Sean Mapes, Owner of Traverse City SEO Pros
Yes, local SEO for Traverse City businesses is one of our main services that we offer. If you have a local services or retail business in Traverse City this is usually the SEO package that we recommend starting with. Getting your business ranking on Google for "near me" searches and searches including "traverse city" are some of the fastest ways to see results from SEO.
Like a lot of marketing it depends. It depends on how strong your competition is at SEO and where your business is at with your SEO. If your competition has a ton of reviews and a highly optimized website it might take a few months to start competing with them. If the businessess you're competing with in the search results only have few reviews and their website it's the best, then you can probably start getting results sooner. I usually tell businesses to expect to start seeing local SEO results in 3 months or so.
I haven't talked with every SEO agency and provider in Traverse City but SEO usually starts at around $1,000 per month and can go as high as $5,000 per month. I usually don't recommend paying less than $1,000-$1,500 per month for SEO if you are paying someone to do it for you. This budget allows enough work to be done to actually get results and this price point gives you a little more confidence that the provider actually knows what they are doing and can get results. You get what you pay for, right? $500 per month just isn't enough budget to allow you to get results in a reasonable time frame. Imagine paying an employee $500 per month. What kind of results would you expect? Not much. Same does with SEO. If $1,000-1,500 just isn't affordable I recommend doing SEO yourself in-house, getting as many reviews as possible and adding keywords to your website headings can get you a long ways.
Here is a good Reddit thread on the average cost of SEOThe thing that makes us different is that we have done SEO for our own companies. I built a test prep site from 0-300,0000 monthly visitors in 5 years or so. I sold the website in 2019 to private equity. I have worked with some of the same local clients doing SEO for over 10 years. For most agencies, SEO is theoretical. They don't even do SEO for themselves but yet they are happy to charge clients for SEO. You might ask yourself, why doesn't this SEO agency or freelancer rank anywhere on Google?
Most Traverse City businesses need local SEO services more than anything else. Primarily local TC businesses need to optimize their Google Business Profiles. Improving your Google Business Profile is the best place to start SEO for Traverse City businesses serving local customers and clients. A great place to start is by getting reviews for your Google Business Profile and making sure your are adding relevant categories to your profile.
Local backlinks from authoritative Traverse City sources signal trust to Google and improve your local search rankings.
Start by getting listed on the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce.You should also join local business directories and claiming your Google Business Profile. Support local charity events and non-profits through sponsorships or partnerships, which often result in valuable backlinks from their websites. You can also partner with other local businesses for cross-promotion and to contribute guest posts.
If your business works with tourists, add your business to the directory or pitch a story to our local tourism website:
Traverse City Tourism
