It’s one of the most common questions that we get – is SEO really that important for my business?

The truth is, SEO is an investment in the long-term success of your business. SEO takes patience. Where PPC marketing like Google Ads can start generating leads overnight, SEO takes time to start seeing results from SEO.

Today, the search results are more competitive than ever. With more businesses vying for the top spot in every niche, it takes a strategic approach to stand out. Companies that rank at the top of Google (and other search engines) aren’t overnight sensations. In almost all cases, they have been fine tuning the SEO approach or years.

Short term, you can expect your rankings to improve for your target keywords. You’ll also start to see more organic website visitors. In the long term, SEO will become one of the main lead generation tools for your business.

As long as websites and search engines continue to exist, then SEO will continue to be one of the most important digital marketing channels available to businesses. Even as SEO continues to change, the value of ranking at the top of search engines will remain the same.

With more than 5-million residents and around half-a-million Melbourne-based businesses, SEO competition in Melbourne (and Victoria) is fierce. New businesses and websites are popping up every day. New (and existing) websites means that standing out in the search results is harder than ever.

Those companies that you see at the top of just about every niche have been investing in their SEO strategy for years.

It doesn’t matter where you start, it only matters that you start. Our team of Melbourne SEO consultants work with established businesses to maintain and improve SERP visibility, but we also work with new businesses who are starting from scratch. If you’re serious about the long-term success of your business, then investing in SEO is an essential part in building a sustainable source of website traffic.

SEO is a versatile and endlessly adaptable marketing strategy. With the right strategy, it can help most business types to reach more potential customers online. Here’s some of the types of businesses that we work with that see huge growth with an SEO strategy:

Professional services: Lawyers, accountants, agencies, conveyancers etc.
Trade businesses: Plumbers, roofers, electricians
Ecommerce: Online retailers that sell any type of product
Local companies: Companies that need a local SEO presence
Service Area Businesses (SAB): Businesses that service clients in multiple locations

We’re firm believers in the power of SEO Melbourne (shocker, I know!). From experience we know some businesses are going to be more suited to an SEO strategy than other ones. It’s simple, if we believe our Melbourne SEO services can help your business to grow, we’ll work with you.

It’s hard to say without looking at your website. But there are numerous factors may have contributed to your previous SEO strategy falling short of the mark. Some possible reasons for the lack of results in the past may include:

• Wrong keyword selection
• Poor quality content
• Poor quality technical SEO
• Sub-par link building
• Inconsistent strategy
• Outdated techniques

Because of “SEO-delay” (the time between starting and when you actually see results) you probably won’t know whether you’ve chosen the right SEO consultant until you’re at least a few months into working with them. To make sure we’re delivering the most transparent services, we set realistic goals and provide time frame projections. Based on these, we let you make the decision.

There’s no limit on the number of keywords that we can target in your SEO campaign. Selling SEO services by number of keywords is an outdated approach.

Instead of restricting you based on the number of keywords, we work with our Melbourne-based clients to determine which keywords we can realistically go after within your budget and then create an SEO strategy from there. Ranking for the most competitive keywords means more content and more links from our SEO team, which will invariably cost more. What we try to do is match your budget with the right keywords to give you the best chance of attracting high-quality leads.

Technically, anyone can do SEO. In the same way that anyone can tile a bathroom or diagnose their tummy ache using WebMD – there’s nothing to stop you from trying!

The benefit of working with an SEO specialist is that you get experience, so you won’t lie awake at night wondering when you’re going to see rankings improve. If you’re on a tight budget, we recommend producing as much content as possible for your blog. Stay clear of doing any link building (it can get risky without the right knowledge). If your business is at the stage where you can hire someone to do your SEO for you, then it’s well worth the investment.

