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Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is a marketing process of increasing organic and unpaid traffic to a website. With Google owning 90% of the search market in Australia the work delivered by an SEO agency is done predominantly to improve Google visibility. This can range from local SEO for a business servicing a specific area through to enterprise SEO for large multi-national brands - the strategy varies wildly.
The goal is to generate more visitors and ultimately more sales for your business, though there are many different ways to accomplish it. Regardless of the methodology, it is essential to understand what the Google algorithm constitutes as effective SEO to tailor your practices.
SEO services delivered by an SEO agency like Local Digital incorporate both onsite SEO and offsite SEO. Onsite SEO involves optimising the areas Google’s crawler will analyse on your website, from article headlines to tags to image names to the content of a page. Generally speaking, you want to align your content with the needs and desires of your website visitors, so the Google algorithm can bridge the gap.
Offsite SEO involves trying to boost the authority of your domain. Google rewards highly authoritative sites with high rankings. The main way Google determines authority is looking at links from other websites to your website. The more links you have the more authority you have.
Local Digital is an SEO agency that offers a full suite of onsite SEO, technical and link building services. We deliver end to end marketing strategy to not only push your website to the top of Google, but deliver more sales and profits to your business. We offer some of the leading SEO Sydney has to offer as well as working with clients in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Gold Coast and more from our head office in Parramatta.
An SEO agency manages digital marketing campaigns designed to drive traffic from search engines like Google to your business website. They usually offer a suite of SEO services on a done for you basis, starting with SEO strategy all the way through to technical implementation and reporting.
As a result of the work performed by your SEO agency, your company website will rank higher on search engine results, improve your brand credibility, gain online exposure, and generate more sales. All of these effects are byproducts of optimising a site and its products and services, and should be expected of any good SEO firm.
There are many marketing agencies in the Australian market – some great, others not so great so it is well advised to be well informed when dealing with an agency. Our podcast The SEO Show is a great way of keeping yourself informed. An SEO company might only off the one service, meaning you engage a PPC agency, social media marketing service and other marketing agency. Alternatively, SEO might be one of the broader offerings of marketing agency that can perform multiple functions for you as part of a holistic campaign.
The first step an SEO agency will take with your company is to evaluate your current website and its SEO performance. The goal is to find what is working and where you have areas for potential growth. The agency will then develop an in-depth strategy to improve those weaknesses, through pillars including onsite optimisation, technical optimisation and link building.
An SEO agency also maintains the responsibility of implementing and monitoring your campaign. It continuously tracks keyword rankings and analytics to see how to further boost traffic or tweak your future content for the best customer engagement.
If all goes well, your business will reap the benefits of more traffic, visibility, and sales.
Nothing builds credibility on the web like having another site link to your blog or individual pages. It shows that others recognise you as an authority and Google absolutely loves to see these links.
All things being equal, if your competitor has better links than you do, they're going to rank better in Google.
Link building is the process of going out and getting more links - actively connecting hyperlinks from one website back to your website. It is a way of bridging two pages on the Internet. For instance, if we run a shoe store, we might connect visitors with running tips from Outside Magazine, which is an authority in the athletic community.
When Google's web crawlers see the link between the pages, they associate the connection as an endorsement. The more of these backlinks your website has, the more credibility the crawlers will give it.
Of course, link building is not as easy as hyperlinking any old website or text you want. The quality of the source matters. Google will also penalise a website that overuses links in an attempt to drive traffic. The penalisation forces websites to make each of its links count.
Our expert outreach team manually identifies and selects the right sites to link with. There’s no need to worry about link building to a competitor’s web page. Our team thoroughly vets each site and only selects the right ones for your business. The besthappens when there’s great content to link to, and as a business owner, you have better things to do with your time. Local Digital will create high-quality content to add to each linked page. The better the content, the more likely your business is to be considered an authority.The goal of any business should be to become a household name, and citation building through high-quality backlinks on other websites will bring you one step closer to that goal.
Is search engine optimisation required to get your business website ranked in Google search? The answer is a resounding ‘YES!’. If you want any sort of presence for your website it's a "must have". On-page and off-page SEO are essential to ensuring that your website ranks higher on search-engine results, increasing your visibility and accessibility to potential customers.
On-page SEO refers primarily to the text on your website. That includes headlines, articles, blogs, tags, and meta descriptions. When the Google algorithm scans your website, it uses the keywords in these locations to understand your business and rank its usefulness against specific search engine results. For instance, if you run a health-food store and frequently blog about the benefits of kombucha, Google is likely to associate you as an authority of the fermented beverage and rank your page higher on related searches.
Off-page SEO refers to connections to press releases and outside articles that link to your website. The key is to find useful and reliable sources connected with specific text or keywords. The Google algorithm will see your link and associate it as an endorsement for your connected site.
