Agency Playbook: Setting Your Agency Apart

Local SEO agencies employ various strategies to stand out in a crowded market, including:

• Being a positive part of the local SEO community: Agencies like RicketyRoo focus on contributing positively to their community and offering transparency to clients.

• Showcasing in-house expertise: Sterling Sky taps into their in-house expertise and showcases it through a strong social media presence, newsletters, conferences, podcasts, and webinars.

• Educating clients: tmwi emphasizes educating clients and sharing knowledge with the wider community, using unique processes like Audience and Search Intent Modelling.

• Focusing on referrals from happy clients: Satisfied clients can be a significant source of new business through referrals.

• Living by core values: SearchLab highlights the importance of core values such as continuous learning, integrity, exceptional results, accountability, and a positive work environment.

Developing a USP for a local SEO agency involves identifying and refining what makes the agency unique. This could be a specific service, process, metric, or the way they treat their people. For instance:

• RicketyRoo developed their USP around being refreshingly transparent and upfront, both with clients and within their team.

• Sterling Sky positions themselves as trend leaders in the local SEO space, often being the first to put out case studies about new concepts and ranking factors.

• tmwi created a unique process for content called Audience and Search Intent Modelling, which focuses on audience interests before overlaying keywords.

Local SEO agency experts offer the following hindsight advice for creating a business proposition:

• Focus on the horizon: RicketyRoo suggests looking ahead rather than dwelling on the past, focusing on future opportunities.

• Share knowledge: Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky believes in sharing information about successful SEO tactics, which helps establish expertise and attracts businesses.

• Connect SEO to paid activity: Emily Wassell from tmwi recommends connecting search optimizations to paid media to demonstrate the value of SEO beyond organic metrics.

The Openness algorithm update is a local algorithm update that was discovered and named by Sterling Sky. They shared information about the update and got Google to confirm it shortly afterward. This update is one of the ways Sterling Sky has established themselves as trend leaders in the local SEO space.

SearchLab sets itself apart by living by several core values daily, which include:

• Continuous drive for learning and self-improvement
• Integrity in all actions
• Relentless pursuit of exceptional results
• Demonstrating accountability and responsibility
• Contributing to a positive, supportive, and collaborative environment

These values are integral to their agency culture and help them to differentiate themselves in the market.