Typically you need to know where your site is in the competitive context, where you can go (realistically) and how you are going to do that. So normally Local SEO  will start with;

• An audit and Google Analytics analysis.
• Digital competitive analysis.
• Keyword research and strategy.

We address existing pages and missing pages on your website via;

• On-page SEO to make sure Google understands the page.
  Website structure and content
• Adding service pages and service area/location pages. These are normally missing
• Technical SEO such as site speed, security, code and mobile effectiveness .

There are other elements of Local SEO.

• Google Business Profile
• Citations - other cases of your business name, address and phone number showing up
• Local link building
• Reputation management, building and marketing

There may need to be content marketing work done to gain traffic and links. This involves;

• Content writing/production.
• Reworking content for other uses.
• Content promotion and link earning.

To ensure everyone is on the same page, there's regular reporting which requires setting up tracking. And also there's learning and adjusting from what works (and what does not).

SEO for your home services business increases online visibility. This visibility comes from your Google My Business listing and your website.

Here's some information to help you understand why it's important;

• 97% of people go online when they're searching for a local business with 54% searching each month.
• A local search results in someone doing business with a local company within a few days. 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day.
• People search on mobile phones these days. Thus search terms like “plumber near me” have grown over 200% in the last two years.
• Google often creates featured snippets from content on local businesses websites. Those snippets answer over 4 and 10 voice searches.

There's no point in being on page two of Google for a particular search term:

• 90% of people check only the first page results
• 70% of people only check the first five results, and the number one result on Google gets about a third of all the clicks.
• Organic search results get a lot more traffic than the Google Ads results.

Your website needs to appear on the first page to attract more potential customers. Even better if it shows up at the number one position.

And SEO is the process that helps you get there. It's unlikely that your website will get good visibility without SEO work. Home services is too competitive for that in most cities and locations in Australia.

It's difficult to give a definitive answer on this. Most studies show that SEO generates a higher ROI than other marketing such as, Google Ads, newspaper advertising, print, TV or radio advertising or letterbox drops.

There are a couple of ways to look at the return on investment calculation.

When you increase traffic you get more leads. Here’s an example;

If your website already gets 1,000 visitors a month and has a conversion rate of 2.5%, then by doing nothing, it generates 25 leads a month, and you convert 50% of those to jobs, so there are 13 jobs a month.

After doing SEO work, two things will change. Traffic will increase, and conversion rates will also increase (due to better traffic and higher credibility).

So now your website gets double the traffic or 2,000 visits a month and a 4% conversion rate. That’s 80 leads a month and at the same 50% conversion rate 40 jobs.

Sure you can do that but, as soon as you stop paying the leads stop coming too.

The alternative to paying for Google Ads is paying a lead generation site like Hi-pages. It's the same principal.

Google Ads for most home services businesses average north of $6 a click. So buying 1,000 clicks per month will cost at least $6,000 (much more in the big centres). As before, if you are paying less than $6,000 a month, SEO is a lower-cost alternative.

Also, remember that SEO on your plumbing website may need to start at a higher level of work at the start of the project.

Frequently, when the work is done, it can be scaled back or stopped with no significant effect on rankings and traffic, so the ROI is often much higher when you look at a 2-5 year perspective.

This is also a tricky question to answer. It depends on what keywords you're going after and how competitive the market is.

Expect to see an increase in organic traffic to your website in the second quarter of an SEO campaign.

Organic traffic is the key measure here. It's far more important than ranking for a particular keyword. That's because the pages on your website can rank for many different keywords. You can't know and measure them all.

In our experience, you should not start doing SEO work if you do not plan to stick with it for at least 12 months.

In local SEO, we have also found that the rankings and visibility increases tend to stick. Once done, you can often scale back SEO work or even stop completely (that's riskier). Your home services business could continue to get higher organic traffic levels from the SEO work.

Competitors or Google can and do make changes, so nothing is ever permanent.

In reality, no one can guarantee SEO results. This is because the person or agency doing the SEO work does not control everything going on.

• They have no control over what your competitors are doing.
• And they have no control over what Google is doing either.

So if you are coming across people who are guaranteeing SEO results, they are either:

• Taking a risk that they can generate the results.
• Creating a guarantee around weasel words that they get out of when you try to claim on it.
• Just aiming to take your money and not respond when you need to call on the guarantee. You won't be able to enforce it if they are based overseas.

SEO is a straightforward process. When appropriately done almost always succeeds. Your business will enjoy increased organic traffic and thus leads.

There is no lock-in contract.

Before you engage with us, we will outline the long-term nature of SEO work. And we may ask you to pay for the first three months in advance.

From there, your payment is a month by month proposition. You pay on your credit card each month in advance with a 30-day notice period.

This enables us to commit the resources required to your business. And we can put in some solid upfront work to help you get results more quickly. Without the initial payment, the work would need to drag out over the first three months.

Sadly, that's a very fair question. You may have been burnt in the past by SEO companies who promise the earth and give you an atlas. We will provide you with a detailed monthly report as part of our commitment to you and your business. The report outlines;

• The activities we have done for you in the past 30 days.
• What we expect to complete in the next month.
• Variations.

You also get access to a reporting dashboard. This shows you the results of the work. In our opinion, this is more important than looking at the work done. You're only actually interested in the outcomes and results, not activity.

SEO is about increasing your organic traffic, primarily from Google. It's also about increasing the traffic conversion rate to leads that come to your website.

While you can measure local rankings, they don't mean much these days. That's because Google is smart. They personalise and localise each individual’s search results. So one ranking measure does not tell the story. Don’t focus on that - focus on the organic traffic trend to your website and the actual flow of leads. Many keywords that drive traffic to your website are never targeted for SEO

Yes, for sure. Just ask and we will be happy to refer you to some of our clients for feedback.

We don't usually publish clients details on our website because it leads to others contacting clients