SEO Melbourne

Howdy, my name is Stephen Forde and I'm an SEO in Melbourne. To the novice, you maybe wondering why I have immediately included SEO Melbourne in my header and mentioned it twice in the opening paragraphs. Well, this is what SEO is all about, seems simple right? To an extent, yes and on the other hand, absolutely not. But more about that a bit later

SEO Services in Melbourne

Actually, I not only offer SEO services in Melbourne but across Australia and the United States. If you'd like to know more about my history in then jump over to my experience page and if that doesn't exist at the time of reading this, well you're best to schedule a call with me.

SEO services include:

Why SEO Marketing?

When it is done right, SEO Marketing or Search Marketing works. It provides the best return on investment but it doesn't happen overnight and for that reason, hiring an SEO marketing consultant is not for everyone.

SEO should be part of your overall marketing strategy and it's success has many variables. But some factors I take into account when i am working to improve a clients business visibility (and especially early on) include:

  1. Age of domain and website
  2. Does the website fully describe all products and services
  3. Does the website have natural backlinks
  4. Is it a local SEO strategy or national SEO strategy
  5. Is the website fast
  6. Has conversion rate optimisation been considered
  7. Does the website content speak to the intended audience
  8. Are there other strategies that will provide an ROI

That's cool, tell me more:

When you need something that you haven't used before, where do you go ? Normally, it's a search engine and if you are like 80% of the rest of Melbourne then you are using Google to answer your search queries, there are of course other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and Baidu. I learned early on in my career that in business, you go to where your clients are and if you have found your way to my website, then I guess you already know that your customers are searching for your on Google.

What SEO Strategies do I use?

My approach to SEO and generating organic traffic to your website is per Google's webmaster terms and conditions. Their T&C are really long, but if you want read them and you probably should, you can check them out, click here.

While It would make my life a lot easier if there was just 1 SEO strategy that worked every time, that is just not the case. If you have decided that an SEO campaign with me to improve your rankings and organic traffic, paid my set up invoice I will start with an analysis of your site. To be clear, I can look at the majority of websites and find leaks in their websites immediately. I do also have my own SEO team and one of the first things I train them in is identifying gaps and strategies that can be implemented.


90 Day Ranking Guarantee SEO Agencies?

This is a RED FLAG. Like any non regulated industry there are cowboys and unfortunately, when it comes to SEO agencies and SEO companies, this is a sales technique to get the suckers through the door.

They often call themselves SEO Experts but their approach to SEO is all fluff with no meaning.

This is what they do:

Salesperson: "Our SEO team of experts promise you higher rankings in only 90 days [insert other wild claims]"

Business owner "WOW that's awesome, so I can twiddle my thumbs for 90 days until my SEO campaign takes off then I will be a millionaire?"

Salesperson: "Absolutely, give me your credit card now and we will get started"

SEO Account Manager: "I see you have taken our SEO guarantee, congratulations, these are the terms we will be ranking you for [insert meaningless non-commercial term].

From my experience in working with clients that have been unhappy with other "SEO experts" this is exactly what happens. SEO companies will choose a term or phrase that has no volume. Volume is the amount of times a specific term or phrase is searched per month in search engines. They achieve the rankings and you're locked into a contract that is near impossible to get out of. This is a SEO business strategy that is based on churn and burn. This isn't a marketing strategy that helps anyone except line the pockets of greedy SEOs. I prefer to work with my clients for the long term.

IT'S ALL BS!

Remember that. Surely you have had someone more experienced than you tell you that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Whenever I see SEO companies doing this, I think of how desperate they must be and what tricks they will con their clients into and promises of higher rankings in under a month.

Walk away or don't. That's on you. But now you know how I feel about the companies that offer you the world. They're the same ones that will leave you holding the baby when it all goes to shit.

But I am sure they wouldn't lie to me

If you're still considering one of those guys, then just watch the below direct from the horses mouth.[note to Maile Ohye - Just to be clear, I am not calling you, Maile Ohye from Google a horse 🤩]

Is there a SEO Company Melbourne that you recommend?

Yes, it's my agency. Media Fortress is a Melbourne SEO company. We started our own only journey over 10 years ago and are still going strong. I hate the term digital marketing agency or SEO company Melbourne, but I guess that is what we are to some extent. Neither really describe the extent of our skills or experience. But it is what it is and until Skynet becomes fully self aware, I am just going to go with the flow. Hopefully you got that reference. If not, I am not sure we should work together. :S

Is SEO my only marketing strategy?

