What can you expect when you shop around for "SEO" in Melbourne? That depends on your luck.
Yes, oils ain't oils in the Melbourne SEO industry. For that matter, this is also the case in Sydney, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Brisbane or Cape Town. Does your SEO consultant fit any of these descriptions?
- The Rockstar. This company is headed by a personality who manages to speak at every online marketing event on every continent. You have to wonder when they last worked on an SEO campaign personally.
- The Jack of All Trades. This can be a global ad agency that has lucrative contracts with large companies. They also offer SEO services. This could be a small one-person operation where the web designer knows to use "meta tags" and there's your SEO done. This person does web hosting, domain names, development, design, PPC, and at a pinch, could probably build an extension to your house.
- The Chinese Takeaway. At this place you choose between 3 keywords, 10 keywords, 20 keywords, or the Platinum Elite package of 500 keywords, which costs just $100 more than the previous option.
- The Agency. They're called an agency because they are agents for the real work that is done elsewhere, probably offshore.
- The Historians. It is still 1998 here. They still offer to fix your meta tags.
- The Quiet Achiever. This can be a one-person shop or a small team. They know their SEO stuff and deliver results.
Please take the trouble to find out who you are dealing with.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO involves the alignment of your web pages with the unpublished rules devised by major search engines. If you left this to chance, your pages might never be found by someone who types in a search term. SEO involves working on your pages, possibly the web server and, increasingly, on external factors such as incoming links. SEO is really "website optimisation". Your website needs to rank for generic phrases used by searchers; merely ranking for your company name means little.
Online Reputation Management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)
These are strategies aimed at enhancing, preserving, and repairing your brand's (or personal) reputation. This involves staying aware of what is being said about you or a namesake who could be mistaken for you. It involves a lot more, such as engaging with influencers early in a campaign, working with vested interests, such as shareholders, and so on.
Pay-per-click (PPC)
PPC advertising refers to the text ads or "sponsored" entries you have seen in search engines such as MSN and Google. As the name implies, you pay only if the viewer clicks on your ad. If your budget is limited, the secret is knowing how low you should bid without losing sales or visitors and which PPC engines give you the best value for money.
Do You Need SEO or PPC?
This performance checklist will help you to determine if you need search marketing help.
- Has your traffic from organic search dropped?
- Is your site hard to find in search engines for a generic phrase?
- Has your ranking been lowered by a major search engine?
- Are you unhappy with your pay-per-click ad campaigns?
- Do you want to make more money from your online campaigns?
Ideally, you need both. PPC brings immediate traffic, but costs money per click. This cost can be lowered by changing the landing page to match the keyword, making the ad copy more click-worthy and making other improvements on the website.
SEO Outsourcing
If you are an agency and need to outsource some of your work offshore, we can connect you with the right people.
Free Assessment
Your next step should be to complete the Enquiry Form for an obligation-free assessment. Nobody will hound you after giving this assessment.
