Im a big fan of niche web develop/seo companies. I was wondering how many clients can you ethically take on in the same field, located in the same city
-
How do niche web development companies justify having multiple clients in the same field in the same cities. I would love an explanation on how to justify this, and how many clients in the same field/same city is acceptable. A good example would be an seo company for auto dealers or hotels.
Thanks
-
Hi Aholyman,
I think it's very good that you're giving this such careful thought. So, if the keywords are identical, then yes, this might be seen as an unethical arrangement, though not a forbidden one (without a contract stating so). I'd take it case by case. Good job giving this such a thorough examination.
-
Miriam thank you for your response. I do agree with you, but I don't know if clients will get it, as there are no real variations in keywords. That is to say they offer the exact same thing, however one location could be a vineyard and the other a beach (wedding locations) and that could work arguing that the said client knows where she would like to get married.But would take some explaining to the client.
Thank you
-
Hi AHolyman,
I'm going to rock the boat a little here. Unless you are in a non-compete contract with a client that excludes taking on same industry clients in the same city, there is no reason you can't work with more than one. Each client is likely to have different strengths, budgets, goals and attributes, even if they are in the same city. For example, dentist A may specialize in sleep dentistry, while dentist B is excellent with children. Unless you're under an exclusivity contract, I don't see anything unethical about helping them both.
-
Kevin I just wanted to personally thank you as well for taking the time to respond. Your points were spot on and everyone has helped me to reevaluate my idea.
-
Dave thanks for taking the time to respond, all of you guys have saved me a ton of time and I am very clear that my idea for a niche SEO business would not work how I imagined. The market is just too small which is why it has not bee done before.
-
I never would have thought about number #2, but you are absolutely right. Its been so helpful to get everyone's responses that it has saved me a ton of time, and potentially money.
Thank you
-
We are heavily involved in the Automotive industry. I can speak from that vertical.
Very rarely (we have never) would you find same brand in same market but you will find competing brands. This is never an issue with us as we usually qualify search with product ("Toyota Camry service" vs "Honda Accord service) and geo.
In cases where the clients wants to focus on generic terms such as "new car" we would advise against that as its too broad a term - which helps us to avoid your valid concern. Our clients get much better results when they focus on their Primary Market Area
If I did run across your described scenario, ethically the only option is to only service the one client unless they were very specific in their focus areas (branding, non-local etc)
-
SEO Experts should only have one client in an industry sector.
Unless the client is focused in one Geo location, when you may want to allow 2 or more.
For instance if I search Hotel in Chesterfield, it would be OK to work with a client site to make them #1 in Chesterfield for the search term "Chesterfield Hotels"
However if it's a term like "Spa Hotels" then they may want to be #1 in the UK or even the world.
It all depends on their requirements, however as Matthew says you don't want to be conflicting interests.
-
Personally I think it's unethical to take on more than one client in the same niche in the same area for two reasons.
- If your clients are in the same niche the same keywords are valuable to them which puts you in a position where you have to compete with yourself. This means that you're never going to be able to give your clients the best possible service as you're always going to have to make a tradeoff on which keywords you rank.
- If one of your clients in the same niche leaves, the client that remains has an unfair competitive advantage as you already know exactly what strategies have been employed on the site that is no longer under your control.
What makes this industry interesting is the amount of diversity and new challenges we face on a daily basis. If I were you I'd try to find clients that make your job as interesting as possible.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to get listed for specific locations/cities/towns
Best practice?? I have a client that wishes to get found for services in several towns across the UK. They only have 1 physical location I have so far created a blog ( i use easyblog) and put a list of these towns..then added TAGS with the town names (this means each TAG gets a URL too) ..also i need to then monitor in moz pro somehow. Alternatively i could create web pages with additional information and give the URL the town name....however i think the tags will help...any advice welcome.
Local SEO | | CORSOLUTIONS1 -
Separating facebook pages for 2 separate but similar companies
I am currently working with a payroll company that has two separate businesses. Payroll services and Time and Attendance services. Currently the client has 1 facebook page with about 50 likes that caters for both companies. My question is.... Should I separate the payroll and time and attendance companies and create 2 separate facebook pages, or since the businesses are so close together, we could use the one page to promote both businesses. We also have a similar issue with LinkedIn company pages. What do you guys think? Separate pages or combine pages? Currently there are 2 separate websites for each companies services.
