Who is Barking Frog SEO?
Before you commit to any agency, it helps to review what they actually offer, how they price it, and where they focus. Here's what we found when we looked at Barking Frog.
Barking Frog SEO is a boutique Utah agency owned and operated by Rick Morris, a 10+ year SEO veteran. The agency runs out of two offices — Salt Lake City (222 S. Main Street #520) and Park City (136 Heber Ave #204) — and earned Google Partner status in 2016. Scentsy, the global scented-candle brand, is one of their long-tenured clients. The Salt Lake / Park City split is deliberate. Two distinct markets, one metro area, different buyer profiles in each.
Recognition: Founded by Rick Morris (10+ year SEO veteran) · Google Partner since 2016 · Salt Lake City + Park City offices · Scentsy as a long-tenured client
Feature review at a glance
Side-by-side
Where Barking Frog excels
Owner-operator continuity and dual-market local knowledge. Rick Morris has been doing SEO for over a decade, and the team is small enough that the person who scopes the work is the person who runs it. Long-tenured staff like Ardyce, who joined in 2013, suggests the team itself is stable — not a churn-and-replace boutique. And the Salt Lake / Park City focus is unusual. Park City runs on second-home owners and ski-tourism economics. Salt Lake runs on local-resident demand. Knowing the difference matters for keyword strategy.
And if you're a local business contractor specifically, that trade depth counts for something. Barking Frog knows the seasonal surges, the buyer hesitations, and the search patterns that generalist agencies miss entirely.
Our take
A boutique with a 10+ year founder is genuinely different from a 30-employee growth-stage agency. The continuity is real — clients work with the same person who set up the original engagement, and reported tenures of 4+ years on accounts like Scentsy suggest retention rather than churn. The trade-off is bench depth. When the founder takes a vacation week or lands a major new client, your account doesn't have a deep team waiting in the wings. So the question worth asking on the discovery call: "Who specifically owns my account day-to-day, and what happens when they're unavailable?"
Who typically hires Barking Frog
Wasatch Front businesses, especially those operating in both Salt Lake City and Park City, who want a boutique agency led by a long-tenured SEO operator and don't need a deep team behind the engagement.
Where Fervor differs as a Barking Frog alternative
Barking Frog and Fervor cover overlapping ground — SEO, Google Ads, conversion work — but the shape is different. Barking Frog runs that playbook across many industries. Fervor runs it for contractors only, and ties every channel to the same number: booked jobs per visitor. So if you're pulling 2,000 visits a month and the phone only rings 9 times, we don't argue about whether the problem is traffic or conversion. We diagnose which one is actually leaking and fix that side of the funnel.
(Quick way to tell where your gap is: check your Google Analytics. Under 500 monthly sessions usually means you need more visibility — SEO, GBP, paid search. Over 1,000 and the phone still isn't ringing means the conversion path is leaking. Fervor works on both, contractor-side.)
Revenue per visitor
Your traffic has a dollar value. But most agencies won't calculate it because the number isn't always flattering. We measure what each visitor is actually worth in booked revenue, then rank your fixes by which ones move that number fastest.
The Site Inspection
Before we recommend a single change, we score your site across 6 categories against 64 national contractor brands. You get a Fervor Grade™ and a ranked fix list. No sales call required. And no money changes hands.
Conversion-first design
Booked by Design™ doesn't start with a homepage mockup. It starts with conversion benchmarks from 18 trades we've already scored. So layout decisions, CTA placement, form position, the order your services appear on the page, even which photo goes above the fold — all of it is backed by what actually gets contractors booked.
Where Barking Frog may fall short for contractors
Boutique team size means limited bench depth. The service stack is the standard SEO + paid + web design retainer with no published CRO methodology. So if your site already gets traffic and the conversion math is what's broken, the offer doesn't address the bottleneck. Pricing isn't published either, which usually signals minimum spend thresholds you'd only learn on a sales call.
Choosing the right agency for your business
Choose Barking Frog if:
- You need an agency that only works with local business contractors
- You want local business-specific keyword strategy and campaign management
- You value rick morris's 10+ year owner-operator track record + salt lake / park city dual-market focus
Choose Fervor if:
- Your site gets traffic but your close rate from web leads sits under 5%
- You want to know exactly which pages are bleeding leads right now
- You need a website rebuilt around revenue per visitor, not just how it looks
- You want a Canada-based agency that works with US and Canadian contractors
One more thing. Barking Frog and Fervor cover overlapping ground. The honest split is shape, not service line: Barking Frog is built for breadth across industries; Fervor is built for depth across contractor trades, with revenue-per-visitor measurement on every account. Some contractors review both options and pick the fit that matches the way their team thinks about marketing.
Questions to review before hiring Barking Frog
Who founded Barking Frog SEO?
Rick Morris, an SEO veteran with 10+ years in search marketing. The agency is owner-operated, with Morris leading a small team that includes long-tenured staff like Ardyce, who joined in 2013.
Where does Barking Frog SEO operate?
Two offices — 222 S. Main Street in Salt Lake City and 136 Heber Ave in Park City. The dual-market focus is deliberate. Park City contractors target different buyers and see different seasonality than Salt Lake contractors do.
Does Barking Frog SEO have notable clients?
Scentsy, the global scented-candle brand, is the most-cited long-tenured client. The agency reports several clients with 4+ year tenures, which signals retention rather than churn — a positive operational signal for a boutique.
Is Barking Frog SEO contractor-focused?
No. They serve small businesses across the Wasatch Front broadly. Contractors are one client type within a multi-industry practice — not a carved-out specialty.
How does Barking Frog SEO compare to Fervor Studio?
Barking Frog runs local SEO across Salt Lake and Park City under a 10+ year owner-operator. Fervor Studio runs CRO across contractor websites continent-wide. If your problem is local visibility in the Wasatch market, Barking Frog has the geographic depth. If your problem is converting existing traffic into booked jobs, Fervor has the conversion specialty.
Find out which problem you actually have
The free Site Inspection scores your site across 6 categories and tells you whether your bottleneck is traffic or conversion. It takes 30 seconds to submit.
Get My Free Site Inspection