A report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
By Reece Rainerspareday, Newcastle NSWLast updated13 September 2026Read time7 minutes
what clients say
What clients say
★★★★★
Since it went live my phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
Jye Hughesgoogle review★★★★★
He was able to take our rough ideas, from concept through to reality. The site has provided an influx of new members, helping to keep our club viable.
Richard Genetgoogle review★★★★★
Reece has been generous, reliable and knowledgeable in creating an online presence for our sporting club. He is good to work with and has good technical abilities.
A monthly SEO fee should buy things that still exist at the end of the month: pages, a corrected listing, mentions on other websites, and a number that can be compared.
This page sets out what the first month holds, what every month after holds, and how an owner can tell the difference without learning the trade.
01
What the first month holds
Measurement, the Google listing, and the list of searches everything else will be built around. Very little of it shows up as a new page, and that is correct.
Month one of an SEO retainer is the month most owners are disappointed by, and the one that decides whether the rest works. Skipping it is how a year of pages ends up aimed at phrases nobody types.
What should exist at the end of month one
A written record of where the business stands.
Positions on named searches, taken from several points across Newcastle rather than from one address, so month six can be compared to something real.
A corrected Google listing.
Categories, services, hours, service area and photographs, which is the fastest moving part of local search and costs nothing but attention.
A named list of searches.
What customers actually type, beside what the businesses already ranking have written, agreed before any page is commissioned.
A plan with an order to it.
Which pages get written first, and why those rather than the others.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
02
What every month after looks like
Pages written, the listing kept current, mentions earned on other local websites, and a report naming positions and enquiries. Most of the fee sits in the first one.
A retainer is easiest to judge on a single question: what exists this month that did not exist last month. Four things should answer it.
The four things a month should produce
Pages that did not exist before.
One page for each service or question, written properly. This is the largest piece of the work and the part that keeps earning after a retainer stops.
A listing that has been touched.
Posts, photographs, questions answered and reviews replied to, which is what keeps a listing looking like an open business.
Mentions from real places.
Chambers, suppliers, clubs and local press. Slow, difficult to copy, and the part most retainers quietly skip.
A report that names positions.
Where the business sits on the searches agreed in month one, and how many enquiries arrived, rather than a list of tasks performed.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
03
Why the pages are most of the money
A page is the only part that keeps working after the invoices stop, and everything else on a retainer is maintenance of something that already exists.
This is the difference between buying an asset and renting attention, and it is the single most useful thing for an owner to understand about the fee.
What a page has to do to earn its place
It answers one question completely.
A page that half-answers three questions ranks for none of them and helps nobody who lands on it.
It is written for a buyer, not for a search engine.
The page has to make sense read aloud to a customer, because that is the test a reader applies in the first ten seconds.
It does not repeat an existing page.
Two pages competing for the same words split the result and read as filler, which is measurable rather than a matter of taste.
It is linked to from somewhere that already ranks.
A page nothing links to is invisible, whatever is written on it.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
04
How to tell whether it is happening
Four checks, none of which needs technical knowledge: ask what was published, look at the listing, read the report for positions, and count enquiries.
An owner does not have to audit the work. Four questions asked once a month will show whether there is work to audit.
The four monthly checks
Ask which pages went live this month.
You should be able to open them. If the answer is a list of activities rather than addresses, ask again.
Open the Google listing yourself.
Recent posts, recent photographs, replies under the reviews. All visible to anybody in under a minute.
Read the report for positions.
On the named searches from month one. A report full of impressions and visits and no positions is avoiding the question.
Count the enquiries.
Calls and forms, month on month. This is the only number that pays wages, and it is the one to argue about.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
05
Why some months look quiet
Because writing is slow, links arrive when other people publish them, and positions move in steps rather than smoothly. A quiet month is normal; three is not.
Knowing which quiet months are ordinary and which are a warning saves both an unnecessary argument and a wasted year.
What is normal, and what is not
Movement in steps is normal.
A page can sit still for weeks and then move several positions at once, which is how Google re-evaluates rather than a sign of anything.
Waiting on other people is normal.
A chamber or a local paper publishes when it publishes, and chasing it faster usually costs the mention.
Three months with nothing published is not normal.
If no new page exists across a quarter, the largest part of the fee has not been delivered.
A report that changes shape each month is not normal.
When the numbers shown keep changing, it is usually because the agreed ones stopped being flattering.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
06
What is specific to Newcastle
The map is read from many points across the city, the competition is thinner than a capital, and a business's own suburb still carries weight it cannot argue with.
A retainer written for a capital city misreads all three of those, which changes both what gets built and what a fair result looks like.
Three differences that change the work
One position is not one number here.
spareday measures a 7 by 7 grid across Newcastle, because a business can hold the top three in Wickham and be invisible in Charlestown.
The field is thinner than most owners assume.
Across 2,165 Newcastle trade listings measured in September 2026, 23 per cent had no website at all.
Nobody currently owns the city.
The same study searched eight trades from 49 points and found no business in the top three right across Newcastle.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
07
Four questions worth asking every quarter
What was published, what moved, what is next, and what would you stop doing if the fee were smaller. The last one is the most useful of the four.
These are quarterly rather than monthly because they are about direction, and direction changes slowly.
The four questions
Ask what was published in the last three months.
A list of addresses you can open, not a summary of activity.
Ask what moved, and on which searches.
Named searches from the agreed list, with the positions before and after.
Ask what is planned for the next three months.
If the answer is the same as the last three months, the plan has stopped being a plan.
Ask what they would cut first.
The answer tells you what they believe is working, which is more revealing than any report.
Get my free reportA report on your own business, showing where it ranks across Newcastle today and what the businesses above you are doing.
Writes pages, keeps the Google listing current, earns mentions on other local websites, and reports positions and enquiries against the searches agreed at the start.
How do I know the work is actually being done?
Ask which pages went live and open them, look at the listing yourself, read the report for positions, and count calls and form enquiries.
Why is the first month so quiet?
It holds the measurement, the listing and the list of searches. Skipping it is how a year of pages ends up aimed at phrases nobody types.
Is a month with no new page a problem?
One is normal. Three in a row means the largest part of the fee has not been delivered, and it is worth asking why before renewing.
Do the pages stay mine?
They should. Pages written for a business belong to that business, along with the domain, the listing and the accounts.
What does it cost?
One monthly fee covering everything, month to month, no lock-in. The number depends on the business and gets given on the call.
What else we do
See what a month of work would actually be starting from
By Reece Rainer
spareday, Newcastle NSW
Last updated
13 September 2026
Read time
7 minutes
