I have two 6-month campaign SEO packages which are suitable for single-location local businesses – a $1200/month and a $2500/month. In addition I have ongoing monthly management from $1000/month, but generally you will need to do the 6 month starter package to set the foundation correctly before you can move into “maintenance mode.” Even if you have worked with another agency we will likely need to do the initial 6 months as there are often problems to fix (taking over from another agency is often more work than starting from scratch!)

The reality is that most local businesses are paying for SEO that is not being done by a true SEO specialist. Local SEO specialists are few and far between. Most agency staff are generalists covering multiple digital channels, or they are relative junior SEO specialists who haven’t “seen it all” yet. SEO is a very “all or nothing” field – either you have the know-how to get wins or you don’t, there is not much in between, so paying someone who doesn’t have the specialised expertise to get results will usually result in a negative ROI (meaning you spend the money, and you don’t even get enough of a result to pay yourself back the investment, let alone make money on it).

Organic SEO is part of what I call the “inbound baseline” of your business. The inbound baseline is what you have coming in when all the paid ads are turned off. It’s you’re brand, your referrals, and your organic traffic streams. The bigger your baseline, the more stable your business is and the more it’s worth in the long run. So if you want to max the asset value of your business, you need strong organic traffic.

If you’re already with a digital marketing agency for your SEO and they are managing other channels for you, like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you can either switch everything over to me or I can handle your SEO while your agency continues to run your other channels. The only condition is that I need to audit any paid ad channels, even if I’m not running them myself, because they influence SEO and they will also impact your cashflow and as a result impact your ability to invest in SEO long term.

My specialisation is in being able to clearly understand your business goals, figure out which keywords best serve those goals, and then using local SEO to give you maximum visibility on those strategically important keywords. There are various ways to get multiple spots on the same search results – the Maps, the paid ads, multiple pages from your main website, or using standalone lead gen domain names built around important keywords.

My services are split into two package types – a 6 month starter package and ongoing monthly maintenance and growth packages. Building search engine rankings is not usually a one-and-done affair, there is some long term maintenance required because competitors will always be trying to climb over you. Backlinks drop off over time, the algorithm gets adjusted, and tweaks need to be made to maintain positions. But usually there is a lot of growth to be had from the first 6 months, and following from that we either switch to maintaining the wins or looking for further aggressive growth opportunities.

Every campaign starts with a full SEO audit which goes into developing your business’s SEO plan. I do some fundamental analysis before recommending a local SEO package, but I do not sell audits as a standalone service. The “free SEO audits” most agencies offer are typically automatically generated from a software and not very useful, as real strategy insights require human analysis and thinking.

Yes, local SEO is about more than just your website SEO – many potential customers in your local area will find you without ever visiting your website. A well optimised Google Business Profile is key for getting traffic from the Google Maps Pack.

When it comes to local SEO services in Melbourne there are a few key components. Keyword research is the bedrock – and there is more to this than just generating a keyword list out of a software. It requires some real analysis and industry understanding to assess where your business is starting from, relative to search competitors, and target your resources to keywords you have the best chance of winning that will make the biggest impact on your business goals.

From there, local SEO in Melbourne is about solid on-page optimisation, good Google Business Profile optimisation, building local citations and getting high quality, targeted backlinks. Where most local SEO companies fall down is on that last step. If you talk to an SEO agency in Melbourne who tells you backlinks don’t matter – run. They absolutely do matter, especially for ranking on high volume keywords, and they are the hardest part of the process to do well.

I’m not saying all agencies are bad, or that you shouldn’t use one. I’m simply saying that I’ve been in the SEO industry for 15 years and over that entire time frame there has been a consistently recurring story I hear from clients. This is why when I see many of the self-proclaimed “SEO experts in Melbourne” I treat it with healthy skepticism. There are good people out there doing good work, both in agencies and as independent consultants and freelancers. But unfortunately deceptive behaviour is still way too common in the industry.