As a content creation professional, I run my own small business. I cannot tell you the number of emails and text messages I have received from SEO providers promising to push my website to the number one position on Google. I have never used one of these services because I can handle SEO on my own. But if I were to use one, I would choose a firm close to home.
There is real value in keeping SEO services close to home. On the other hand, choosing to work with an SEO firm clear across the country – or even in a different country altogether – opens the door to a messy relationship. Why tempt fate? There are so many service providers within one hour of where I live that finding one should not be too hard a task.
All Business Starts at Home
I am a firm believer in the idea that all business starts at home. Even the most prolific companies in the world started out as local operations trying to reach a limited customer base. It is how business works. For the purposes of illustration, let us talk about ski resorts in Utah.
Pick your favorite resort. It didn’t open its doors on that first day and immediately attract skiers from all over the world. Most of the major Utah ski resorts started out as local operations catering to local crowds. As they grew, they began attracting skiers from out-of-state, and eventually other countries.
If I were opening a new ski resort in the Beehive State, I would want to find a Utah SEO provider. Salt Lake City-based Webtek Digital Marketing comes to mind. Having worked with them in the past, I know they have had enormous success in Utah.
What I would not do is contract with a service provider in Los Angeles, Orlando, or New York. Why? Because they don’t know Utah. They don’t know anything about Utah ski resorts or even the skiing lifestyle.
Working With People Who Get It
The whole point of SEO is to improve a website’s position during searches on Google, Bing, etc. The better a website ranks, the more likely it is to get traffic from that search engine. But ranking well is not as easy as it sounds. It requires creating content worthy of a high rank, content that appeals to the very people looking for your website.
If I am a skier who lives in Chicago, and I’m trying to plan a ski vacation in Utah, I will go online in search of a specific kind of content. That content should be capable of answering my questions. It should help me solve problems and come up with vacation planning strategies.
On the other hand, being a resort owner would dictate that my website content appeals to the Chicago skier. It would dictate that my SEO strategies get that content near the top of the list for appropriate Google and Bing searches. So at the end of the day, I want to work with people who get it. I want my SEO provider to not only understand the finer points of search engine rankings, but also the Utah ski industry as well.
Closer Is Better
In my opinion, closer is better when a company is looking to hire an SEO provider. Keeping SEO close to home means having access to creatives and technical experts who know how to reach the people a business is trying to reach. If my business were in Utah and I needed professional SEO services, I would definitely hire a Utah SEO firm.