An effective SEO strategy needs to focus on the four pillars of SEO. They are:

1. On-site
2. Off-site
3. Content
4. Technical

When we talk about on-site, we’re talking about your headings, your site-structure, your landing pages, your keywords etc. For off-site, we’re mainly talking about backlinks – but there are other elements that go into it. For content, well, that one is pretty self-explanatory – we need to have high-quality content that provides real value. No spammy AI written content and no junk for the sake of ticking some SEO boxes. For technical SEO, it means things like site speed and making sure your website is easy to crawl and index.

Start by checking how they rank their own website for digital marketing/SEO related keywords. It’s easy to talk a big game on a sales call. But how you rank your own website tells the real story. If they can’t rank on page 1 for themselves, then chances of them being able to do it for your website are somewhere between slim and none.

Other than being able to prove their strategy with results, find a team that aligns with your business. We know that we are not going to be the best SEO agency in Melbourne for every business – and that’s ok! Some companies will be better suited to a bigger agency that can provide them with that agency razzle dazzle. If you’re looking for a straight-up SEO agency Melbourne can rely on, then give us a shout.

Choosing between SEO and PPC really depends on your goals. If you need immediate calls and leads, we recommend starting out with pay per click marketing. If your goal is to build a brand with a sustainable funnel, then search engine optimisation is going to be a better investment.

Remember, you don’t have to “choose”. Many businesses will do Google Ads (PPC) in the short term while their SEO strategy takes time to “take effect”. Their long-term goal is to reduce your Google Ads spend and make organic the main source of leads.

If your SEO strategy is doing what it’s supposed to do, your email inbox, order book, and enquiries, and conversions should be stacking up. More website traffic should (if your strategy is correct) lead to more enquiries and conversions. If your SEO isn’t working, then you won’t notice a change to your revenue or work rate. SEO in Melbourne is hugely competitive. So results won’t happen overnight. But you should start to see all of these hallmarks of business growth as your strategy kicks in.

Local SEO or a localised search engine optimisation strategy is one of the best ways for small to medium sized businesses to outperform and outrank established businesses in their area. That’s not strictly what it is about, but from our perspective, we love doing local SEO in Melbourne because it is one of the best ways to help our small to medium level clients achieve huge ‘punch above your weight’ success that puts them on the map in their local area.

Today, more than 80% of all searches in Google feature a location element. In addition to that whopping number, some 97% of users turn to Google when they are looking to find goods or services in their area. As such, appearing in front of local users is one of the best ways to capture users that are likely to transact with your business.

A local SEO strategy helps businesses to appear prominently in local search results. For businesses that offer products or services to customers in a pre-defined service area (like a service area business), local SEO means isolating your customers and focussing your efforts to attract them. Rather than going after big, broad, high-competition search phrases, local SEO helps businesses to attract customers that are most likely to transact with their business.

We get it, you’re spending money, so you want some level of assurance that you are heading in the right direction. With that said, Google explicitly warns business owners to steer clear of any companies that offer “guaranteed SEO services”. We’ve written a good article about it here (it also ranks #1 when you search for guaranteed SEO – so you know we know what we’re on about). We’ve got enough experience to be able to provide you with a realistic projection and time frame for results. But we can’t say that you’ll rank X by Y date – it’s just not how it works. Google has its own timeframe. As SEO specialists, it’s our job to put your best foot forward to make sure that Google picks you up for the right keywords.

When it comes to “how much does SEO in Melbourne cost”, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. SEO prices in Melbourne can range from $1,500 per month to $10,000+ per month based on the type of business and competition in that particular industry.

While we don’t have a standard SEO Melbourne price list, we can provide you with a free consultation and quote for your business. The cost of SEO services is determined based on a number of factors, including:

• The age and history of your website
• The current performance of your website
• The current technical state of your website
• The amount of new content that is required
• Your location and the location of your target audience
• The competition of your target keywords and niche
• The goals of your campaign and desired outcomes
• Your industry – some industries are significantly more competitive than others

To be upfront, we are not the cheapest SEO Melbourne has to offer – but we are far from the most expensive. We deliver value-led SEO solutions that ensure our clients see a positive ROI from their SEO investment. If we do not believe that we can deliver a positive ROI from our SEO services, then we won’t work with you – it’s that simple.

