Sharjah is also one of the largest tech hubs in the Emirates, with an increasing number of IT companies located there. Out of 170+ known companies, 80+ are also registered on TechBehemoths and are focused mainly on web design, development, and application management. 

One of the biggest stimulants the city received in the field of IT is the local IT park - Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park, which gathers all professional resources in this field. Its main priority is to increase the added value of local IT companies and web agencies and facilitate the digital transformation of the city as a whole, and of each company individually. 

Yet the city’s profile is far from being digital and focused totally on this sector. The IT sector is used more to develop other important fields and industries in the city and the city area - fields that produce and attract more investments than the IT sector itself. On the other hand, the impact of IT companies and web agencies cannot be underestimated since they play a vital role in digital transformation and the business environment. 

According to Glassdoor, the average salary an IT professional gets in Sharjah is about US$66K/year. However, there are 11 top accelerators in the UAE that are probably funding and growing young businesses, including in Sharjah. Among the most notable we can count Plug and Play FinTech Accelerator, FasterCapital, Middle East Venture Capital, and others. 

Based on the analysis of IT companies in Sharjah that are also registered on TechBehemoths, we can say that they definitely have a high potential to become top digital agencies and IT companies in the UAE, and also in the region.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website in order to get a higher ranking in organic search results and consequently more organic traffic.

SEO is a long term strategy and requires advanced knowledge of ranking algorithms and some technical background, to be able to optimize websites for popular search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc.

According to the latest survey on digital marketing conducted by TechBehemoths, about 70% of IT companies revealed that SEO is their main channel for leads, meaning that it’s a vital marketing activity that generates traffic, prospects and sales.

Some of the benefits of SEO are:

• Free organic traffic
• Brand awareness 
• Better control over brand traffic
• A vital marketing channel for leads & sales
• Supports other channels: social media, paid ads, direct traffic, etc.
• Optimizes your advertising budget
• Usually, has a higher conversion rate
• Gives you a competitive advantage
• Is a good long term investment, generating decent results

It’s not easy to find a reputable SEO company, as some SEO agencies used to provide questionable/suspicious services in the past, and lots of businesses became reluctant to pay for search engine optimization services.

When looking for and choosing an SEO service provider, you should consider a lot of aspects. Ideally, you should do some basic research, set up clear goals and ask yourself a few questions before hiring a company.

Here are some things to look for when searching for SEO agencies to partner with:

• Expertise
• Portfolio
• Years in business
• Case studies
• Price (expect to pay at least $30 / hour if you’re hiring an agency)
• Approach and particularities (technical SEO, link building, content optimization, etc.)
• Communication and reporting

TechBehemoths lists more than 30,400 SEO companies from all over the world. Check out their profiles and feel free to get in touch with them.

To ease the selection process, we’ve created a powerful filter which you can use to narrow down the results based on your requirements and shortlist the companies.

SEO and search in the AI era

SEO has dramatically changed since the launch of chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc. (post end of 2022), and disrupted the whole search industry for both business owners/publishers and users who search on the web.

User interaction has completely changed, with more users opting for natural language questions instead of search keywords.

While the traditional 10 blue links in Google or Bing are not gone, their importance has shifted , as traditional search engines now integrate summarized answers via AI (Eg. Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot Search).

Traditional search engines are shifting to chatbot-like interfaces, where users discuss with AI and get relevant and customized answers, just like in ChatGPT or Claude.

This is good and bad news for both business owners and users.

On the positive side, AI chatbots offer endless possibilities for content creation, automation, customization, app/software development, etc. and the entry point is really low. But there are downsides too:

There have been many concerns that AI systems are using copyrighted content to train themselves and generate answers without giving credit or sending referral traffic to the original content creators.

Users can experience AI hallucinations (made up, false information), no real-time data, bias and might diminish critical thinking and evaluation of multiple sources to create an opinion or an action.

SEO is still the foundation

Being present and visible in both search engines and chatbots is critical these days. SEO is the foundation for that, as chatbots operate in a similar way: they use their large language models (LLMs) to answer questions and 3rd party sources (Bing index, web APIs, etc.) to provide real time or recent info and citations/sources within the answers.

If your website is present in Google or Bing index and ranks well in their organic search results, it’s most likely that it will be often cited in chatbots (although it’s not directly correlated).

This is why a new type of SEO has emerged: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) which is basically SEO for AI.

To make sure that your website ranks well and is present in traditional search index and AI based search engines, you still need to have a good technical SEO foundation. Here are some fundamental aspects that you need to consider:

• Robots.txt - should be properly configured so that search engines can access your website

• Crawlability - make sure you have a sitemap and meta robots tags on pages that you want or don’t want to appear in search results

• Duplicate content - implement canonical tags, so that search engines know what are the primary/preferred pages to be indexed and ranked/cited.

• Site speed - is essential for users and search engines. Your web pages should load fast on all kinds of devices.

• Mobile first - smartphones are the primary devices for most users, so having a mobile-first website is highly recommended. For more advanced sites with high traffic volumes: PWA and mobile apps could work too.  

• Schema markup - chatbots and search engines rely on structured data to better understand your pages and the type of content you are serving to users. Common schema types can be: local business, event, product, review, rating, etc.

There are other parts of SEO that should be also considered like content creation and backlink/citation building.

Content creation is a significant part of SEO and many companies choose to either outsource or automate the process by using AI tools. It’s important to note that search engines don’t penalize content created by AI, however the quality of content is vital and often content created at scale with AI, doesn’t present much value.

This is why SEO agencies can have a smart/modern approach where they use humans/professionals and AI to help them create valuable content, not just generate content that has no value.

Before you hire an SEO agency it’s important to ask and know exactly how they use AI and what’s their workflow.

Some agencies offer link building/citation building services. Our advice is to avoid bulk/automated link submission services and opt for customized and high quality link building services. Focus on quality rather than quantity.

Managing technical SEO can be overwhelming, hence you can opt for reliable SEO agencies that can make sure your website is up and ranking in search engines, while you can focus on achieving the desired business results.

How to shortlist SEO agencies for your projects?

Finding the right SEO agency for your projects might be a difficult task. That’s why, TechBehemoths offers a few tools to facilitate this process:

Search

Simply search for SEO related services and include the desired location (city or country) and browse the listings. Look at companies with awards, positive reviews, great/excellent profile strength and strong portfolios. 

Feel free to get in touch with the right companies directly from listings.

Advanced filter

Use the advanced filter to narrow down your search results by lots of handy criteria like: location, technologies and tools, team size, hourly rate, review count and rating, and many more. 

You can also sort the filtered results to get a more organized view of your shortlisted companies.

There is an option to save your filter results and choose to receive notifications if new companies meet your filter criteria.

Submit project

Head over to Submit project techbehemoths.com/project-submission and include your project description and specifications, and our system will match it with the best possible tech service providers. You will get a list of curated companies ready to execute your projects.