Relevance
A complete, category-correct Google Business Profile (primary and secondary categories, every attribute, menu, hours and fresh photos), plus on-page content and schema that match the exact dishes and neighborhoods people search.
Search & visibility 02
SEO is part art, part science. We run both.
Rankings are an outcome, not a strategy. We engineer the whole system behind them: clean technical foundations, intent-mapped content, authority that earns links, and pages tuned to convert, so the traffic you win actually moves the business. And we keep at it, because search compounds.
The approach 01
Not just higher rankings, but a search presence that earns its keep.
Plenty of agencies will sell you a list of keywords and a monthly ranking report. We think that's backwards. Search is a system: a site search engines can actually read, content that answers the questions your buyers are really asking, the authority to be trusted on the topic, and a path that turns a curious visitor into a lead or a customer.
We come at it the way an engineer and a strategist would together: rigorous about the technical fundamentals, honest about the numbers, and creative about how you win attention. The art is knowing what to say and how to stand out. The science is the crawl budget, the schema, the Core Web Vitals, and the attribution that proves it worked.
Talk through your search goals →What's inside 02
One discipline, seven moving parts, engineered to reinforce each other.
SEO only compounds when the pieces work together. Skip the technical foundation and great content never ranks; nail the content but ignore conversion and you buy traffic that bounces. We run all of it, in sequence.
Technical Audits
Crawlability, indexation, site architecture, Core Web Vitals, schema and log-file analysis. The foundation everything else stands on.
Keyword Mapping
Intent-led research mapped to real journey stages and to the right page, so nothing cannibalizes and no demand goes uncaptured.
On-Page & Off-Page
Titles, metadata, internal linking and content optimization, paired with digital PR and earned links that build durable authority.
Semantic Topic Clusters
Pillar-and-cluster content architecture that tells search engines you own a topic, not just a single lucky keyword.
Local & "Near Me" SEO
Where we live. Google Business Profile, menu schema, citations, review and reputation management, and location pages that win the "restaurants near me," "best [cuisine] near me" and reservation searches happening blocks from your door.
Conversion Rate Optimization
The rankings are only half the job. We tune the landing experience so the traffic you earn actually converts.
AI & On-SERP Optimization
Structured for AI Overviews, featured snippets and answer engines, winning visibility even when the click stays on the results page.
Reporting That's Honest
Clear KPIs (rankings, qualified traffic, conversions, pipeline) in dashboards you actually read, with no vanity metrics.
Content Strategy
Briefs, editorial calendars and brand-journalism-grade writing built to rank and to be worth reading once it does.
How we work 03
A method, not a magic trick.
No black boxes, no "trust us." Here's the sequence we run on every engagement, and exactly what you'll see at each step.
Audit & baseline
We crawl the site, pull your analytics and search data, and benchmark against the competitors actually winning your terms. You get a prioritized roadmap, not a 90-page PDF nobody reads.
Fix the foundation
Technical issues first: indexation, speed, architecture, schema. There's no point pouring content onto a site search engines struggle to crawl.
Map demand to content
We map real search intent to your funnel, build the topic clusters, and write or optimize the pages that capture it, each pointed at a clear conversion.
Build authority & iterate
Earned links, digital PR and on-SERP wins, then a steady test-and-refine cadence. Search rewards consistency, so we stay on it, every month.
Audit · map · build · measure
Days 1–90 · the roadmap
The first 90 days 03c
You shouldn't have to wait six months to see us working.
SEO compounds, but the work is visible from week one. Here's the cadence we run on a typical engagement, and what lands on your desk along the way. You get direct access to our work-management software, so there's no waiting on a monthly call to see what moved.
Weeks 1–3 · Audit & baseline
Full technical crawl, log-file and analytics review, competitor and SERP analysis, and a prioritized roadmap scored by impact and effort. You leave the kickoff knowing exactly what we'll fix and in what order.
Weeks 4–8 · Fix & build
Technical debt cleared (indexation, speed, schema, redirects) while we map demand to a content plan and ship the first optimized pages and Google Business Profile work. The foundation gets solid before we pour traffic on it.
Weeks 9–12 · Authority & momentum
Digital PR and earned-link outreach, the first round of CRO tests on your highest-traffic pages, and a baseline-versus-now dashboard. By the end of the quarter you can see the trend line and exactly where next quarter's lift comes from.
Under the hood 03b
The unglamorous work that makes everything else rank.
Most of SEO's lift comes from things visitors never see: a site search engines can crawl cleanly, pages that load before a thumb stops scrolling, markup that tells Google exactly what each page is, and a layout tuned so the click you fought for turns into a booking. Here's what we actually touch.
Technical foundation
Crawl-budget and log-file analysis, XML sitemaps and robots rules, canonical and pagination logic, redirect-chain cleanup, and an architecture flat enough that nothing important sits five clicks deep.
Core Web Vitals & speed
LCP, INP and CLS tuned for real-world hardware, including image and font strategy, render-blocking scripts, lazy-loading and caching, because a slow page loses both the ranking and the visitor.
