An observation of the Omaha SEO marketplace.

Getting to know them! One day recently, I picked up the telephone and called a number of metro Omaha SEO company owners to get feedback concerning a local industry matter.

It was really cool to talk shop.  All the owners are so friendly. Each has a story to tell, and interesting history of how they came about. I also observed most owners are men. One has a husband/wife team. Stern PR may be the only female-owned and operated internet marketing firm!

The entire exercise of reaching out to chat with competitors taught me something unexpected.  Omaha’s search engine optimization marketplace is saturated with non-local digital marketing companies. Turns out, only a handful of Omaha SEO providers – are actually local. Seriously. Less than five have a physical address in Nebraska – an interesting discovery based on search results.

Why this matters? Well, to those in the know, outsourcing to a non-local company for SEO, or any internet marketing, is a risky venture.

A number of business owners told me stories of getting burned. Worst case scenario. Your company risks a costly repair bill to clean up Google penalties caused by an SEO firm engaging in black hat techniques like spam that violate  best practices. Others give minimal effort, and lazily dump stock images onto your business listing and website. Blasé.

Only a local digital marketer can offer all the services a company needs to build and maintain top position in search. Besides handling pay-per-click advertising for a client, a local SEO pro will work on what’s known as organic search optimization.

Organic search engine optimization (organic SEO) refers to algorithm-focused techniques used to achieve good website, listing and social media site placement for target industry terms people search without paying the search engines a penny. Organic means natural.

Here at Stern PR, this process involves a mix of advertising, marketing, public relations and journalism.

An organic SEO PR creative typically writes high quality blog content articles and news releases with custom-shot photography, video, and graphic designs for client websites, business listings and social media. Reviews are managed, and keywords analyzed. Website articles, news releases and media contain keywords, tags, titles and meta descriptions for search engine indexing.

So the next time you query for ‘Omaha SEO companies’ on Google search engine, before you sign any dotted line, ask to meet he/she in person. Go local. local. local.

Take it from there!