SEO Gold Coast

Put simply Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising a website to appear higher in the search engine results. SEO has evolved over the last 20 years and resembles something more like “Website Management” because this is what a Digital Marketing Manager does. Manages your website. This is done by generating exposure online through directories and social media, writing new content for your website, updating social media channels like facebook and twitter and technically optimising your website code.

Read more: What Is SEO?

The decision is really quite simple, it’s not as hard as you might think and ultimately the right decision can be made with three simple steps.

1. Select a program that suits your business goals and time frame. After performing an SEO Analysis I will give you an estimated time frame.
2. Select a budget you’re comfortable with investing into your business. The common marketing rule of thumb is: Total Revenue x 5% = Marketing budget required to maintain current awareness and visibility. Total Revenue x 10% = Marketing budget required to grow and gain market share.
   

   Marketing Expense Budgets Averaged 10.2% of Revenue.

3. Select a program that’s suited to the level of competition in your industry. Using realistic expectations, you won’t rank 1st for the most competitive keywords on a program that isn’t aggressive enough. After performing an SEO Analysis I’ll provide you a recommended program.

You may find two of these components are conflicting, for example a short time-frame and a small budget. In this case you should prioritize which is more important.

Of course after performing a thorough SEO Analysis of your website I will be able to provide you with a professional recommendation based on your business goals and needs.

93% of people who are looking for products and services do so using a search engine. 75% of marketers rate SEO as excellent in terms of Return-on-Investment. This is because SEO is one of the most affordable tools for online marketing and yields consistent and effective results. SEO is not just affordable; it is cost-effective because it is customizable to your business needs and budget.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple. It’s like asking your Accountant how much tax I will have to pay next year. He or she can give you an estimate but not an exact figure. Similarly I can give you a very accurate estimate but not an exact figure. Nothing is more important for a business owner to fully understand what SEO is before investing. SEO is not a cost. It is an investment. This isn’t some cheap sales tactic, it’s a fact. A cost is something that doesn’t provide a return, like buying a home (you pay your mortgage but it doesn’t put money back into your pocket). An investment is something that provides a return, like buying a positively geared investment property (each week you gain a return from the rent). SEO is the same, each week it puts money back into your pocket.

To understand the answer to this question you first need to understand how SEO works and what is required to reach page 1. Let’s say you are a brand new business, you just started today. There are 50 or so businesses all scrambling for the top positions on page one, many of them are actively investing in SEO. Some of them may have been doing SEO for months or years. So what does SEO cost? The cost is relative to the time it takes to reach your goal, page one or rank 1, 2 or 3. Let’s assume your main competition has been doing SEO for three years and has a $4,500 website. To rank higher than your competitor you need to either, hire someone better than they are using to catch up to them (x years of SEO), or get someone that isn’t better and wait until your SEO catches up (months or years). As you now understand to tell you how much SEO costs, I need to know what your goals are and who your competition is. I’ll then go analyse their website and give you an estimate of how long it will take to catch up. The advanced program might take 1-3 months, the standard might take 3-6 months for example. It’s all relative to the time invested and how good their SEO is. You get what you pay for. If your competitor goes cheap and outsources to a third world country, it won’t take me long to beat them.

If your competitor spent 3 month optimising their site you wouldn’t expect to beat them spending 2 months. The same would apply to your site, if you spent 3 months you wouldn’t expect a competitor to beat you in any less. SEO takes the relevant amount of time to beat your competitor which varies from industry to industry and business to business. If you’d like an accurate estimate of how long it would take to reach page 1 in your industry, contact me for an SEO analysis.

There are many levels of expertise in every field. The level of study and experience is similar to that of an Accountant, Financial Planner, Software Engineer or Marketing Manager. A true Search Engine Optimiser is extremely specialised in a wide and varying number of skills and proficiencies including:

• Website Design and Development
• Coding languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, SQL
• Business and Marketing
• Copy writing
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Sales and Customer Relations
• Statistics and Analytics
• Conversion Rate Optimisation
• cPanel, Web Hosting and Server Optimisation
• Graphic Design and Image Optimisation
• Content Management Systems: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal
• eCommerce Systems: Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, OpenCart

It takes many years of study and practise to learn and apply these skills effectively, which is why so many amateur SEO’s fail to reach page 1 for their clients. They have simply underestimated what it takes to effectively optimise a website and don’t have the required skills. When I optimise a website I utilise each and every skill listed above, most of the time is what it takes to reach the top of Google.

90% of our new clients are generated from referrals and word of mouth. However our primary keywords are “SEO Expert Gold Coast” – Rank 1, “SEO Consultant Gold Coast” – Rank 1, “SEO Specialist Gold Coast” – Rank 4.

Google’s search results can still be tricked and manipulated into showing a business using unethical or spammy techniques. I saw a new company showing up for SEO Brisbane, SEO Gold Coast, SEO Townsville, SEO Cairns, SEO Bundaberg and SEO Ipswich! All these keywords and they were ranked in the top 3! I thought to myself wow they look legit, I wonder how they got such amazing results so fast. After auditing their website I found that they had created a ton of fake blogs with backlinks to their pages (This tricks Google into thinking the website is more popular than it really is). Not many months later the Google Penguin algorithm found these spam sites and gave the Search Engine Optimisation company a penalty, they have since shut down their site and I assume moved on to another website. Similar to those scam businesses which operate under different trading names. While this can happen in regular industries, it doesn’t happen anywhere near as much as in the SEO industry. So performing a search one day to the next can be wildly different. The problem with these companies is that you the unsuspecting customers can’t see that they are using unethical techniques that could destroy your website rankings permanently. So my advice would be not to focus so much on where the SEO Company ranks. But what results they have achieved for their clients. After all, your rankings are far more important than mine.

There are a range of options available to you to measure your SEO success. Common metrics we use to measure the success include: the number of website visitors (measured through Google Analytics), the number of phone calls (measured with a dedicated line) and email enquiries (measured through contact form logs), increase in rankings on Google (measured with rank checking software). These metrics are often included in an end of month SEO report.