Many of our biggest customers come from outside the State of Arizona. Given the virtual nature of search engine optimization, this is no surprise, since SEO work can be done just about anywhere in the world, though results may vary. Since its inception in 1997, Web.com Search Agency has been performing SEO projects for firms in cities which have top level marketing agencies within the space of a few blocks. We service clients in Los Angeles, London, Chicago, New York, Miami, Houston, and around the world, and many of our Arizona SEO colleagues get a crack at the same prospects before they become clients.
What’s behind the “gold rush” for Arizona SEO firms? One consideration may be price. An expensive Park Avenue marketing agency has to pay a New York City price for rent, and higher salaries for people who need to live in NYC apartments, which are still not cheap despite recent housing price adjustments. As a result, the expense gets passed on to the client. A good deal of the talent pool for technology also finds itself priced out of “big city” living and finds the cost of living in Arizona more affordable, despite the air conditioning cost that comes with four months of triple digit temperatures.
However, price is not the only consideration for SEO work. There are plenty of far-east SEO firms who can do a project for a fraction of the cost in US dollars compared to prices charged by Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe SEO companies. Some of our clients have gone this route first, and then come to us. Part of the problem with offshore search engine optimization is that its practitioners are not as familiar with US English vernacular, so the on-page content is in many cases inscrutable. Search engines are increasingly improving their natural semantic recognition features, so bad content gets bad results. Secondarily, offshore SEO firms are not necessarily as up to date on higher end linking and optimization practices. Many companies will use automatic tools to create content for your site, using scraped or “spun” information that approximates what you’d get when you put a dictionary in a blender. Lastly, the 12 hour time difference in communication means that emails don’t usually get answered until the next day, and you can’t have too many teleconferences where people on both sides of the phone are awake.
Outside of New York, one of the biggest sources of clients for Web.com Search Agency is Chicago. It may seem unusual for Phoenix firms to do Chicago SEO work, given that Phoenix is not windy, has no nearby lakes, and is rarely cold enough to require a jacket, but Chicago companies have been using Arizona optimization for years. Many of our Chicago SEO clients even fly out to our Scottsdale Airpark location in their own planes and pay us a visit. If they wanted to shop around for Arizona SEO, they would only have to travel a few miles to find several other agencies that do the same thing. The advantage of being in town with so many other agencies is the cross-pollination that comes with proximity. Secondarily, the many technology, website design, and hosting companies in Arizona provide a rich source of individuals who understand the HTML and programming techniques necessary for implementation.
Surprisingly, we also service SEO clients in London, where “optimisation” is the preferred spelling of the word. Some of these customers have a US or global presence, but other firms are looking for a global SEO experience base that may not be found servicing the comparatively lower number of sites in the UK. Other factors in play could be the cost of labor in the UK or EU, and the favorable exchange rate that makes it cheaper to hire a US firm and still get a higher level of quality and people you can ring up during working hours (albeit just barely).
What is not so surprising is the number of customers who come to us through search engines, and a scan of the top agencies in the nation would be weighted with SEO firms from Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Glendale, Tempe, and Chandler Arizona. Many of the most popular search terms bring up AZ agencies in the top 100 at the expense of larger cities. Given the lower population of the Phoenix metro area compared to LA or New York, this may seem unusual, until you consider that search engine rankings are a testament to the talent of the agency that got them, and Arizona has quite a few people who are good at search engine optimization.
Tags: arizona seo, chicago seo, london seo, los angeles seo, new york seo
