Digital Marketing Agency – Google UK (SERPS) Top 100*
It’s here! The very first of our monthly blog posts reporting on which agencies make the top 100 in the Google UK (SERPS) for the search ‘Digital Marketing Agency’.
SEO – Can YOU Practice what YOU Preach?
The number of digital marketing agencies across the UK who provide SEO services to clients continues to grow without any sign of slowing down. We have been to see prospective (eapb) clients who have previously worked with some quite brilliant SEO agencies up and down the UK. Digital marketing agencies that REALLY know their search engine optimisation stuff and are staffed by knowledgeable and expert staff.
On the other hand, we have seen evidence of real horror stories! Businesses that have had the misfortune to have worked with firms who have no right to call themselves ‘digital marketing and SEO experts’. Thus, the reason for this list: We want to find out, and monitor over the next few years, which digital marketing agencies across the UK can really practice the SEO that they preach and get paid for! The tool we are going to use for this task is Google Search……..
Google UK Search ‘Digital Marketing Agency’ Top 100 as @ 19.05.2014
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It’s Not Here!!?
Trust us, this was not meant to be a wind up or late April’s fool’s joke! We set out with the best of intentions to illustrate the good from the bad agencies – or those that could get their own website ranked highly in Google SERPS for a key search term. We aimed to, over time, show which UK agencies that proclaim to know it all about SEO – could actually practice for themselves what they preached.
The Google algorithm is CLEVER, but NOT that clever.
Let’s start at the beginning. If I were a business owner in West Sussex searching for a LOCAL digital marketing partner I might well type into the Google search box ‘Digital Marketing Agency Sussex’? And yes, Google has delivered exactly what I want to see: a list of websites and agencies that do exactly what I am searching for and are based or active in the County of Sussex. You can see the results delivered by Google here (cut and paste this link): http://ow.ly/x1gTR.
However when I make the Google.co.uk search ‘Digital Marketing Agency’? I am for all intents and purposes seeking a digital marketing partner than can be located anywhere in the UK. I don’t mind where in the UK they are based – small agencies or big agencies welcome – they just have to be very good at what they do. In essence I am making a NATIONAL, UK-wide search. That’s the power of the World Wide Web, right? Although in this case just the UK is fine.
I would welcome the opportunity, with ONE press of the ENTER key or click of the MOUSE, to find (ranked in some order of competence) high quality agencies that are based in London; Cornwall; Newcastle; Brighton; Crawley; Birmingham; Manchester or Leeds. However, in reality what Google serves up in it’s organic listings is a travesty in that I am seldom presented (higher in the Google rankings) the websites of a number of top notch, excellent, creative digital agencies in Manchester or Leeds or Birmingham etc.
More often than not I see a number of the top 20 positions filled with a host of what I would consider second-tier digital marketing agencies, presented to me purely for the reason that they are, according to Google: ‘the best of who’s nearest to you’! Well, unfortunately Google, that’s not quite what I asked for – not by a long stretch.
I am tempted to say that for the purposes of this article according to the Google algorithm, and making a search from here in Sussex, a “north of Watford Gap” syndrome exists. Lol.
You see, when I make the second search above, excluding the geo-modifier (Sussex), I am really interested in seeing a ranked list of UK agencies that are best in breed. Let’s say a list more akin to this one, or possibly more like this one.
How frustrating it is then that often when I make a ‘UK-wide’ search in Google, from here in Crawley, West Sussex the top spots in the organic listings seem to exclude over the half the country!!!!!
*Rankings exclude Google Local/Places business listings and Google AdWords listings. Searches were made from the eapb base here in Crawley, West Sussex.
Paul Brewster, May 2014