SEO in Newcastle, NSW

SEO is making your website the thing Google decides to show for the words your customers type. It comes down to what is on your pages, how easily Google can read them, and how many other websites point at you.

A Google results page has separate sections and they are won in separate ways. The advertisements at the top are bought. The map is decided by your Google listing. The ordinary results underneath are decided by your website, and they are the ones you earn rather than buy.

What decides those positions

• What is on the page. Whether a page exists for the thing somebody searched for, written in the words they used rather than the words the industry uses.
• Whether Google can read it. How fast the page loads, whether it works on a phone, and whether the site is laid out so a crawler can find everything.
• Who points at you. Links from other websites. Google treats them as other people vouching for you, which is why a handful of real ones outweigh a pile of bought ones.

Google publishes its own version of this in its search essentials, and it is worth reading once because it is shorter and plainer than most of what is written about it.

The map only shows three businesses, and it only shows them to people close by. The ordinary results are where everything else lands: the longer searches, the comparison searches, and the people who are further away.

The map is a short list. Three businesses, chosen partly on how close they are to whoever is holding the phone. It is worth being in, and it covers a slice of what people search for.

Underneath it sit the searches that are longer and more specific, and they are usually the ones where somebody has already decided to spend money. A person typing four or five words has a particular job in mind.

Where the ordinary results do the work

• The longer searches. Somebody naming a specific job, a specific product or a specific problem. There is a page for that or there is not.
• The comparison searches. How much something costs, what is involved, which option suits them. These arrive before anybody calls anyone.
• The searches from further away. Distance decides the map. It does not decide the ordinary results the same way, so this is how a Newcastle business reaches Maitland and Lake Macquarie.

Google matches a search to a page, not to a business. A site with one services page covering nine services is asking one page to win nine different searches, which is the most common reason a good business is invisible.

Open most small business websites and you find a home page, an about page, a contact page and one services page with a list on it. That site can rank for the business name and very little else.

The fix is a page for each thing you sell, named the way customers name it. That is more writing than most businesses get around to, which is why the ones that do it end up sitting at the top.

What a page has to carry

• The words people actually type. Blocked drain, not drainage services. Look at what the businesses already ranking use and use the same plain words.
• Enough detail to be useful. What the job involves, what changes the price, and what somebody should know before they call.
• The city, said naturally. In the heading and the opening lines, because you are competing for a Newcastle search rather than a national one.
• One clear next step. A phone number and a form. A page that ranks and does not ask for anything is a leaflet.

They still decide the competitive searches. For most Newcastle businesses a small number of genuine local links is enough, and buying them is the fastest way to spend money on a problem you then have to undo.

A link from another website is Google's oldest signal and it has never stopped counting. What has changed is that where the link comes from matters far more than how many there are.

For a local business the useful ones are close to home. A club you sponsor, an industry association, a supplier who lists their installers, a local news story. They are slow to collect and they are difficult for a competitor to copy, which is the whole point of them.

Bought links are the other route and Google is direct about it in its spam policies: paying for links that pass ranking is against the rules, and sites get treated accordingly. The damage also outlasts the agency that sold them.

Find the words customers use, build a page for each one, fix the technical problems stopping Google reading them, earn a few real links, then keep adding pages for the questions people ask before they buy.

1. Find the words your customers use

Not the words your industry uses. Look at what people type, and look at what the businesses already ranking have written. This is a couple of hours and it decides everything you build afterwards.

2. Build a page for each thing you sell

One page, one job, named the way a customer names it. This is the single largest piece of the work and there is no way around it.

3. Fix what is stopping Google reading the site

Speed on a phone, pages that return errors, two versions of the same page, and anything hidden behind a script. These are cheap to fix once somebody has actually looked for them.

4. Earn a few links you would be happy to name

Sponsorships, associations, suppliers, local press. A short list of real ones rather than a long list of bought ones.

5. Answer the questions that come before the sale

How much does it cost, how long does it take, what goes wrong. Those searches happen before anybody rings a business, and a page that answers one is how you get found by somebody who has not heard of you.

6. Then keep going

Positions move slowly and then hold. The businesses at the top of Newcastle searches are usually the ones that kept publishing after the first six months.

The technical fixes show up quickly. Pages and links are the slow part, and the position they earn is the part that holds once it arrives.

The order it happens in

• The words are settled and the technical faults are cleared. Nothing visible moves yet. This is the part that decides what everything after it is aimed at.
• The pages go up. One per thing you sell. The first movements tend to be on the longer, more specific searches rather than the obvious ones.
• The links and the extra pages build. Positions on the competitive searches follow, and they hold rather than spike.

SEO does not switch off the day you stop paying, which is the real difference between it and advertising. It fades slowly instead, as competitors keep publishing and you do not.

Ask which searches they are aiming at, what gets built in the first month, who owns the pages at the end, and what they will show you each month. The answers separate the people who build things from the people who report on them.

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• Which searches are you aiming at? A named list with the rough demand beside each one. Improve your visibility is not a target.
• What gets built in the first month? Pages. If the first month is auditing and reporting, the second month is where the work starts.
• Who owns the pages if I leave? You do, on your own site, in your own hosting. Ours are the client's from the day they are written.
• What will you show me each month? Positions on the named searches, and where the enquiries came from. A list of completed tasks is not a result.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

Plenty of Newcastle businesses write their own pages and do well out of it. The part worth paying for is knowing which pages to write and in what order.