SEO That Works

Your SEO strategy is a function of three important items.

The first item is understanding where you are now versus where you want to be, and by when.

The second is the level of competition in your particular space, and the speed at which your competitors are moving.

And the third is your available resources for SEO.

By examining these three items, Reef will be in a position to show you the best paths forward for your unique situation.

Together, we will define and implement an SEO strategy that gives you the right combination of short-term wins and long-term competitive advantage.

SEO helps with the acquisition of new customers, the development of competitive advantage by creating a barrier of entry that’s hard to copy, and by supporting your other channels.

Acquisition of new customers is all about reaching people in your target audience as they search for keywords related to your products, services and topic. When your audience searches the web to learn about, research and compare your marketplace, SEO enables you to be found again, and again, and again, during their buying cycle.

With this acquisition comes competitive advantage. If a website ranks for hundreds or thousands of important keywords, it has a major advantage over a website that doesn’t. This advantage has business value because it enables the website that ranks well to acquire customers in higher volume and at a lower cost than its competitors. You may like to think about SEO as a ‘builder’ channel because it accumulates in value over time, as more and more keywords provide incoming visitors and conversions.

SEO also supports your other marketing channels. For example, you can use SEO to do things like grow your email subscribers list or retargeting audiences, at which point these other channels can complete the conversion.

The organisations and clients who are most successful with SEO are those that:

1. Are able to make changes to their website
2. Are able to make changes to their content
3. Have adequate time to manage an agency relationship

SEO is a high-effort channel. It requires collaboration from both client and agency to be effective. It’s difficult for an agency to do best practice SEO without regular input from a client.

If, as a potential client, you worry about your ability to make changes to your site or content, and you have limited time for collaborating with an agency, SEO is probably not right for you at the moment. Instead, there are other channels that are also effective and that don’t require the same commitments, like Google Ads, for example.

There are a few factors to keep mind when determining a budget for SEO.

The first factor is understanding what work is required to get you from where you are now to where you want to be, and the speed at which your competitors are moving.

The second factor is what you can afford to invest in SEO while you wait for results to arrive.

And the third factor is your expected return on investment once those results come in, versus what you could get with other channels.

Generally speaking, a small engagement with Reef for SEO would be at the $3,500 to $5,000 per month mark. Medium would be between $5,000 and $10,000 and large would be $10,000 and up.

We’ve written about this quite extensively in the blog post SEO Services Explained, but here’s the summary:

If you want to be in both parts of the search result – the Paid and Organic areas – use Google Ads and SEO. This will maximise your chances of getting the visitor’s attention and click, which is ideal for businesses who are looking for rapid growth.

Or, if you’re already ranking for some keywords with SEO, consider using Google Ads to cover keywords you’re not yet visible for, as well as to protect your brand from competitors bidding on your brand name. This will widen your total visibility and reach.

Generally speaking, Google Ads is probably right for you if…

• You have never done search marketing before and want to test the channel for feasibility
• You want fast results that start in days, not months
• You want something you can switch on and off, or up and down, as required
• You don’t want to make big changes to your website

SEO is probably right for you if:

• You want unlimited keyword targeting. Google Ads use a cost-per-click model with an associated daily budget for clicks. If that budget for clicks exhausts, ads stop showing until the budget refreshes the next day. Advertisers must therefore make careful decisions about the keywords they want to target and which ones they are willing to sacrifice by not targeting. SEO allows you to target all the keywords you want, as much as you want. The potential with SEO is unlimited.
• You want 100% impression share. Advertisers with a limited budget often have to settle for only showing ads part of the time to avoid their budget exhausting quickly, whether between certain hours of the day or for 1 in every 3, 5, 10 (etc.) searches. Organic search results, which are influenced by SEO, show all the time. For every click ad click on Google, there are 20 clicks to an organic result.
• Your audience uses ad blockers. Google Ads get blocked by ad blockers. Ad blockers only allow organic results to show. As ad blockers rise in popularity, organic click-through-rates increase. 1 in 4 Australians use ad blockers (IAB)
• You want an implied endorsement effect. Searchers understand the difference between an ad and the organic results. Because the organic results are selected by Google, they carry an implied endorsement effect of being the best result for the search. There is no user scepticism that “this is just an ad”.
• You want a competitive barrier of entry that is difficult to duplicate. Any of your competitors can create a Google Ads account and start showing ads. Few competitors can do what it takes to succeed with SEO which builds in value over time as the site ranks for more and more keywords.

Google has a favourable view of SEO agencies that adhere to its Webmaster Guidelines. Google also provides official guidance about working with SEO agencies here.

For agencies that violate Webmaster Guidelines by exploiting algorithmic loopholes, the opposite is true. The tactics of these unscrupulous agencies are continuously targeted by Google’s Search Quality team, who maintain the integrity of search results.

Yes, if the agency uses tactics that violate Google’s Quality Guidelines.

However, there is a method of performing SEO that is completely risk-free because it aligns with Google’s goals of providing excellent resources to searchers, which is why it’s rewarded. It is to do this:

1. Make a website that is technically excellent and that search engines can understand
2. Fill that website with useful, unique content that genuinely benefits visitors and reflects what they search for
3. Earn incoming links from other reputable websites who want to share the value you bring with their audience

This is the formula for doing SEO that leads to lasting results and is the basis of our SEO services here at Reef. It is the only approach that the world’s leading websites use and is the most difficult to copy because it requires hard work, smart thinking and discipline.

Yes. Search engines adapt their algorithms for each region based on the needs and behaviours of the people in that particular area. Search engines also roll out updates to regions at different times, with major markets like the USA and UK usually getting new updates first, and can also apply specific interventions industry by industry.

That said, the core fundamentals of how the search engine works and what it strives to accomplish, apply to all regions.

As a full-service SEO agency, we help you with every aspect of your SEO.

We view ourselves as being your partner in running this important marketing function within your organisation.

As part of this, our SEO activities include but are not limited to:

• SEO Strategy, to determine what to do, why, and how best to measure it
• SEO Audits, to identify and resolve technical issues
• Content Strategy, to determine what content is required for search engines and users, which keywords it will target, how it will serve users and why it will be worthy of ranking well
• Content Production, to help write and publish content on behalf of or in conjunction with you and your team
• Link Building, to identify and capture beneficial incoming links
• SEO Website Redesign and Domain Migration advice, for those specialty situations where hundreds to thousands of pages can change at once
• SEO Reporting, using a combination of live dashboards and presentations

In terms of process, our SEO engagements tend to start with Strategic and Technical work, then transition to Content and Link Building.

Yes.

The first is the Google Search Quality Evaluator guidelines. Google employs human raters to evaluate search results and provide feedback about their quality. That feedback is then passed onto the engineers who maintain and update the algorithm. Therefore, the content of this document shows exactly what the Google algorithms want to reward, which shows you how to build an SEO strategy that aligns with Google. By doing so, every algorithm update in the future will benefit you.

The second is Google’s Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide, which is a list of best practices in SEO.

Third is the Art of SEO book. This is an SEO masterpiece that shows you the ideal mindset, strategy and tactics for winning with SEO.