SEO is constantly evolving, and search engines continue to change the way that they rank content. As a result, rankings and organic website traffic is constantly changing. As a rule of thumb, Google releases 3-4 major updates each year (known as core updates). In addition to these updates, Google (and other search engines) also make hundreds (perhaps thousands) of small tweaks to their ranking system that can impact how you rank.

Luckily, because we are SEO specialists, we’ve got the time to learn about what all of these changes mean and how we can apply them to get the best outcome for our clients. We read industry news, Google releases, and other sources to make sure we stay up to date with updates and our clients remain at the top of the SERPs for their respective industries.

When it comes to getting the best SEO results, content is right at the top of the list.

On-site content and content marketing is the cornerstone of every successful SEO campaign.

Content is make or break for your SEO strategy. Search engines use content to understand the context and value of your website. When done correctly, your content should inform, entertain, and provide real value to users. Too many SEOs get caught up in writing content to “game” the SEO system, but that’s not what it’s about.

Great content should provide value to your readers and cement your position as an industry thought leader. Google wants to reward great content by giving it more visibility in the search results.

There are no shortcuts, high quality content is essential for search visibility.

When you work with us, you’ll get a team of SEO copywriters helping you to get it right. From blogs to on-page content on your most important landing page, our team of SEO copywriting experts will work with you to combine essential SEO elements with your desired tone and brand voice.

A backlink refers to a link from another website that links back to your website. In SEO, backlinks act as a ‘vote of confidence’ from one website to another. Think of backlinks like a job reference. The more ‘references’ that you have from high authority sources, the more trust you inherit. To put a number on it, we usually say links account for as much as 30% of how a website ranks.

In theory, the notion of backlinks is straightforward. In reality, the practice of getting trusted backlinks is a minefield. You can’t buy a thousand links from PBNs (private blog networks) and link farms and expect to rank. 10 years ago that might have worked – but not today. Search engines are too sophisticated to fall for that these days. Today, it’s about getting high-quality links.

Domain Authority (DA) is a Moz (third party SEO tool) metric that measures the ranking potential of a website based on backlinks. Just about every SEO tool has an equivalent metrics. Ahrefs has Domain Ranking (DR), Semrush has Authority Score, Majestic has trust flow – it’s all more or less the same thing. All of these tools are trying to mimic Google’s defunct Page Rank metric that used to do the same thing. DR, DA and all the rest are just a metric. Google doesn’t know about it (or really care for that matter) – and nor should you.

Our 2c on the matter is that you should be worried about traffic and conversions, not a third-party metric. In most cases, we find these metrics are something that digital agencies love to bang on about because they are not getting you actual results.

If we had to pinpoint one SEO mistake that is hampering businesses in 2024, it has to be AI content.

There are so many conflicting opinions and “SEO Gurus” virtue signalling on LinkedIn, so it’s hard to know where to start with this one. But from first-hand experience, we can tell you this is tripping up a lot of established websites.

We get it, creating a lot of content with AI tools can be tempting. Writing a high-volume of content used to be synonymous with strong SEO rankings. Recently, things have moved quickly. It’s no longer about putting out as much content as possible; it’s about creating original and unique content that abides by Google’s E-E-A-T criteria.

When you work our SEO nerds, we’ll help you to navigate the most common SEO mistakes and ensure you’re always on the right track.

We use a full stack of SEO tools. We lean heavily on tools like Semrush and Ahrefs for on-site and off-site planning. We also have customised reporting dash that you’ll get 24/7 access to for rankings, traffic, progress insights etc. Data is crucial for making the right decisions, so we don’t skimp on tools. If there is a new tool on the market, you can be sure we’ve tested it. And if it provides value, then we’ll integrate it into our workflow.