Yes, my main area of specialisation is multi-location local SEO, part of which involves ranking multiple Google Business Profile listings for more than one location for a business.

Not necessarily! But it will almost definitely be better than using an SEO agency. Usually you are better off either using an independent consultancy, or keeping your money in the bank.

The SEO industry is dominated by the agency model but this is not a pathway to SEO success for clients in the vast majority of cases. Most agencies use a checklist based approach to SEO which is just not an effective way to get great SEO results most of the time, because a campaign needs to be crafted to fit the client’s industry and starting position relative to the competition. There are also feedback loops in play that require an expert to analyse and decide next steps on an ongoing basis. This is why bespoke SEO strategies work better than cookie cutter approaches.

Yes, all the SEO work I do is white hat, both in terms of techniques and process. I specify this point about process because many SEOs claiming to be white hat SEO consultants are in fact not. Their techniques appear white hat, but for example, it is possible to get penalised using otherwise white hat techniques at very high volume or too fast.

Contrary to popular belief, black hat SEO techniques can work very well. The problem is not that they don’t work. The problem is that they don’t work forever and when they stop working, it can be catastrophic. This is why it doesn’t make sense to use them when you are focusing on building long term business value through organic SEO.

My basic philosophy is based on focusing on the ranking factors that have been a clear part of Google through every algorithm change over 15 years. There is no bulletproof algorithm-change-proof approach, but this method means the lowest possible long term volatility in rankings.

We’ve talked about agencies, but what about doing SEO in-house? There are a few reasons you might use external SEO consulting services as a supplement or a replacement for an in-house team. I’ve been doing SEO for 15 years and I still regularly see SEO issues that I’ve never come across before. That means unless you have very senior people on your team, there are likely to be situations that come up which will require outside expertise. Likewise, while your in-house team may have strong skills for executing tasks (eg content creation), they may not necessarily be able to see the 10,000 foot strategy view that is necessary for a successful SEO campaign. In many cases it will be cheaper to hire an SEO consultant than to pay an in-house team and you will likely get better results, since SEO is much more about knowing what to do than having a thousand hands working at once.

I have a team for admin support, development, accounting and the like. All SEO and Google Ads strategy work is done by me personally and I manage all the accounts. In other words there is a team executing much of the day to day work but I direct it all personally. This is not the case in many agencies where a lot of accounts, especially smaller accounts, may never get a look from a senior technician.

I live in Melbourne, Australia and I’m originally from New Zealand. I have a remote admin and development team based in the Philippines and Europe.

There are various reasons so many SEO companies in Australia & NZ get such bad results. One is that the barrier to entry is so low – anyone can say they are a digital marketing consultant, regardless of having little to no SEO experience. SEO is often an easy upsell for web designers and developers who aren’t necessarily specialists. But the biggest reason is that the majority of SEO agency owners are happy to trade off neglecting existing clients to focus more on accelerating the growth of their own agency. There is always a balance here and doing better work for existing clients means being a bit more patient with adding new clients, and that simply doesn’t fit the values of many agency owners who are effectively in the business to get rich quick.

Yes, if you are in need of some expert SEO consulting around technical issues, I can provide assistance, depending on the details of the project. I can solve many common technical issues, though there are SEO issues that can occur with very large websites that may require referral to another specialist.

In most cases yes. I am not specialised in technical SEO on very large websites (tens of thousands thousands or millions of pages), in which case the project may not be a fit. In this case developing a successful SEO strategy may be better suited to a specialist in large sites and/or programmatic SEO.

There are two big answers here: one is that you probably don’t know how much more you’re missing out on, and when organic traffic is already fairly good that usually means there are also lots of easy opportunities for growth. The other answer is that SEO is not just about growth, it’s about defending what you’ve built for the long term, and that also takes management and work.

Look at it this way. If you pay $500/mo and don’t get to page one, you have a 100% negative ROI. You need to spend enough to make sure you actually get the positive results required to make money, and there are not that many people in the industry who can do that consistently – that’s why the ones who are good tend to be more expensive. The important part is that I always try to assess my fees against probable outcomes – even many good SEOs are so expensive that even if the get good results the return will be negative if the client’s upside is not big enough.

With a big SEO agency your account will most often end up being managed by a junior employee, unless you are a “whale” client. Your point of contact will be an “account executive” or “business development manager” or “customer success manager” who is basically more of a salesperson, not a technical expert who knows how to rank sites. As a result the typical pattern is poor results, followed by not being able to get a straight answer on why results are not better. There is no one driving the bus.

SEO is an extremely difficult and unpredictable game, and it takes a long time to build experience with enough different scenarios to know exactly what should be done for any given client situation. There are so many variables involved, it can’t simply be done by a junior staff member with a checklist. This is why it’s essentially a binary: you can use someone very good and experienced and get a positive result, or you can use someone else and lose money.