Where budget permits, I do also recommend the use of Google Ads (previously Adwords), Facebook Ads. One of my Account Managers will generally work on these areas with you and I will oversee the campaigns to ensure it is set up correctly and performing.

If you are interested in how our Google Ad strategy is different, I can email a copy of our strategy to you.

One thing, I think you do get a lot of benefit from is remarketing. I am sure many of you, have read that it can take up to 10 contact points to convert a customer. At a John Logar training session that I attended while at an SEO conference , John said that it can take up to 30 contact points to your target audience in 2020 and beyond to get a sale (I'm paraphrasing). This being due to the information overload. That isn't always true but it certainly is in some industries.

While there is no direct correlation to advertising on Google or Facebook and improving search engines rankings, general brand awareness and gaining links by promoting content for cents in the dollar does. That's a strategy I don't want to go into too much for competitors sake, but by golly gosh does it work!

This is something we can discuss more of during our SEO strategy.

What does SEO cost?

How long is a piece of string? The cost of SEO is dependant on many factors which can include on how you intend to use my SEO Services. If we have had a chat and you know a little about me, you know I can pivot your campaign towards your needs as necessary. That means, if you need forms added to your website, changes to code, changes to website design etc, then YES I can do. But those services aren't free. My staff include, SEOs, Outreach specialists, Website developers whom all have families of their own and they need to eat and pay the electricity bill too.

As a general rule of thumb I charge $150 ex-gst for SEO campaigns and I recommend a minimum of 10 hours per month on any website. It is recommended that outside basic changes (things that take don't take unreasonably long) that we keep web design seperate. We will of course make recommendations on conversion rate optimisation so that the target audience is taking action when visiting your business website.

You still didn't tell me about SEO Melbourne

OK OK. SEO Melbourne is an EGO term but it has volume. There's a SEO industry term "rankings are vanity, revenue is sanity". I can't remember who said this originally, but if you read this, then thank you, i use it alot

Above I mentioned, every SEO campaign is different. To be honest at the time of uploading this content (9 January 2020) I am not expecting this content to rank on the first page of Google any time soon. There's a few reasons for that, which include:

  1. There is basically no other content on this website
  2. This page is brand new
  3. I have not actively promoted this page
  4. This website has no meaningful back links
  5. It (currently) has no images, schema mark up or other elements that help a page rank


But with that said, if I do build this blog out, I can expect it to rank in the future. But you will note, that this page has more information, (not necessarily about SEO Melbourne)

Putting that aside, when I am looking to rank a website in Google, either local, national or global, I perform keyword research. SEO Melbourne is fairly competitive and if you take a look at this query, you will see the number 1 position has been taken by a branded domain.

This is an SEO strategy in itself. It can work great for local SEO but is not without it's own risks depending on how Google is feeling. I might cover this in a later blog post. I actually have a fantastic case study on a more recent client whom does target the Melbourne and with our help (and the Google gods) the other websites lost their map rankings completely while his website took the right side bar for that term.

But whatever you do, don't go and register your service dot melbourne.com or .au. It's a very old strategy that generally doesn't work any more and limits your visibility and potentially your CTR (click through rate). I prefer branded domains. This is what any SEO worth their money will tell you as well.

So the term SEO Melbourne allows me to test this site in the real world. It's going to be interesting to see how it goes to say the least.

Interesting SEO fact:

One other thing, Google does not currently care about grammar. At least not in the way you think. SEO Melbourne needs to be strategically placed within the content. Of course, the content should read well and be easily understood by companies and business owners you intend to do business with if you want to increase the amount of leads. No one likes reading poor grammar...except Google that is. Of course, that is really another conversation,

Bonus: I have purposely omitted a term regarding SEO that is common explanation of what SEO means.

Can you send me a quote?

To be completely honest, I do not do SEO quotes. I am an experienced SEO and my time is important and i am not interested in my quote sitting on your desk and going ignored for months

YES, we can have do a proposal either in your office or via a Zoom or Skype meeting. But first do give me a call or email and we can work out if we are right for each other, that sounds a bit romantic, I guess in one sense it is, because if we do end up working together, I will know everything about your business so there will be a lot of prying

The things we will discuss include:


I've probably left something out of this content that is really important, so i will come back and update this page as necessary.

Ready to increase your business, connect with your target audience and push more qualified clients to a quote then click the button below and let's have a chat about how I can improve your business.


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