Our Services
Web Design, WordPress Development, and SEO Services
Custom WordPress websites, brand identity, technical and local SEO, and AI search optimization from a Raleigh agency that builds what it recommends. Four service areas, one small team, every result measured.
Web Design, WordPress Development, SEO, and AI Search Optimization
City of Oaks Marketing is a Raleigh, North Carolina agency that designs, builds, and grows websites for businesses that depend on them. Everything we do rests on one conviction: the website is infrastructure, not a brochure, and it should be built the way infrastructure is built, in clean code you own, fast by design, structured so that search engines and AI assistants can read it, and measured against business results rather than page views.
Our services fall into four groups. Design covers brand identity and the websites that express it. Development is custom WordPress: themes, plugins, integrations, migrations, and the care plans that keep sites fast and secure. Optimization is search, in its classic and AI-answer forms. Marketing covers the analytics, conversion, and content work that turns a well-built site into a source of clients. Most engagements draw on more than one, and the same small team handles all of them, which is why the technical recommendations in our audits get built rather than filed.
Our Four Service Areas
Web Design and Branding
Custom website design, responsive design, brand identity, and small business branding, all designed screen-first and built without page builders.
WordPress Development
Hand-coded custom themes, plugin development, API integrations, AI chatbots, platform migrations, and WordPress care plans on managed hosting.
SEO and AI Optimization
Technical SEO, local SEO, WordPress SEO, SEO audits, off-page SEO, and AI search optimization with monthly AI visibility monitoring.
Marketing and Analytics
Analytics and tracking, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, reputation management, PPC management, and healthcare marketing.
Most Requested Services
The engagements businesses come to us for most often.
Raleigh Web Design
Custom-designed, hand-coded WordPress websites for Triangle businesses and clients across the country, with performance and search built in from the first template.
Custom WordPress Development
Themes written for your content model instead of adapted from a marketplace, plus the plugins and integrations that connect the site to the systems your business runs on.
Technical SEO
Crawlability, indexing, Core Web Vitals, structured data, and site architecture, diagnosed in an audit and fixed in the code by the same team.
AI Search Optimization
Getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews: entity clarity, structured data, answer-first content, and monthly visibility monitoring.
Local SEO
Google Business Profile, citations, location pages, and local structured data for businesses that win or lose in the map pack.
WordPress Care Plans
Hosting, updates, security, backups, and performance monitoring on WP Engine, with published pricing and a developer, not a ticket queue, on the other end.
Industries We Know Well
The approach is the same everywhere, but the architecture, integrations, and search strategy change by sector, so we document how we work in the industries we serve most: law firms, banks and financial services, home builders, and software companies, each with the case studies and numbers behind it. Our client work also includes telehealth, agricultural technology, hospitality, business advisory, and digital marketing agencies. See all of it on the industries page and in our case studies.
How We Work
A few things that are true of every engagement, whichever service it starts with.
You own everything
The code, the content, the analytics accounts, the domain. No proprietary platform, no monthly fee to keep your own website, and nothing that makes leaving harder than it should be.
No page builders
Every site is a hand-coded WordPress theme. It is why our clients’ sites pass Core Web Vitals, why they are simpler to secure, and why editors get structured fields instead of a maze of nested blocks.
Fixed-price scopes
Projects are scoped after a discovery call and quoted as a fixed price. Ongoing work runs on published care plan pricing or a monthly retainer sized to the work, never an open hourly tab.
Measured against results
Baselines recorded before work starts, and reporting tied to rankings, traffic, speed, conversions, and AI citations rather than activity. Every number on this site comes from a client case study, Google Analytics, Search Console, or Semrush.
One team, start to finish
The person who audits the site is the person who fixes it. Design, development, and SEO are not handed between departments, so nothing is lost in translation and nothing waits in someone else’s queue.
Built for what comes next
Semantic HTML, structured data, and clean architecture serve today’s search engines, the AI systems that now answer a growing share of queries, and whatever reads the web next.
Selected Work
A software company, a home builder, a law firm, and a bank. Every case study includes the numbers.
HOPPR
How we rebuilt Hoppr.ai from Squarespace to custom WordPress: performance from 42 to 94, SEO score from 77 to 100, and Core Web Vitals passing outright.
TBG Homes
James Scott Farrin
Fidelity Bank
Questions About Working With Us
What services does City of Oaks Marketing offer?
Four groups of services, usually combined. Web design and branding: custom website design, responsive design, brand identity, and small business branding. WordPress development: hand-coded custom themes, plugin development, API integrations, AI chatbots, migrations, and care plans. SEO and AI optimization: technical SEO, local SEO, WordPress SEO, audits, off-page SEO, and AI search optimization with visibility monitoring. Marketing and analytics: tracking and analytics, conversion rate optimization, content marketing, reputation management, and paid search management. Industry-specific pages cover how we apply these for law firms, financial services, home builders, and software companies.
Do you only work with businesses in Raleigh?
No. We are based in Raleigh, North Carolina and work with many Triangle businesses, but our clients include law firms, banks, home builders, and software companies across North Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, Florida, and beyond. Most of our work is delivered remotely with regular video calls; for local clients we are happy to meet in person.
How much do your services cost?
Projects are scoped after a discovery call and quoted as a fixed price, so the answer depends on what the site or engagement needs. Our WordPress care plans have published pricing, starting at $1,500 a year for hosting and protection, and our website cost guide explains what drives the price of a custom WordPress build. Ongoing SEO and marketing work runs on a monthly retainer sized to the scope. We do not charge platform fees, and you own everything we produce.
Do you use WordPress page builders like Elementor or Divi?
No. Every site we build is a hand-coded WordPress theme with structured fields for editing. Page builders add markup and scripts that slow pages down, make sites harder to secure, and put a ceiling on both performance and SEO. Several of our case studies, including Cordell & Cordell and Dragonboat, are rebuilds that replaced a page builder with a custom theme, with the before-and-after numbers included.
Can you help with an existing website, or only new builds?
Both. A large share of our work is on sites we did not build: SEO audits and technical fixes, speed optimization, accessibility remediation, plugin and integration development, and care plans that take over hosting and maintenance. When an existing site’s platform is the underlying problem, we will say so and show you what a rebuild would involve, but we do not push rebuilds where a fix will do.
Not sure which service you need?
Most projects start with a conversation about what the website is supposed to do for the business. Book a discovery call and we will tell you what we would do first, and what we would not.