Local SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
Local Search - Google Mobile Results (Web&App)
Hi, I have a client with multiple locations. One of the locations manager is searching for branded and non-branded keywords on his mobile phone and not able to locate the business (within the parking lot of the location). Our ranking reports via a local search platform and manual checks indicate the location is actually ranking well. and we're seeing progress in GA. Has anyone deal with something like this before? This is a location that recently opened to the public. The concern is around mobile web and app results. I'm looking for some guidance around how to approach the situation. I'm sorry I cannot provide more details on the client.
Local SEO | | burnseo0 -
Best Rank Tracking tool w/ data exports or APIs
I have briefly reviewed the API data available through the Moz API endpoints and did not see that the rank tracking data is available. I first wanted to confirm that? Second, I am looking to start tracking rank for nearly 1 million keywords (local pages multiplied by dozens of core keywords). I want to watch the rankings for a region move over time, as well as keywords generally, and then keywords in a region. My momentary initial research shows that there are a LOT of rank tracker tools, which felt a bit overwhelming to sift through them all and figure out which one would be best. My biggest needs are: handling lots of keywords and URLs exporting the data automatically (via an API or recurring export) allowing for localized results without having to qualify the keywords not breaking the bank to do so -- I'm not an SEO w/ multiple clients, these are all on 1 domain
Local SEO | | Mase0 -
Changing Your Company's Name
Our firm is considering adding another person and adding that person's name to the firm. In terms of our online presence, what all would have to be done for that to work? For example: 1. We aren't changing the domain, but should we get a domain with the new name and redirect it to our current site? 2. Do I need ask the people who have linked to our site with our name in the anchor text to change it to the new name? 3. Do I need to get back to all our old posts/blogs/etc and edit them with the new name? 4. Can we use our current social media names or do we need to setup new accounts? 5. If we decide to just keep the onsite marketing the same, but change the name in regards to offsite markeitng (banners, billboards, etc) will that conflict have a very negative effect? 6. Anything else, anyone wants to point out would be great. Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Google My Business Locations Query- Do I need unqiue Picture File Names for every location
Hello All, I am just in the process of updating all my google business locations for each of my depots. I have been uploading photos but I am wondering if the file names of the photo's need to be unique for every location ? I know I need to describe the picture in the filename so it's good use of keywords but I am wondering if google will see it as spaming if I upload the same product pictures etc to ever google business location ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
Developing a content marketing strategy for a social security disability firm.
I have a client that I've been working with for a little over a year now and I've been struggling to generate new business from his online presence. Initially, I completely re-designed his website with semantically correct html markup, and used all of typical, site level SEO tactics, i.e., keywords in title tags, h tags, paragraphs, correct NAP, etc. We've only seen very low marginal returns off of our efforts. Part of the problem is that my client is not an attorney, but instead he runs a social security disability advocacy firm. He still performs all of the operations that an attorney performs, but due to the fact that he is not an attorney, we cannot optimize his site for search phrases containing "attorney", which is a common keyword that people would generally use to find the services that my client offers. So I've decided to try a different approach. A content marketing approach. The only reason I prolonged avoided this approach for so long is that, to be frank, I had no idea how to target his ideal clients with content. After talking to my client the other day and recommending this new approach, I uncovered some similarities between his previous clients. Most his clients live in rural areas, and they like nascar, hunting, fishing, etc. So I suggested that I create blog for him, and begin finding some freelance writers that can create some killer content about nascar, hunting and fishing. Admittedly, I don't have a much experience with a content marketing approach, but I want to learn everything there is to know about it. I guess I'm a little unsure about this approach that we're getting ready to try, and would love to hear from some people that have been down this path, and might be able to offer any advice. I really want to help my client's business flourish, and it's now very clear to me that solely relying on an old SEO line of thinking is not doing the trick anymore. Any tips, tactics and strategies would be greatly appreciated. Am I on the right track here? How would we get this content in front of his ideal clients, and market it in such a way that he will get a good return on his investment?
Local SEO | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Does having /search/ in your URLs for searches within your site hamper these URLs from coming up on Google SERP's?
We are an aggregate site for a particular category and have our own internal search wherein visitors can search for local references to services that they are looking for. We use SOLR search and our results page for the "Tag123" search would look like www.mywebsite.com/city/search/tag123 For some reason, we see that these pages are all indexed on Google but they do not come up on SERPs appropriately! The content is unique and we also have appropriate title and description tags on these pages.
Local SEO | | mycity4kids0