Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The Jacksonville SEO Market is Small.. and Strange

It's been a long time since I've posted to this blog, but 2020 has brought big changes and new priorities back in to focus.

While I've remained involved in SEO and web publishing more generally, I never ended up following through with building a local SEO firm in Jacksonville. I have, however, kept an eye on it - and I've worked on some local business websites either as a personal owner or as a favor to a friend.

SEO Companies and Marketing Firms that Offer SEO in Jacksonville

Dagmar Marketing and Thrive Internet Marketing are probably the two largest SEO firms in Jacksonville that actually have top organic results for Jacksonville SEO & related keywords. Since that's what they're selling, they're probably the ones you can trust the most.

Beyond that, there appears to be a significant number of small-time operations run out of someone's home. Now, there's nothing wrong with that - because that's all it takes to get results! In fact, some of those sole proprietorships seem to be outranking the big firms.

The State of Organic Search Results

Digging a little deeper in to the smaller sites that rank well tells an interesting story. The current top spots are held by sites using decidedly grey to black hat SEO tactics. While I'd normally argue for pure white hat techniques, it's also hard to argue against what works.

The niche doesn't look like a free for all, either, after all.

Several large firms have been kicked down 100 or 200 spots for what I would presume are search penalties. It's possible they tried to copy what appeared to be working, but flew just a little too close to the sun.

What do you think? Have you had any particularly positive or negative experiences with a Jacksonville SEO company that you've hired for a local or national or even global job? Let us know in the comments: Your advice could save someone a headache and help their business, too!

First Impressions of Google's December Core Update (2020)

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