If you are not doing any of the above, Google will favour the many competitors in your space who ARE doing it. In this day and age SEO is not just a "nice to have" - it's a vital pillar of your marketing mix and a requirement to ensure your website enjoys a strong presence in Google.
It’s challenging to put a timeframe on when you’ll see results from your SEO campaign. That said, you must be patient, as one thing that is for sure is that it is not immediate.
Generally, you can expect to see results from your SEO agency anywhere from four to six months after starting. SEO implementation is an extended process because it entails a repeated cycle of research, creation, evaluation, and tweaking. It often makes sense to run some Google Ads for immediate results while you wait for your SEO efforts to take hold.
The initial months involve developing a strategy and generating content, such as blogs, articles, and FAQs, to begin associating your website with specific keywords and topics. When you get to months five and six, the attention shifts to narrowing your focus on content types that work and have proven useful at maximising your return on investment.
Along the way, a substantial amount of link building also needs to be performed to boost the authority of your domain. Link building is a time intensive process made up of a lot of planning, prospecting and outreach, but the work MUST be done to ensure you can compete with the strongest websites in your space.
Keep in mind, four to six months is the length of time before you’ll start seeing results. Once those results begin to funnel in, your website traffic should only continue to grow, making the ROI you generate from SEO improve each month, to the point it is easily your most profitable acquisition channel. Put another way, you should try to budget for SEO costs for at least six months to a year to get the most profound results possible.
Onsite optimisation deals with "all of the stuff" on your site that Google can read and understand. This means the web pages themselves and the words on the pages. Optimising these pages involves optimising keywords, tags, titles, images, and your overall design. While onsite SEO takes a while to garner results, the process is straightforward.
The key is to create a strategy around specific keywords and topics and create high-quality content with those in mind. One of the easiest ways to generate consistent and useful onsite SEO is through keyword research and mapping to your existing content, updating the on page copy to be keyword rich and then creating new content to target gaps in your website content via the creation of new pages and blogs.
It’s important to also understand the 4 types of search intent – informational, navigational, transactional and commercial investigation – and create content with each audience in mind, to put your website in front of the right searcher at the right moment.
Don’t overlook the small stuff, though. While headlines and captions can seem innocuous, the Google algorithm takes that information and more into account when determining the relevancy of each page on your site. For instance, having catchy and engaging headlines will increase your click-through rate, which correlates with your ranking on search-engine results.
There is a very popular saying in the SEO agency world - "it depends".
However, realistically a bare bones small campaign will start from $1,500 per month and can go as high as $10,000 or more per month. The big variable in this pricing is usually how much you are investing in link building.
A small local business in a relatively niche market with low competition can get away with the lower end of the spectrum. But if you sell an in demand service, let's say family law, then you can expect to spend thousands a month just on links.
The prices are dictated usually by how active your competition is, how much of a gap you need to close and the economics of your market such as price point, margins etc. The economics dictate how much you COULD invest in SEO and analhysing what your competitors are up to and where you are positioned to them dictates how much you SHOULD invest.
One thing is for certain -you're not going to get game changing growth and a torrent of customers by spending $500 or $750 a month on your SEO. It doesn't work like that sorry -magic money printers unfortunately don't exist. That being said, if you are serious about SEO and commit to it with a reputable SEO agency, the investment you do make should return itself many times over in the long run
Absolutely. There's a reason the biggest ecommerce brands all have teams of SEO specialists in-house. And brands without the resource for an internal team ALL work with an SEO agency.
Unless you're selling some sort of funky product where you're building the market, SEO will be the single most profitable channel for an ecommerce business, usually significantly more than other typical ecommerce marketing channels like PPC.
The beauty of SEO for ecommerce brands is that once you're ranking you're not having to pay per click like you do with Google Ads.
But word to the wise - ecommerce SEO is competitive. Not only are you competing with your direct competitors, brands similar to you - you're also competing with your "keyword competitors" - brands that rank in Google, like Amazon.
So how do you do it? If you're on Shopify then make use of a Shopify SEO agency. By dialling in your content strategy and ensuring your link building is on point. Also, technical SEO is important in the ecommerce world, making sure your canonical tags and duplicate content game is on point. You can also make use of programmatic SEO to scale your efforts. Finally, make sure your mobile SEO game is tight as in this day and age most of your customers are mobile first.
Yes, Search Engine Optimisation can be an effective marketing method to generate leads. By improving your website's ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords, you increase the visibility of your site to potential customers. This increased visibility can lead to more organic traffic, which can then be converted into leads.
But it's not as simple as "rank it and they will enquire". You need to make sure you're WORTHY of an enquiry. This is achieved with conversion rate optimisation. The basics are making sure you have a compelling offer that people WANT to enquire about. Making sure you have a tonne of social proof like reviews, awards, testimonials, case studies and before and afters so that potential customers see you're alegit business that can help them with their needs.
