//Paid Advertising
Search engine marketing:
paid and organic as one plan.
SEM means search engine marketing, the paid and organic halves of a results page. Most businesses hire an SEO vendor and a PPC vendor who never talk, then pay for clicks on terms they already rank for. Search engine marketing done properly treats the results page as one place and decides, term by term, whether to earn it or buy it.
Search engine marketing is the whole results page: the ads at the top, the map, the organic listings, and now the AI answer above all of them. Buyers do not care which one they clicked. A search engine marketing agency plans them together, which sounds obvious and almost never happens, because paid and organic usually live in different vendors with different reports. When they live in one plan, the paid budget goes to the terms you do not rank for yet, the SEO work goes to the terms you keep paying for, and the total cost per customer drops.
We run search engine marketing for businesses in Orange County and across the US, from Irvine, California: keyword planning across paid and organic, Google Ads campaigns, SEO on the site behind them, and one report that shows what search produced in total. Our own site ranks in Google's top three for hundreds of competitive keywords, and we run the same playbook, paid and organic together, for clients.
//What you get
What search engine marketing includes.
One keyword plan
Every search that matters to your business, tagged earn or buy, with the reason. Brand terms, competitor terms and near-me searches each get a deliberate decision.
Paid search campaigns
Google Search and Performance Max built for the terms worth buying, with negatives, tracking and landing pages, managed weekly.
Organic search work
Technical fixes, on-page work and content for the terms worth earning, especially the ones you are currently paying for.
Search term intelligence
Paid search term reports feed the SEO plan, and organic ranking data feeds the bids. Each side makes the other cheaper.
Landing pages and conversion
Pages that convert whichever way the visitor arrived, with tracking that separates the paid customer from the organic one.
One search report
Paid plus organic, cost per customer in total, and the terms moving from bought to earned over time.
//What is usually broken
Why your search spend is bigger than it needs to be.
You are bidding on your own brand name and terms you already rank first for, paying for visitors who would have clicked you anyway.
The SEO vendor and the PPC vendor each report their own numbers, and nobody can say what search produced in total.
The paid search term data, the most honest keyword research you own, never reaches whoever writes the content.
Google's AI answers changed the results page and neither vendor has said what that means for your terms.
Want this for your business?
Sound familiar?
Most owners recognize at least one of these. The fix is usually smaller than the problem looks, and the first conversation costs nothing.
Not ready? Keep reading
//How we work
How we run search as one system.
Map the results page
For every term that matters: where you rank, what an ad costs, whether an AI answer sits above it, and who is winning it today.
Decide earn or buy
Buy the terms with high intent where you do not rank yet. Earn the terms you keep paying for. Test the uncertain ones with a small paid budget.
Run both, share the data
Paid campaigns and SEO work launch against the same plan, and the search term reports flow between them monthly.
Shift budget as rankings move
As organic rankings arrive, bids come down on those terms and the budget moves to the next gap. The total cost per customer keeps falling.
Want this for your business?
That is the process.
Nothing exotic, just done properly and in the right order. Want it run on your business?
Not ready? Keep reading
//Receipts
What this work has produced.
Method of Beauty
406 keywords ranking from zero in three months
A med spa with page one for its name and page two for most of what it sells. Search impressions rose 46%, and 138 non-brand terms landed in Google's top three, including the near-me searches that bring people through the door.
Read the case studyWheelhouse
From page 3 of Google to top rankings
New users on the website up 236% and total users up 232% once the site was rebuilt around what buyers actually search for.
Read the case studyWant this for your business?
Want the same rigor on your account?
Every number above has a case study behind it, and a founder who can walk you through how it happened.
Not ready? Keep reading
//Two-minute quiz
Is search engine marketing your next dollar?
Four questions. At the end you get our honest read, including when the answer is “not this, not yet.”
Question 1 of 4
Do you currently run paid search, SEO, or both?
//Why trust us with it
Search without the vendor turf war.
We are not paid to prefer a channel
Paid and organic share a plan and a report. The only question is which one wins a given term for the least money.
We say when to stop bidding
When you rank, we test pausing the ad. Sometimes it holds, sometimes it does not, and either way you know instead of guessing.
Built for the AI results page
Our search work includes AI Overviews and assistant citations, because that is where a growing share of searches now end.
Everything stays yours
The ad account, Search Console, Analytics, the content and the pages stay in your name.
Want this for your business?
This is how we work.
If it sounds like the way you would want it done, the next step is a ten-minute conversation with a founder.
Not ready? Keep reading
//What you can count on
How we operate.
//Learn the work first
The thinking behind the work.
The difference, and why the question is which, not either.
When buying the click beats earning it.
The organic half, explained plainly.
How to choose terms worth earning.
How the results page is assembled and what each part costs.
