Twenty years in.
Still care about
getting it right.
We didn't start Salt City Digital because we thought the world needed another SEO agency. We started it because we were tired of watching good strategy get strangled by bad incentives.
Between us, Brett and Kevin have over twenty years in digital marketing and SEO. Venture-backed startups. Fortune 100 enterprises. Legal lead generation. Health and medical clients with real stakes — the kind of work where getting it wrong has consequences beyond a missed traffic goal. We've seen what SEO looks like at scale, under pressure, across almost every business type you can name.
That experience taught us a lot about what works. It also taught us a lot about what gets in the way.
The allocation spreadsheet problem
Typical agency life has a particular failure mode that doesn't get talked about enough. Somewhere along the way, decisions that should be about client outcomes start getting made based on resource allocation. Who's available? Who's already on the account? Can we fit this into the hours we've sold?
The work suffers. Not because the people aren't talented — usually they are — but because the incentive structure isn't pointing at the right thing. An agency optimizing for utilization rates is not the same as an agency optimizing for results.
Kevin spent several years on the client side after agency life, which gave him a different vantage point entirely — what it actually feels like to be on the receiving end of that model. What it's like to sit in a quarterly review wondering whether the strategy you're hearing was built for your business or assembled from whatever was available.
- Decisions driven by allocation spreadsheets
- Junior staff, senior sign-off
- Take any client with a budget
- Strategy built on availability, not outcomes
- Growth at the expense of quality
Salt City Digital, late 2022
When Brett and Kevin joined forces, the goal wasn't to build a bigger agency. It was to build a better one — smaller, more intentional, and built around the things we'd learned actually matter.
Expertise without the overhead
Twenty-plus years of experience across every major SEO context — startups, enterprise, regulated industries, lead generation — without the layers that slow things down. The people who talk to clients are the people doing the work.
Selective by design
We work with a deliberately limited number of clients. Not because we can't handle more, but because quality of engagement matters more than volume of revenue. When you work with us, you have our actual attention — not a share of someone's utilization target.
Strategy before tactics
We get genuinely interested in the businesses we work with — not just their search rankings. What are you trying to build? Who are you trying to reach? What does winning actually look like? SEO without business context is just traffic without purpose.
Honest, even when it's uncomfortable
We'll tell you what we actually think — about your site, about a strategy, about something you've read. There are enough people in this industry willing to say whatever keeps the client happy. We'd rather be useful.
On doing good work
There's a version of this industry that treats SEO as a commodity — something you buy by the hour, measure by the deliverable, and swap out when the contract expires. We've never been interested in that version.
The clients we do our best work with are the ones who want a genuine partner — someone who understands their business, pushes back when they need pushing back on, and is invested enough in the outcome to tell them the truth. That kind of relationship takes time to build. It also tends to produce significantly better results.
We're based in Salt Lake City, which probably tells you something about us. Not a coastal agency chasing the loudest client or the flashiest case study. Just two people who are good at this and care about doing it well.
Think we might be
the right fit?
Every new client relationship starts with an audit — a complete picture of where you stand before any commitments are made. No obligation. Just clarity.