Structured data
Schema that earns rich results: Organization, Article and FAQ across the board, plus Restaurant, Menu, Review and LocalBusiness markup for the hospitality work, so your listings show stars, prices and hours, not just a blue link.
On-page craft
Title tags and meta written for the click, not just the keyword; clean heading hierarchy; descriptive image alt text; and internal linking that passes authority to the pages you most need to rank.
Content that answers intent
Pillar-and-cluster topic maps, briefs built from real SERP and "people also ask" gaps, and brand-journalism-grade writing that earns the ranking and is worth reading once it has it.
Conversion rate optimization
Ranking is half the battle. We A/B test headlines, forms and calls-to-action, tighten the landing experience, and remove the friction between "found you" and "booked you." That same discipline is behind a 68.85% form-completion rate on our team's work.
"restaurants near me"
Restaurant local SEO 04
When someone's hungry nearby, you should be the first result.
Restaurants are where Zoned Marketing's local search work goes deepest. The "best tacos near me," "brunch open now" and "dinner reservation tonight" moments are won or lost in the map pack and on the SERP, at the exact moment someone's deciding where to eat.
We tune the whole local stack: an optimized Google Business Profile with menus, hours and photos; structured menu and review schema; consistent citations across the directories and delivery apps; proactive review and reputation management; and location pages built to rank for every dish and neighborhood you serve. Hotels, bars and the rest of hospitality get the same treatment, but the table is where we start.
See restaurant marketing →Winning the map pack 04b
Google ranks local on three things. We work all three.
The three results above the fold on a "best [cuisine] near me" search come down to proximity, relevance and prominence. Proximity you can't move, but relevance and prominence are earned, and that's where a tuned local program wins the table.
Prominence
Review volume, rating and recency are a top local-ranking signal. We build a steady review-generation cadence, respond to every one, and manage reputation across Google, Yelp and the delivery apps where diners decide.
Consistency
Identical name, address and phone across every directory, map and delivery platform. NAP conflicts and duplicate listings quietly suppress rankings, so we audit, de-duplicate and lock the citation network down.
AI & answer engines 04c
Search is being answered before the click. We plan for that.
AI Overviews, featured snippets and answer engines increasingly resolve a query right on the results page. Pretending it isn't happening costs you the visibility; chasing it blindly costs you the click. Zoned Marketing optimizes for both: being the cited source inside the answer, and earning the visit when the searcher wants more.
Be the cited source
Clear, well-structured, genuinely authoritative answers, backed by FAQ and how-to schema and a clean entity model, so your page is the one AI Overviews and snippets pull from, not your competitor's.
Win the on-SERP real estate
Rich results, sitelinks, review stars, "people also ask" coverage and local panels: the surfaces that earn attention and trust before anyone scrolls, whether or not the click follows.
Protect the high-intent click
For the bottom-funnel queries that still convert ("book," "near me," "pricing," "reserve"), we make sure the result that wins is yours, and that the page behind it is built to turn the visit into a customer.
Cited · seen · clicked
The outcomes 04
What good search work actually moves.
A snapshot of results our founders and senior team have led across paid and organic search programs: credentials we bring to the table, not stock-photo promises.
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lower cost-per-lead, year over year, on a CFP Board search program
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higher qualified lead volume on similar spend, same program
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qualified leads delivered against a 3–4K target
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form-completion rate on optimized landing experiences
When the funnel is tuned, the math flips.
For the CFP Board "Future CFP Pro" program, our team paired intent-led search targeting with relentlessly optimized landing experiences. The result wasn't a vanity ranking. It was a 650% drop in cost-per-lead and 325% more qualified leads year over year, on a similar budget. More than 6,000 qualified leads came through against a 3–4,000 goal, at a $299 cost-per-lead.
Attribution note: this is work our founders and senior team led during prior agency tenures, a credential we bring, presented honestly, not a Zoned-the-company client logo.
Read the full case →
$299 CPL · 68.85% form completion
Why Zoned Marketing 05
Senior people, the whole system, no guesswork.
SEO is most powerful when it isn't bolted on. Here's what you get with us that a standalone SEO shop can't offer.
Engineering in the room
Technical SEO is a development problem as much as a marketing one. Our team builds the sites (WordPress, React, headless CMS), so fixes to speed, schema and architecture actually ship, instead of sitting in a ticket queue.
See development →Organic and paid, together
We run the search ecosystem as one. SERP insights sharpen your paid bids; paid data reveals which terms are worth the organic investment. Most agencies silo the two. We don't, and your budget goes further for it.
See paid media →Built for regulated complexity
Government, higher ed, public health, financial certification: we know how to win search in categories where accuracy, accessibility (WCAG) and compliance aren't optional. That rigor shows up in everything we publish.
Meet the team →Pairs well with 06
SEO rarely works alone.
Let's talk 07
Let's make search compound for you.
Send us your site and your goals. We'll run a real look under the hood, tell you honestly where the opportunity is, and exactly how we'd go after it.