Where the search dollar goes furthest.
What the AI answer at the top of the page means for your terms.
How to read the numbers without fooling yourself.
The local version of the organic half.
//Related services
The work this connects to.
Paid search and paid social run as one account, measured by booked customers.
Search, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns built around your unit economics.
Meta campaigns across Facebook and Instagram that create demand and prove it.
Account-targeted campaigns for B2B buyers, without the LinkedIn price tag surprise.
Ongoing management of an account you already run: structure, bids, negatives, tracking.
Google Guaranteed leads for service businesses, paid per lead instead of per click.
Technical, on-page and content SEO that turns into calls, forms and booked revenue.
Messaging, friction and proof, fixed in the order that moves the number.
Welcome, nurture, win-back and newsletter flows to the people who opted in.
Design and engineering as one job: fast, crawlable, on brand, built to convert.
Every Door Direct Mail: the offer, the piece, the routes, the printing and the drop.
Press releases, local features, awards and the outreach to the outlets that matter.
Practices, med spas and clinics: local search, ads that clear policy, and trust.
Who to win, why they pick you, what to run first, and how you will know it worked.
Every service we offer, grouped the way buyers look for them.
The receipts, with the numbers and how they happened.
Local help if you are in our home county.
//Our work
See this work in the wild.
Four businesses we have grown, including our own. Every number on these pages is one we can show you.
Body Juice
We built a juice bar that fought human trafficking and went viral
600% customer growth, on a founder's budget.
Read itMethod of Beauty
We put a med spa on the map
80+ guests from one campaign, 406 new keywords from zero.
Read itRomée
From a name to a brand, four cans and a store
A whole brand, live before launch day.
Read itWheelhouse
From page 3 to the top 3 for 300+ keywords
Five Dispensary of the Year wins came with it.
Read it//Plain English
What the initials actually mean.
Defined in a sentence, with a link to the organisation that owns the term.
You only pay when somebody clicks your ad, not when it is shown. Google calls the same thing cost per click, and the price you actually pay is usually less than the maximum you set.
Source: Google Ads Help: cost per clickClicks divided by the number of times an ad or a listing was shown. It is the honest read on whether your message is worth clicking, separate from how big your budget is.
Source: Google Ads Help: click-through rateEverything that puts you on a search results page, paid and organic together. Most agencies use it to mean paid search only. We use it the broad way, because the two halves should be planned as one.
Source: Google Search Central: how Search worksEarning your place in the unpaid results. Google publishes its own starter guide, and the short version is that you make the site easy to crawl, useful to a reader, and clearly about the thing people are searching for.
Source: Google Search Central: SEO starter guide//Common questions
Things we get asked first.
What is the difference between SEM and SEO?
SEO is earning organic rankings. SEM is the broader discipline that includes paid search as well, and, done properly, plans the two together. Most agencies use SEM to mean paid search only. We mean the whole results page.
Should I bid on my own brand name?
Sometimes. If competitors are bidding on it and taking your customers, yes, and it is cheap. If nobody is, and you rank first organically, it is often money spent on visitors you would have had anyway. We test it rather than assume.
Can you run just the paid side or just the SEO?
Yes, and many clients start with one. The advantage of one plan is that whichever side you run, the other side's data is still in the room. We will tell you honestly which side is the better first dollar for your business.
How do AI Overviews change search marketing?
The AI answer now sits above both the ads and the organic listings on many searches, and it cites sources. Being one of those sources is a new job for the SEO half, and it changes which paid terms are still worth buying. We plan for it explicitly.
How long before SEM produces results?
Paid search can produce customers within weeks. The organic side takes months to compound. The point of running them together is that the paid side covers the gap while the organic side earns down the cost.
What does an SEM agency cost?
It depends on the scope of the plan and the size of the paid budget. We give you a number after we have mapped your results page, not before. Month to month, and every account stays in your name.
Want this for your business?
Still have a question?
Ask a founder directly. No call center, no sales guy, and no obligation.
Not ready? Keep reading
About Mining Wells
We're on a mission to fix bad marketing.
Maybe:
- You are spending thousands on marketing tools, ads, and your website, with zero revenue increase to show for it.
- Every campaign you have tried gets minimal results.
- You have a great product that nobody seems to find.
- You are getting interest, but it never converts to a sale.
- You have a low retention rate.
- You have been paying a marketing agency for over a year and have not seen results.
You are not alone. Many founders and leaders live with the results of bad marketing without ever finding the reason.
And often that is because it can be many reasons. Sometimes it is the wrong ICP, sometimes the wrong messaging, sometimes the wrong targeting chasing impressions.
We are here to take the hard guesswork out and provide that clarity before it is too late.
At Mining Wells, we help founders and leaders grow their businesses the right way.
Tired of bad marketing?