SEO in Buffalo, NY, is surprisingly competitive. In reality, despite what some may say, it is competitive in 2026 in almost every market. If you’ve ever started a website, you shouldn’t be shocked to discover that with no SEO plan in place, you can’t even find yourself on Google when you try, let alone when searching for vital SEO keywords associated with your industry.
This is often the case with small businesses that don’t do any SEO. SEO has become a bit less “sexy” in the digital marketing world, but it is probably more important than ever. By avoiding SEO, your competitors who do contribute to SEO easily overtake you in position-based search engines like Google, and ultimately, leave a lot of intent-based, local website traffic on the table.
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
SEO is the process of “optimizing” your site, so search engines will rank it higher when someone looks up a keyword. If you own a company that sells muffins, you will want to be the 1st result when someone near you looks up “Where to buy muffins.” But it goes deeper, because you may not want to show up for muffins in Nevada if you have a small shop in Talahassee Florida. Google knows this, and that’s where Local SEO comes into play.
There are many different strategies and methods to improve a website with SEO, but the goal is always the same. Increase or maintain your ranking on search engines so that when someone Googles certain keywords, they will find your website. The more organic traffic you can garner for your important, ROI-driven searches, the more business you can potentially create.
Basically, if you want to be competitive on the web, you need to be doing SEO. Most Buffalo businesses don’t have the time or expertise to do SEO, luckily there are plenty of established companies that are skilled at SEO, but how do you choose one?
What to look for in an SEO Company
Does the SEO Company try to Educate You?
If you have a contact form on your website, you probably know this, but there are a lot of sketchy SEO developers who will try to get your business. Unfortunately, these developers are rarely interested in the long-term success of your business. SEO has some bad actors, which may be why you have a bad feeling about it. We aim to shift that mindset through transparent auditing, KPI tracking, and conversion lead form tracking.
With how technical SEO can be, you need to be careful when deciding who to work with. People know how complex SEO is and will try to take advantage of your ignorance. If the SEO company isn’t interested in educating you, they are interested in their next paycheck, not your success as a business.
This is also the case with the newest term, “AIO,” which is based on AI results, but you won’t show up in AI results if you’ve never invested in SEO. Google rewards those who play their game by their rules. No one outside of Google writes the SEO rulebook; we are all competing and learning as we go, following signals and trends to help our clients always stay ahead of each new Google update.
The bottom line is—A good SEO company will try to educate you on what SEO is and how it helps your business.
The same SEO company will also likely tell you that SEO isn’t instant magic; it’s foundational. You aren’t going to be able to double your revenue in a few weeks just because of some SEO improvements. It takes time, quality technical SEO, and GOOD HUMAN CONTENT.
Learn more about what EEAT means here.
Is the SEO Company Interested in Long-Term Growth?
SEO is best done over the course of months and years, not days and weeks. It’s the foundation of digital marketing. Because it’s so much more effective to improve SEO over the long term, any good Buffalo SEO company will focus on building a long-term relationship with your business and building that marketing foundation.
The goal of a good SEO company should be to grow your business in the long-term and achieve your goals. A bad SEO agency will try to offer you a quick, short-term solution. In reality, that just doesn’t work for SEO.
Does the SEO Company consider Results, not just Ranking?
Ranking with a keyword on search engines is one thing, but it doesn’t directly translate into more business. A poor SEO company will only focus on your website’s ranking. This is of limited value to you. The website will be discoverable through search engines, but if people aren’t looking, they won’t find your business. Any decent SEO company will know that their goal should be to get you more clients or customers, not just to make your website rank higher.
A smart company will build the foundational SEO and propose a larger digital marketing strategy. This strategy could include social media, video production, and advertising. These marketing strategies are much more focused on results and leads, but their effectiveness goes down drastically if your business doesn’t have good SEO.
A good marketing company will build your SEO foundation so they can use those more powerful marketing tools to their maximum effectiveness to generate the most leads for the least cost.
Does the SEO Company Understand Your Business?
To actually do the optimizing in “search engine optimization,” the SEO agency you hire should understand your business. A good SEO company will insist on knowing how your business operates and what your goals are for it. They should take what we call a “journalistic” approach to your SEO. The better we can understand our clients’ business, their clientele, and their potential audiences, the more successful the SEO can be.
Companies try to understand your business because it allows them to write better content and improve SEO. The SEO agency will need to understand your business to determine what keywords to focus on, what content to write, and they will want to know your business to portray it accurately and properly.
An SEO agency that doesn’t take the time and effort to learn your business will not be able to provide you with quality content, and they will easily be beaten by competitors who took the time to write accurate content.
Does the SEO Agency give you Reports?
If you’re hiring an SEO company, you should expect to get reports on progress. Typically, these reports will involve keyword positioning and web traffic. A proper SEO company will provide you with reports on your keywords’ positions at a minimum. Without these reports, you would have no way of knowing if the SEO was working, and the SEO Agency would have no way to demonstrate its value and successes.
Does the SEO Company Understand the Buffalo Market?
If you are hiring an SEO company, you should make sure they understand your specific market. This typically means hiring a local SEO Company. A company outside of your market will have a harder time competing for local rankings simply because they don’t know the competition or the audience as well.
If your business is marketing to the whole country, working with a local SEO company is less necessary, but if you are competing nationwide, then you should expect your competition to be even more fierce, and you’ll want to be absolutely sure you hire a good SEO Company.
Is the SEO Company Established?
The simplest way to understand if an SEO company knows what they’re doing is if they are still in business. The SEO industry changes extremely often, and SEO companies rise and fall with the industry changes. One Google algorithm update can put unprepared SEO companies out of business.
If an SEO company has been in business for many years its much more likely they will provide you with good results. They have survived the turbulence and have been able to adapt their strategies to work without needing to fear that a software update will break their company.
Our SEO Strategy
Bean Media Productions has been in business for 20 years. We educate our clients and provide them with fair, honest SEO advice and marketing strategies that we execute with a long-term plan.
We are not just an SEO company; we are a full-service digital marketing agency that takes your SEO and uses it as part of a larger marketing strategy that is focused on achieving your business’s goals.
We learn your business, we develop a strategy, we execute it, and we provide you with reports and progress updates on every aspect of your digital marketing strategy.
And we’re local to Buffalo, Go Bills!
If you’re looking to hire an experienced marketing company that has proven its expertise over the years, look no further. Contact Us for your SEO, Production, and Digital Marketing Needs