Local SEO Melbourne
Drive meaningful, qualified traffic to your website with Melbourne’s leading local SEO provider.
Whether you’re a service area business wanting to capture leads from Cranbourne to Craigieburn, or you’re an enterprise level company looking to capture leads from every capital city in Australia – we can make it happen. Find out how a localised approach to SEO can take your online visibility to the next level.
Melbourne’s Local SEO Experts
Laser targeted local search strategies that drive valuable leads for your business. 97% of consumers use Google to find products or services in their local area. When consumers are looking to make a quick purchase or employ the assistance of a local business – they use geo-targeting in their search enquiries. Local search engine optimisation connects savvy businesses with buy-ready customers.
Our Melbourne Local SEO services do exactly what the yellow pages did for businesses in the 1990s and early 2000s – they connect local consumers with local companies. The demise of the yellow pages means local search in Melbourne is in an unprecedented stage of growth. Smart businesses in Melbourne are taking advantage of the fact that local customers are using Google to connect with businesses in their area.
If your business does not have a localised strategy, you are neglecting the easiest form of organic traffic. There are no two ways about it, A Local SEO campaign is the most powerful and effective way to quickly (and substantially) increase the quality and quantity of enquiries and visits that your business receives through organic search in Melbourne.
Melbourne is amongst the busiest and most competitive local search markets in the world. An exploding population of tech-savvy consumers mean that fighting your way to the top of Melbourne’s search engine results pages is getting more competitive by the day. You don’t have to be number for every keyword – you have to be there for the right ones. A Local SEO Melbourne strategy allows your business to target valuable search terms that are going to drive leads, enquiries and revenue.
The Value of Local Search Engine Optimisation
Local SEO or local search engine optimisation is a digital marketing strategy that is designed to help businesses appear more prominently in the local search results. Businesses that service a specific area or multiple areas (trades people, online services providers, multi-location businesses) can all benefit from a localised approach to SEO services.
Local SEO works by capitalising on users that want to see results in their local area. Google (and other search engines) understand that when users conduct certain searches – such as those that include a specific location or ‘near-me’ at the end, want to connect with businesses in their area. As a result, search engines use things like location data and device settings to present hyper-specific search results that meet the unique demands of the searcher.
Businesses that operate within one (or more) areas can capitalise on these opportunities by implementing a local SEO strategy that correctly identifies user intent and creates content that meets those specific demands. As local SEO experts, our team can effectively identify relevant, high-converting search terms and ensure that local businesses capitalise on these potential leads with a strategic approach to SEO marketing.
Our SEO Strategy
SEO Backed by the Best Tools
Frequently Asked Questions
Is local SEO right for my business?
Before we go into the merits of local SEO, it’s essential to establish who is the right candidate for SEO and who is not.
The truth is, not every business is going to benefit from local search engine optimisation in the same way. While some SEO companies might tell you that local search will benefit your business without actually doing an audit, we take the time to understand your business before making any assumptions. Transparency is the most critical aspect of any successful working relationship. Understandably, it’s hard to find when you are asking providers whether you should invest in their service.
Generally speaking, an area focussed search engine optimisation strategy can be beneficial for any Melbourne business looking to attract local leads to their bricks and mortar store, e-commerce business, or service-based business. If you can service multiple locations or offer your goods and services to a single location, it is worth looking at how a local strategy can help your business.
Does Local SEO Provide High ROI?
Yes.
The first thing that you need to know about Melbourne Local SEO services is that conversion rates are ridiculously high. The most recent data indicates that 78% of local searches result in an enquiry or offline conversion.
To put that in perspective, if you are a service-based business like a roofer or sparkie and your website receives a click from a local search, there is an 8/10 chance that it will result in an enquiry. You’ve got to like those odds!
If there is one local search stat that should make you sit up and take notice, it’s this one. Considering that the majority of local searches result in a conversion, the importance of a localised search strategy cannot be overlooked.
Local search engine optimisation in Melbourne captures highly motivated consumers at the pointy end of the buyer cycle – which is precisely when you want to put your business front and centre. If you’re going to attract motivated consumers to your business, a localised strategy is essential.
Why Does Local Search Matter?
What if we told you that 97% of search engine users will look on Google to find a local business? Consumers looking for a local business online, will turn to search engines first.
Without a local search engine optimisation strategy in place, your business is missing out on these leads. Investing in local SEO company means appearing in more local searches and taking your piece of the local search market.
Your online presence makes an ongoing impression on your potential leads. If your business does not have a strong online, organic presence, you are missing out on local, qualified leads.
An area-focussed campaign will help you build your local presence and increase awareness for your business. The first step towards growing your business is letting consumers know that you are there.
86% of consumers rely solely on the internet to find a local business – if you’re not visible to your local audience online, then you’re missing out on valuable leads.
Are My Competitors Utilising Local SEO?
Nope – that’s the best part about implementing a local strategy for your business. You will be one of the first businesses in your niche to do so!
The latest data suggests that 56% of local businesses haven’t even claimed their Google my business listing. Just imagine what your business could do with a comprehensive local search strategy.
