Exploring Thanet SEO

Spammy sites

For the “spammy” sites, I found a batch of cookie-cutter templated pages for “areas covered” where each page was pretty much the same with the location swapped out. I’m not a fan of that as it feels spammy. Not to mention this can be a risk if Google updates the search algorithm targeting this cheap method. There is no easy way to rank for all regions but this is not the answer.

If sites from the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) don’t get a mention, they are probably employing this spammy trick. (That, or I overlooked one).

Barely more than a business card

I have not listed any agencies with a website that is little more than a business card. If I review your Thanet SEO work, I want to see the quality of the goods demonstrated.

Findings

Along with finding some possibly trustworthy agencies, I learned a thing or two about how local SEO has changed since I was last an active part of the industry. While a lot has stayed the same, the goalposts have moved somewhat.

The benefits of a local address

This research showed me not only how Google has changed but how much more important a local presence is for reaching customers these days. Some of the sites I visited only showed up because they were local and Google knew it. Even weak SEO and good localisation can drive traffic to your website.

Before spending a lot of money with outside agencies, there are some things you should probably do to help yourself first.

1. Be clear about what you offer and provide useful content that demonstrates your expertise in your business area.
2. Make your local address obvious and perhaps use microformats to mark it up so engines can understand where you are based.
3. Publish content talking about your local setting. This is free SEO marketing that doubles as an assurance to customers that you are committed to being part of the community that you are connected with.
4. Have been online for at least a year. These things take time. By all reports, a year or two.
5. Read up on the SEO basics so you don’t get taken for a ride or have your online reputation crushed.

Once you have that under your belt, the agency or consultant you contract with will have something to build upon.

Quality content is still king

When I first started in this field, it was said that “content is king”. This is still true. Providing quality content for real human beings is still the backbone of good SEO.

If you want your business website to get traffic that turns into sales, you need to create content that potential customers are looking for. The better the content, the better the traffic.

Thanet SEO is wide-open

I found two passable SEO firms in Thanet. Of those one had strong SEO and the other had other qualities that were not SEO. That is an increase from the zero that used to exist.

Overall, there is more than I found all those years ago but it still left a lot of room for spammy low-effort SEO offerings. If those fails are the best they can do for themselves, I would be concerned that they might not be able to do much more for me.

There is plenty of SERP scope left for a hungry SEO agency to break into the Thanet space. Which is not surprising given the local economics. If you know what you are doing, this might be a potential business to break into.

Conclusion

If you are looking for marketing and search engine ranking help locally, it would pay to do your homework. Perhaps dive into the articles and tools offered by one of the world’s leading SEO agencies, Ahrefs. That way, when you search for a local consultant or agency, you know what to ask for and some of the red flags to avoid.