Are There Any Benefits To Being In The Same City / State As Your SEO Company?

When looking for an SEO company that you can confidently invest your time, money, and faith with, it can be difficult to know where to start – particularly given how many different agencies there are in the world. So, how can you know who to trust? And are there any benefits to being in the same city or state as your chosen SEO company? Let’s take a closer look…

Are there any benefits to choosing a local SEO company?

In this modern digital age, working with overseas agencies is now incredibly easy – and safe. However, just because you can look overseas, should you? Why not choose a local agency if you can?

While there are a few benefits to working with a local SEO company, it’s important that you don’t get too caught up in ‘proximity’. Just because an SEO agency is within driving distance, it doesn’t automatically make them the perfect fit for your business. And without further ado, here are some of the ways in which it can benefit you:1. Being able to meet face to face: the first and obvious benefit of choosing a local SEO company is being able to meet face to face. For example, if you are a Houston based business, working with an SEO expert in Texas means that you can meet them for a consultation in person before signing on the dotted line and parting with your cash. This is certainly a bonus, but again, it doesn’t necessarily make them any more capable than the next agency.

2. No time difference: another benefit is the fact that you will be working to a similar schedule as your chosen SEO agency. If for example, you’re a Houston based business and looking to invest in an SEO agency in Bangkok, Thailand, you’d be about 12-hours behind. While this shouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker, it would be a nuisance at times.

3. Local SEO knowledge: admittedly, the best SEO agencies will have gifted writers who can carry out the necessary research to write high-quality geo-targeted content, however, working with an agency with in-depth knowledge about your local area certainly can’t hurt when it comes to your local SEO efforts.

4. No language barrier: working with an overseas agency might mean having a bilingual campaign manager who uses English as a second language. While this is generally a non-issue, communicating with someone who grew up in the same town as you can have its benefits.

Conclusion: proximity is a bonus

While the above are indeed benefits, they aren’t exactly game-changing benefits. So, in other words, you should treat proximity as a bonus – rather than actively searching for a local SEO agency and writing off everyone else.

The fact is, your primary concerns when shopping around for a prospective SEO agency should be:

• Reputation: if a prospective SEO agency has loads of 5* reviews from their customers, you know that they are doing something right.
• Social proof: if they have positive interaction all over social media with their customers, then it adds to their authenticity – and authority.
• Results: if they can provide you with plenty of case studies and previous success stories, then you’ll have all the proof you need to invest in them with total confidence.

Ultimately, the above three factors should be non-negotiable. For example, if you find a nice local SEO agency but they don’t have much in the way of social proof and they can’t share any case studies (for whatever reason), then you should go back to the drawing board and find someone else.

Finding the right SEO agency to work with is not so dissimilar to choosing the best SEO plugins for your WordPress website: there are so many to choose from and taking a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach can be bad for business.

So, do your due diligence and make sure that you set a very high standard for yourself. After all, the SEO company you do eventually choose can potentially make or break the long-term success of your online business.

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