Local SEO awareness is still in its infancy, which means that standing out is easy. There are thousands of businesses who are desperate to increase their market share but have no idea how to start. By implementing a Melbourne local SEO strategy, your business will be one of only a handful of businesses in your niche who understand the power of local search.
Consumers want results that are personalised and tailored. Search engines like Google have responded by using different data points and geo-tracking to present search results that are honed for the user. For example, “Near me” search terms have exploded by more than 400% over the last four years.
Your business needs a rock-solid SEO strategy that includes your local citations, Google My Business listing and a range of other local search marketing factors will influence your local visibility.
How Does a Localised Approach Build Organic Traffic?
Search engine optimisation is the most powerful inbound marketing strategy available to your business. Unlike marketing models that involve reaching out to customers when they are not interested in your goods and services, SEO captures highly motivated leads when searching engines to research or purchase goods and services.
Generally speaking, SEO is more convenient and less intrusive for your prospective customers. Think about it like this, instead of bombarding a disengaged and unwilling audience with irrelevant information; local SEO allows you to capture motivated leads at the right time. As an SEO Melbourne company, it is our job to understand how your prospective customers are using organic search and to create a strategy that puts you in front of them at just the right time.
How Many People Use Local Search?
46% of all searches feature local intent.
The latest local SEO data reveals that almost half of all Google searches feature a local intent. And this number is only going to grow. That means when someone is looking for a service, product or place to visit they include location details in the search.
Google is placing a greater emphasis on showing local results that provide an immediate solution for users. Rather than offering general results, Google is producing laser-targeted results that direct customers from their phones, desktop or tablet straight to your business.
What’s more, 28% of searches that include a local intent will result in a purchase. For businesses of all sizes and shapes – the importance of a Local SEO strategy in Melbourne cannot be overstated.
Will Local SEO Help My Business to Grow?
Absolutely.
Getting to the top of the search engine results pages in Melbourne was once considered a pipe dream for small to medium businesses with a limited budget. The Melbourne landscape is dominated by big companies who can throw money at a solution – so what about companies who need to find an answer on a budget?
Since 2014, Google has been giving local businesses the chance to outrank and outperform their more established rivals on a local level.
Local search engine optimisation is the most effective way to increase your local visibility in Melbourne and grow your business on a budget.
Do You Offer Any Other Marketing Services?
We are a specialised search engine optimisation company. Unlike some of the other companies in Melbourne that offer every digital marketing service under the sun – we choose to focus on one aspect of online marketing and do it well.
From our observations, there are far too many general digital marketing agencies that claim to have specialised knowledge of every facet of digital marketing – we are not one of them. We are committed to training and retaining the best SEO talent in Australia.
How Much Does Local SEO Cost?
Asking how much SEO costs is like asking how much a holiday cost – it depends on your starting point and where you want to end up.
The cost of SEO depends on the number of resources, time, and effort required to help you achieve your business goals. During your initial consultation, we will be able to dissect your current market position and advise you on whether you will be the right fit for our services.
We don’t have an SEO price list, and we don’t limit campaigns based on the number of keywords you can target. The cost of our services is tailored towards your unique business goals. some of the factors that may influence the price of SEO include the following:
- The age of your website
- The history of your website, including past SEO work
- The amount of new content and landing pages that are required
- The location of your business and the area in which you are competing
- The goals for your campaign
- The competition within your niche
- Your competitors
Providing the best local SEO services requires patience, time, trust, and a long-term vision from your SEO provider. We are not the most expensive, but we also don’t claim to be the cheapest. If you’re looking for the cheapest local SEO in Melbourne, you may need to make your way to page 5 or 6 of Google, where you can find the SEO providers that don’t know their craft.
Our Blueprint for Local SEO Success
Local Content Marketing
Creating local content is one of the most crucial aspects of a comprehensive local SEO Melbourne campaign.
Content is still king – even so for local SEO. According to the latest research, 57% of marketers rank content creation and content marketing as the number one way to drive the best results in search. According to the same studies, social media marketing and backlinks rank as the second and third most effective ways to increase website traffic.
Local content marketing includes creating and publishing content that is relevant to the industry and niche, as well as targeting the local area. Users love to connect with brands on topics that are relatable, relevant, and community based. Local content involves leaving a mark on the local community with well written, insightful, and valuable content.
The hard work does not stop there. Updating existing local content with fresh images and written content can increase organic traffic rates by 111.3%. Republishing and updating existing local content is one of the most underrated and time-effective ways to increase organic reach and engage more readers.
Authoritative Local Backlinks
Almost 70% of SEO experts admit that link acquisition is one of the most challenging aspects of sustainable SEO. And naturally, the backlink profile of your website holds significant weight in the way your site is ranked in search results.
When it comes to local search, visibility can be significantly improved by creating solid connections with local websites and having them link back to your site.
Before the Google Penguin Update, link building efforts were skewed towards acquiring high volumes of low-quality backlinks to build authority and “link juice”. However, today, link building efforts need to be sustainable and more meaningful – websites engaging in low-quality link schemes will suffer a Google Penalty.
