Why We (Still) Don’t Work for Your Competitors
If we’re working for your competitors, who do we really work for?
That’s something we decided a long time ago.
We don’t think an SEO company should take your money to help you outrank your competitors, then turn around and take their money to help them outrank you.
So we don’t.
Some SEO Companies Don’t See a Problem
Some agencies will even walk into a sales meeting saying something like, "Look at what we're doing for your competitor!"
Unfortunately, we can't very well do that.
To us, it creates a conflict of interest.
Suppose we work with two Tucson electricians. Both want to rank for searches like "electrician Tucson," "emergency electrician Tucson," and "electrical repair Tucson."
There is only one first organic result.
There are only so many businesses in the local pack. That makes Google Business Profile SEO another area where representing direct competitors can become a problem.
We can’t build the strongest possible strategy for one electrician without potentially making things harder for the other.
At some point, we would effectively be competing against ourselves, using knowledge gained from one client to benefit another.
We’re not interested in doing that.
What Counts as a Competitor?
This doesn’t necessarily mean we can only work with one business from an industry anywhere in Southern Arizona.
Competition depends on how the business actually operates.
Brick-and-mortar businesses can be very local.
Two dental offices on opposite sides of Tucson, for example, may serve substantially different patient populations. The searches that matter to a dentist near Rita Ranch may be different from those that matter to a dentist in Oro Valley.
The same can be true for restaurants, salons, retail stores, and other businesses where customers generally travel a limited distance.
In those cases, we look at the actual service areas, search results, and customer overlap before deciding whether there is a meaningful conflict.
Attorneys are another example where the industry itself is too broad to determine whether two businesses actually compete. We handle exclusivity by practice area. A personal injury attorney and an estate planning attorney may both be law firms in Tucson, but they're pursuing entirely different clients and searches.
We wouldn't, however, work with two Tucson personal injury firms competing for the same cases.
Service-Area Businesses Are Different
If your business serves customers throughout Tucson and the surrounding area, the answer is much simpler.
We’re only working for you.
If we work with a Tucson pool company (and we do), we’re not going to quietly take on another pool company chasing the same customers.
If we work with an electrician serving Tucson, Oro Valley, Marana, and the surrounding communities (and we do), we’re not going to help another electrician compete for those same searches.
The same principle applies to plumbers, HVAC companies, roofers, contractors, and other businesses whose customers can come from across the metro area.
For businesses like these, our approach to SEO in Tucson is pretty straightforward: we're trying to make one client more visible than the businesses they're competing against.
Your competitors can hire somebody else.
Why We Still Do It This Way
We started Tucson SEO Pros in 2016, and a lot about SEO has changed since then.
This hasn’t.
There are certainly financial reasons for an agency to accept several competing clients. Turning away a qualified business means turning away revenue.
We understand why agencies do it.
It just isn't how we want to operate.
When we research your competitors, find opportunities they’ve missed, develop SEO content, analyze search results, or figure out why one strategy is working better than another, we want to be able to use that information entirely for your benefit.
We don’t want to stop and wonder whether improving your rankings might hurt another company that also sends us a check.
That makes the relationship considerably simpler.
If you hire us to compete, we work for you.