City of Angels, or City of SEO’s?

Ever wonder what makes LA so competitive for SEO?

Suffice to say, Los Angeles SEO agencies have their work cut out for them. LA is among the most competitive online marketplaces in the world.

Just under 4 million people live in Los Angeles county as of 2011. That’s a whole lotta searches hitting Google/Yahoo!/Bing every day. Business owners here are clambering to stay at the top for the most competitive terms – relying on SEO agencies in Los Angeles to keep them ahead of the curve.

The sheer number of SEO companies in Los Angeles makes this city more and more competitive than most places. On any given search result page, you may notice that more than 3/4 of the business have hired professional LA SEO agencies to do their marketing. In a smaller city, maybe only one or two results would be a result of the business having hired an SEO company.

If you’re among the ranks of business owners that have contracted an SEO agency in LA, you’ll be wondering if you chose wisely, while you sit and wait to see results. If you’re wondering how your fate ended up in the hands of Google and your now your newly hired SEO Agency in Los Angeles, keep reading.

Google still has a good 80% of the market share among the top search engines. Over the last couple years, they have been focused on delivering more relevant organic local search results and developing their Google Places product. The result has been a shifting landscape for business owners, and professional SEO companies in Los Angeles.

So, how can you be sure your SEO company is on top of all these changes? First of all, you should be receiving detailed monthly reports, as well as updates throughout the month when appropriate. Most importantly, you should set aside a few minutes every couple of weeks and search some of your targeting keywords in Google/Yahoo!/Bing. Ask yourself a couple questions like:

• Do you notice your rankings moving up or down? • Do your results match the reports from your LA SEO agency? • Do you notice anything different about the ‘look’ of the search results in Google? If so, ask your LA SEO Agency if the changes affect how your site will rank. • Do you notice any new competitors on the first page since you started SEO yourself? What are they doing that you aren’t? • Monitor your competitors to see how their positions change over time versus yours. • Is your website ranking in the combined listings? Ask your Los Angeles SEO Agency if your Google Places Page is optimized correctly.

Simple questions like that can help you better evaluate the performance of the LA SEO consultants you’ve hired.

Lastly, be patient. Google in particular is slow to move, so, if you don’t see top 5 results in the first 3 months, it isn’t because anything is being done incorrectly necessarily, just that it takes time to reach the coveted top of page 1. Check your Yahoo! and Bing results, these can be an indicator of things to come with Google.