Ranking is one things, but you won't generate leads without the above.
Assuming you're conversion game is on point then SEO will be the most profitable form of leads out there. The traffic is high intent. People are literally searching Google for someone to help them at the exact moment they are in buying mode. If you can elevate your site to be there at that moment, it's going to translate to leads - and lots of them.
Black hat and white hat SEO are two distinct approaches to search engine optimisation, each with its own set of tactics and philosophies.
White hat SEO focuses on strategies that align with the guidelines and best practices set out by search engines like Google. It emphasises creating high-quality content and a good user experience, with the goal of organically improving a site's ranking in search results over time. This approach is generally considered sustainable and ethical, as it seeks to add value to both users and search engines.
In contrast, black hat SEO involves techniques that attempt to exploit or manipulate search engine algorithms to gain higher rankings quickly. These methods often violate search engine guidelines and can result in penalties or even being banned from search results. Black hat SEO includes practices like keyword stuffing, cloaking, using private link networks, and creating doorway pages. These tactics are designed to trick search engines into giving a site higher visibility than it deserves based on its actual content or user experience. While black hat SEO can sometimes provide short-term gains in traffic, it is risky and can damage a website's long-term credibility and reputation.
The fundamental difference between the two lies in their approach to optimisation and the sustainability of the results. White hat SEO is about building a long-term, credible online presence, while black hat SEO focuses on quick gains, often at the expense of ethics and long-term viability. As search engines become more sophisticated, they are better able to identify and penalise black hat tactics, making white hat SEO the more reliable and effective approach for businesses and individuals looking to build and maintain their online presence.
Now there is one type of hat we haven't spoke about - "grey hat" - this is where you steer clear of the obviously dodgy black hat tactics like cloaking, hacked links etc, but you DO push the Google guidelines a little. Because remember, Google's guidelines are written in THEIR interest, not yours. They want you to spend on Google Ads rather than SEO, so they discourage you from implementing tactics that are quite safe and work, such as link building.
White hat SEO works for super large brands that acquire a tonne of links naturally, but for most ecommerce stores and service businesses they don't have that luxury. We absolutely recommend steering clear of black hat SEO all together. But most websites that perform well in SEO will be deploying some shade of grey hat SEO.
It all comes back to your market, your goals, your risk profile, what your competitors are up to and your budget. This is where a qwuality SEO agency can steer you on the right path and ensure your SEO strategy is using the absolute best hat for you.
Topical authority in the context of SEO and digital content refers to the degree of expertise, trustworthiness, and relevance a website or content creator is perceived to have within a specific subject area or niche. It is established through consistently creating and sharing in-depth, quality content that comprehensively covers a particular topic.
Search engines, like Google, use various signals to gauge this authority, with the aim of providing users with the most reliable and informative content for their search queries. The concept is rooted in the idea that a source that regularly publishes detailed, accurate, and valuable information on a topic is more likely to be an expert in that field.
Achieving topical authority not only involves the depth and quality of the content but also how well it is interconnected and covers the breadth of the subject matter. This means that a website with a focused theme, consistently updated with relevant and detailed content, is more likely to be recognised as an authoritative source.
Topical authority boosts a site's SEO performance, as search engines tend to rank sites higher if they are deemed authoritative in their niche. This leads to increased visibility, higher organic search traffic, and improved trust among users, which can subsequently enhance user engagement and conversion rates.
Choosing an SEO company requires careful consideration to ensure that you partner with a firm that aligns with your business goals and adheres to ethical SEO practices.
There are a lot of "johnny come latelys" out there in the world of digital marketing. People that start an SEO agency and sell services to clients, despite only discovering the world of SEO themselves a month or two earlier.
It's crucial to look for a company with a proven track record of success in SEO, demonstrated through case studies, client testimonials, and a portfolio of past work. An effective SEO company should be transparent about their strategies and methodologies, clearly explaining how they plan to improve your search engine rankings and the kind of results you can expect.
It's also important to ensure that the company uses white hat or grey hat SEO practices, as black hat techniques can lead to penalties from search engines. Communication and collaboration are key factors in selecting an SEO company. Choose a firm that communicates effectively, sets realistic expectations, and is responsive to your queries and feedback.
A good SEO company should be interested in understanding your business, target audience, and unique challenges, and tailor their approach accordingly. Additionally, consider the range of services they offer – a comprehensive approach that includes keyword research, content optimization, technical SEO, and ongoing analysis and reporting is often more effective.
Lastly, ensure their pricing and contract terms are clear and align with your budget and objectives. A trustworthy SEO company should provide clear, upfront information about costs and be flexible enough to adjust strategies as your business and the SEO landscape evolve.
