//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, so the same demand is not being bought twice without anyone noticing.
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. We run the same playbook, paid and organic together, for clients.
//Before we prescribe it
You may need sem agency. You may not.
Selling a service is not a reason to prescribe it. We look at the business first: the bottleneck, the economics, the customer path and what your current marketing is already doing. If sem agency has a clear job, we will tell you why. If the problem is somewhere else, we will tell you that too.
//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.
//When this service earns its place
These are signals we look for. They are not your diagnosis.
//When we recommend it
Search marketing makes sense when paid and organic are solving the same demand separately.
Search demand matters to the business
Buyers already use search when they research or choose what you sell.
Both paid and organic have a real role
You are buying visibility in some places and trying to earn it in others.
The decisions are being made separately
Different teams, agencies or reports are making search decisions without one view of the result.
Budget allocation changes by query
Some searches may deserve paid coverage, some organic investment and some both. That should come from the evidence rather than a blanket rule.
//When we would not
When a combined search program is more work than you need.
There is little meaningful search demand
Neither paid nor organic search should get the first dollar simply because the channels exist.
The real problem is only paid search
Start with the paid account itself. PPC Management
The real problem is only organic search
Start with the search work on its own. SEO
Paid and organic are already coordinated well
You may not need another service layer. If the system already works, we should not invent a problem to sell you one.
//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.
//Receipts
Read related case studies
Medical practice
400+ newly ranking keywords in three months
A medical practice with page one for its name and page two for most of what it sells. Search impressions rose more than 40%, and nearly 140 non-brand terms landed in Google's top three, including the near-me searches that bring people through the door.
Read the case study
Technology company
Paid ads in a strategic geo-targeting campaign around its market's biggest conference
Ads that reached attendees where they were and content from the event itself, written up as a playbook the company can run again.
Read the case study//Two-minute quiz
Should paid and organic search be planned together?
Four questions about your situation. At the end, send them to our founders and get a straight answer back.
Question 1 of 4
Do you currently run paid search, SEO, or both?
//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.
//The case for us
Why Trust Mining Wells
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.
//What you can count on
How we operate.
//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.
Questions
Still have a question?
Ask a founder directly. No call center. No sales handoff.
Not ready? Keep reading
//Not sure this is the right service?
Good. The diagnosis is our job.
Talk to our founders. We will look at the business and tell you what we think should happen first.
//Related services
The work this connects to.
//Definitions
What the initials actually mean.
Defined in a sentence, with a link to the organization that owns the term.
Everything 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 works