Montana
Internet Marketing Service in Montana: Built to Convert.
I'm Caleb Schallert, based in Houston, and I run internet marketing for businesses in Montana the same remote-first way I run it everywhere I don't have a local office: websites, SEO, video, ads and automation, one person across all of it. An audit first, a plan you can see, and Search Console data every month proving it moved.
Internet Marketing Service Starts With Your ZIP Code
In Billings or anywhere else across the state, your ZIP tells me which market you're competing in. Give it to me and I'll show you what results look like there.
On this page
How Remote Work With Me Runs
Houston is where I work from, and that holds here too. No local address, no pretending there is one.
- I look at what’s live before touching anything
- A plan you get a say in
- Something visible before the first month’s out
For a business like yours, the first month always looks like that. I’ve never shortened it.
The Numbers Behind the Market
So here's where I start every plan. 1,137,233 people (U.S. Census Bureau estimate), Montana's population as of 2024.
- 1,137,233 people, 43rd by population
- 42,566 employer businesses, 40th nationally (2023)
- About 37.4 employer businesses per 1,000 people
- Largest city: Billings, 121,483 people
The hardest market to break into sits right there (11% of the state's population), where the volume concentrates.
By population there are 5 metro areas, and each one is its own local search reality:
- Billings: 192,531 people
- Missoula: 127,741 people
- Bozeman: 126,984 people
- Helena: 96,735 people
- Great Falls: 84,523 people
The state runs on Mountain time, 1 hour behind Houston's Central time, per 49 CFR Part 71. I've never made a client adjust to Houston hours; the standing call moves to fit them.
The Top Industries
I pulled BLS employment data instead of guessing, and these are the industries the state runs on.
- Health Care and Social Assistance: 74,380 jobs, 2024 (I've watched reviews and credentials outweigh being the closest option, more than once)
- Retail Trade: 62,766 jobs, 2024 (where the season moves the search volume, and accuracy still wins the map pack)
- Accommodation and Food Services: 60,313 jobs, 2024 (where answering a bad review fast beats collecting five-star ones passively)
Two businesses on the same street can need different builds. What they sell splits them.
Metro Search vs. Statewide Search
An internet marketing search could mean the whole state or it could mean Billings, and I've learned to plan for either one.
- The one searcher who truly means the whole state is usually someone about to move here
- Voice search skews local harder than typed search does, even inside the state
- A search from Billings already reads local to Google before I touch anything
- Desktop sessions skew toward comparison shopping; phones skew local
Cutting the metro pages to save money costs calls almost every time, usually within a month. So the page carries both answers, the inconvenient one included. I've had a business tell me the state page alone was working fine, right up until I pulled the Search Console data and found a whole metro's worth of searches it had never once shown up for. Simple as that.
What I Would Do First for a Montana Business
Which metro a business sells into decides the plan before any service does. Billings and Missoula don't share a competitive field.
- 74,380 people worked in Health Care and Social Assistance here as of 2024. That's why trust signals carry more weight than being nearby, so that's where the build starts
- 62,766 people worked in Retail Trade here as of 2024. That's why I've seen a wrong closing time lose more business than a slow website ever did
- 60,313 people worked in Accommodation and Food Services here as of 2024. That's why I've watched a fast reply to a bad review save more bookings than an ad did
The build gets sized to whichever metro the business competes in, Billings included. I've built for markets ten times Billings's size, and the process stays the same; only the pace changes. The audit settles it.
Seasons, Timing and the Map Pack
The state's industries don't share a calendar, so I don't build like they do.
- Watch Health Care and Social Assistance closely; it holds level month to month, unlike the other two
- Watch Retail Trade closely; it follows the same national holiday swings, felt harder here
- Watch Accommodation and Food Services closely; it moves with travel, without one single tourist season covering the state
I've moved a listing up in Great Falls faster than I've ever managed in Billings, purely because fewer businesses were competing for the same spot. With 42,566 employer businesses statewide, no single season covers all of them. That gap is real.
Internet Marketing Service in Montana: What an Audit Usually Turns Up
These come from audits on other sites, in other industries. None of them describes your business, and I will not know what yours needs until I have looked.
- One of three origins was dead; five of five requests then returned 200
- On-page score from 20 to 73 on a keyword change alone
One of Three Origins Behind the Firewall Was a Dead Server
After a host migration, a residential remodeler's firewall still listed the old host's address beside the two live ones. That firewall rotates uncached requests across all of its addresses, which meant some visits could land on a dead server. Two addresses answered 200 with the live site and one answered 404, which likely explains the intermittent errors nobody could reproduce in a browser. We removed the dead address and cleared the cache. Five uncached requests then returned 200 five times. Every audit behind a firewall now tests each origin directly.
A 4,100-A-Month Keyword That Belonged to a Government Program
A home-care company's service page had been assigned a keyword with 4,100 searches a month, chosen on volume alone. The terms around that keyword belonged to a national benefit program, with its acronym and state versions. A private company cannot win it. It would not convert the traffic if it did. The page's title, URL and H1 already matched a phrase searched 2,300 times a month, and changing the target alone took the on-page score from 20 to 73. We now read a keyword's ten nearest neighbors before committing to it.
This one page is a single entry in the full United States directory, with the country-level numbers alongside it.
The Five Services
Work here usually draws from these five things. I couldn't tell you which ones you need without seeing the site first.
4 straight answers
Frequently Asked Questions
These only live on this page. If yours isn't here, ask me below.
Quick Answers
Do You Have an Office in Montana?
No, and I won't pretend otherwise. Houston, Texas is home base, and a client in Montana gets exactly the process I run everywhere without a physical office. A launch or a shoot gets me on a plane; a status update never does.
How Is Working With Someone Outside Montana Different From Hiring Locally?
Distance changes the tools, not the standard I hold myself to. A kickoff call and a plan you can question take the place of a desk visit. I still answer my own phone, and I'll tell you straight when something isn't working, the same as if I were sitting across the table from you.
With Montana This Crowded a Market, What Does Working With Me Here Include?
Five things sit inside working together: internet marketing service, website designer, video production service, advertising agency, automation company. I've turned down selling all five to a business that only needed two of them, and I'd do it again.
How Fast Can We Start Working Together If My Business Is in Billings?
A business day is usually all it takes to hear back from me, no phone tag involved. We talk through the business, set the kickoff call, and a written plan follows before anything moves.
Let's talk
Contact Me About Your Project
To talk through your business specifically, reach out to Caleb Schallert. I read these myself, and a business day is usually enough for a reply.
"Everyone is welcome. This is bigger than me."