Sustainable link building means focusing efforts on building connections with high authority relevant websites. Links signal to search engines that one site considers another website to be trustworthy, authoritative, and provides valuable insight. In terms of local SEO, we will focus on attaining links for other websites within the local community that are both relevant and high-quality. As well as improving local search visibility, local links will also increase brand awareness and referral traffic.
Managing Google My Business
Over half of all local businesses have not claimed their Google My Business listing.
Google My Business is one of the most critical and imperative components of local SEO Melbourne. Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that works with Google Search and Google Maps; GMB has a direct and enormous impact on local search visibility.
When users are searching for a product or service in their local area, GMB listings are the first things they come across.
Claiming, verifying, and managing your GMB listing is one of the most critical aspects of managing your local visibility. Once you’ve set up your GMB profile, the next step is to optimise and then keep it updated with Google Posts and photos. Keeping your GMB profile updated signals to both search engines and users that your business is alive and thriving.
An optimised GMB listing helps Google to understand more about your business; who you are, what services/products you offer, where you’re located and where they can find your website (for further crawling). The more Google can understand about your business, the more types of searches your GMB listing will display in.
Landing Page Optimisation
Landing page optimisation for local SEO Melbourne services includes creating local landing pages for each service area or store location.
Creating individual landing pages for targeted areas informs consumers about your geographical service or storefront areas. Optimising landing pages for locations will also significantly extend reach and find customers that you wouldn’t otherwise come across.
Almost 80% of location-related searches will lead to an offline transaction. Landing page optimisation for locations is the perfect local SEO Melbourne strategy for brick and mortar style and service style businesses. Optimising your pages to extend online, can significantly impact the number of people visiting or using your services offline.
On-Page Strategy
Google looks at several different on-page signals when ranking websites in search. Optimising your on-site content for local search includes using relevant, lucrative and local keywords to get your content noticed.
One SEO Statistic keeping marketers up at night is that the average page one result in Google contains 1,890 words of content. Detailed landing pages will make your business an industry leader; not a follower. In saying that, not every page needs to be 2,000 words in length. Competitor research should help marketers to work out which pieces require more content and tweaking to outrank in Google.
Page Title Optimisation
Page title optimisation for local search involves local keyword research and configuration.
Page titles should accurately describe what a page is about and what its purpose is. If you’re targeting local areas, page titles must have geographical intent. As well as being an important ranking factor for search engines, page titles play an enormous role in the way local users read and interpret your website in search results.
Recently, Google has started to dynamically rewrite page titles based on the information that they find on your page. if your page title is over optimised or does not accurately reflect what users can expect to find on the web page, Google will go ahead and replace it with something more relevant. Page titles are one of the most important on-page ranking factors – if you are serious about appearing at the top of Google’s search results, you need to ensure that your titles are not being rewritten by Google.
Internal Linking Strategy
Internal links are hyperlinks that go from one page on a website to a different page on the same domain.
Internal links help users navigate a site, establish a hierarchy, and can create “master” pages within a website that make it easier for search engines to understand which pages to rank for search queries.
Linking your pages internally connects your content and gives Google a good idea of the structure and architecture of your website. With a solid internal linking campaign, you can show which content is most relevant and which articles are the most informative and essential. Furthermore, internal links assist with indexing and are an important way to make sure that your website is crawled efficiently by Google crawl bots.
Mobile Usability
With more people using their mobile devices to find information about local businesses and services, mobile site usability is more critical than ever.
More than half of all users would not recommend a company with a poorly designed mobile website. Making your website mobile-friendly is one of the critical aspects of local SEO. According to Google, users who are not about to read or browse websites efficiently and effortlessly on their mobile phones are likely to abandon the page altogether. Not only will websites lose that user, but they also run the risk of users warning others against going to the site in the future.
Directories and Citations
NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number ) listings and citations are essentially online catalogues of websites and business information.
In the past, web directories in high masses have been used to build a backlink profile. Today, having your site linked from lots of low-quality directories can only do your website harm.
Directories and citations do not hold the same weight for local search as they once did. In saying that, web directories and citations can be used to establish consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information across the web, and are still somewhat relevant for users looking for company information online.
It’s important to note that NAP links will not be the difference between ranking on page 2 and page 1 of Google. However, they do play an important role in building trust and creating a foundational layer of links that improve website authority. We incorporate NAP link building into the early phases of our SEO campaigns to ensure that you have consistent name, address, and phone number information across all of your online business listings.
Get Your Local Business on The Map
Local search engine optimisation delivers outstanding ROI. Whether you are a plumber, an e-commerce store, or a national business, a localised approach to organic search can dramatically improve your search presence.
Through our comprehensive strategies and thorough local search techniques, we can get your local business competing with the big players in your industry.
The reason we love working on local SEO Melbourne campaigns so much is because our local strategies always deliver ridiculous ROI and generate enormous amounts of qualified leads. Take your business to the next level – contact the local SEO experts at Safari Digital.
Get in Touch
What are you waiting for? Our team is ready to work with you to create a custom SEO strategy that will inundate your business with high-converting leads.
