about structuring content so AI tools can pull it out as a direct answer. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about earning a spot as a cited source inside a longer, AI-generated response. In practice, all three build on the same foundation: clear, credible, well-structured content. We treat them as one connected strategy, not three separate budgets.

No. The work overlaps heavily. Clear writing, solid technical SEO and real expertise help you in both traditional search results and AI answers. We’re not pulling resources away from your existing SEO, we’re extending the same strategy to a few new platforms.

No. Most practices do not have anyone with spare time for it, and the pages that actually bring patients in are rarely the ones written by committee. You get a draft to react to, you correct anything clinically wrong, and nothing goes live without your approval. Your review matters because you know your patients and your procedures. Starting from a blank page should not be your problem.

Your site needs updating that week, not next quarter. A provider page still listing a doctor who left six months ago costs you trust with the exact person who was about to call. On an ongoing program that is handled for you. If you would rather your own team own it, they will be shown how, so nobody is waiting on an agency to make a name change.

Any part of the site where a patient can send you information has to be built for it, which means contact forms, appointment requests, chat and intake. Those get built with HIPAA in mind from the start rather than reviewed at the end. You will also get a straight answer about which third-party tools are safe to add later and which ones will create a problem. If you already have a site, we can audit what is there and show you where the gaps are.

Often, though it depends which one you run. Some publish a way to connect and some do not. Before anyone promises you an integration, your specific system gets checked, because sometimes the honest answer is that a clean handoff to your staff beats a fragile connection that breaks the next time the vendor updates something.

When it comes to digital marketing tactics, the answer is most likely “yes”. We offer a full suite of digital marketing services, provided by our in-house talent right here in our Columbus HQ (no offshore outsourcing). In the rare instance that it’s something we don’t do ourselves, we typically have a trusted, fully-vetted partner that we work with – and we’re always transparent about that.

Just reach out and ask, we’re always happy to answer any questions, and we love talking about what we do.

Most agencies avoid this question and hide behind the old, “every company is different, contact us for pricing” excuse. And while that is true, and we would never just offer a blanket cost with a “buy now” button, we can certainly give you some idea of our rates.

Unless it’s a hyper-local campaign, we generally start our Success Plans out with a budget of $1750 or greater. We’ve found that a spend less than that usually provides results a little too slowly for most. Getting results is a major budget factor (the bigger the spend, the quicker we can produce results), but other factors can include:

• Size of market – local, regional, national, international?
• Quantity and quality of competition
• Target demographics
• Conversion expectations

For a more in-depth look at this topic, see our blog article on digital marketing costs.

One of the biggest things is the fact that we were doing SEO work before that acronym was really even in use. To say we are experienced is an understatement. We’ve lived through every major algorithm update, watched entire tactics come and go, and built a playbook based on what actually holds up over time. That history matters because it tells you what we don’t do: chase trends, cut corners, or hand your account to someone two years out of school with a certification and a template.

But what sets us apart isn’t just longevity — it’s the approach. Every campaign is completely bespoke, with a disproportionate amount of real, physical time invested by senior people. Most clients end up feeling like they got more than they paid for. That’s not an accident.

This is a tough one to answer succinctly. There are so many factors involved; and it’s a little like asking how much a house costs.

We have a full blog article on this, which you can find here. But here’s an excerpt that might help:

…but bear in mind that there are many factors that can skew these numbers!

Small website: ~ 10 pages, custom design
$5,000 – $10,000

Business website/basic eCommerce website: ~ 30 pages, custom design, mobile optimized, on-page SEO
$15,000 – $30,000

Professional website: ~ 40+ pages, custom design, content strategy, SEO
$35,000 – ?

Just about all content management systems add a LOT of code, which in turn slows down the site. Add a feature-heavy theme and your site will likely fail the Core Web Vitals tests. That will have a huge negative effect on your SEO.

A headless CMS separates all that heavy code from what is actually being pushed to the web. So you get all the convenience of a CMS without any of the slow speeds and code bloat. Here at ForeFront we spent over a year developing our own headless CMS system, and it’s crazy fast. This site was built using it, feel free to test it out!

Contact us for your headless CMS website.