Australian SEO Consultants v’s Overseas Consultants

SEO Works, (an SEO agency in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney) posted a blog recently titled “What Makes SEO in Australia unique?”

Their blog post offers five reasons why SEO in Australia is not a one-size-fits-all. Their reasons are:

1. Keyword Selection – Australian slang, colloquialisms, idioms and more
2. Copywriting – Australian culture
3. Link Building – Understanding which Link Directories are prominent and meaningful in Australia
4. Domain Strategy - Overseas SEO agencies may not be aware of the importance of using a .com.au domain name.
5. Hosting – Overseas SEO agencies may not offer hosting in Australia.

You can read their full blog post about the benefits of using an Australian SEO consultant here.

However, the biggest problem of using overseas SEO agencies has been left of this list:

1. Too much reliance upon the keyword data and little understanding of Australian geography.

Around 50% of Australian Internet searches include a location in the search term. However, as many towns in Australia have a small population so too does the search volume for these geographic specific keywords. As a result, an overseas SEO consultant may dismiss some relevant keywords as the search volume is too low, even though the keyword is still very relevant and meaningful to the business.

For example:

The search volume (exact) match for the keyword ‘SEO Caloundra’ is approx 12 searches per month, whilst the keyword ‘SEO Brisbane’ is approx 2,400 searches per month.

Now an Australian SEO (particularly an SEO consultant in Brisbane or the Sunshine Coast) would know that even though Caloundra is only an hour drive from Brisbane, a Caloundra address is certainly not a Brisbane address. If somebody is looking for an SEO consultant in Caloundra (which we can safely assume that they are – with the search term ‘SEO Caloundra‘) then this keyword would have a higher conversion rate as it is more relevant to what the searcher is looking for.

The catch here is that if you were optimising a website based in Caloundra, but targeting the keyword ‘seo Brisbane’, you would probably find that the rankings for ‘SEO Caloundra’ would also increase due to the general optimisation efforts. However, (and this is where I really see overseas SEO agencies doing poorly) is that it looks ridiculous to stuff the page titles and headings with Brisbane keywords when the business is not based in Brisbane! On-page optimisation should be helpful for both search engines and people!

Further to this, as Google Local Business listings now occupy most of Google’s first page results it would be a long and expensive process to have Google believe that the SEO agency in Caloundra is more relevant than all of the other SEO agencies with physical addresses in Brisbane.

In summary, if you’re local business in Australia, and you are using an overseas SEO provider instead of a local SEO Consultant, then sometimes you just have to follow your instincts. Keyword search volume is important but it does not always trump the meaning of a word.

SEO Sunshine Coast

Search Engine Optimisation Service Sunshine Coast

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimisation”. In simple terms, the practice of SEO is to make ‘on-page’ & ‘off page’ changes to your website so that the website appears higher in Google Rankings for relevant search terms and keywords.

Generally speaking, SEO services include improving the websites navigation, content, and link popularity of your website.

Four or so years ago there were only a handful of SEO agencies on the Sunshine Coast, these days there are numerous SEO agencies. Some agencies specialise in SEO whilst other companies offer SEO as a ‘tag-on’ service to their main service, which is usually web design/development.

A tip on how to decipher an experienced SEO agency from a ‘lets tag it on agency’ is to ask them

“What is the primary way of assessing a websites SEO strength”.

If they answer – “Google’s Page Rank Tool!”

Then it is highly likely that you are speaking with an SEO novice & you may want to continue shopping around.

The good new is that many local keywords (i.e. a local keyword is your keyword + your targeted location; such as seo sunshine coast) have lowish competition so a novice SEO maybe all that you need.

Drop in Yahoo Site Explorer Link Stats

Over the last week there has been a significant drop in the number of links being reported in the Yahoo Site Explorer Tool.

Many SEO’s have been wondering how the Yahoo Site Explorer tool would function once Bing begins to power Yahoo search results.

For those of you that were relying on the Site Explorer tool to gain insight into your link count – well, you will have to keep holding your breath for now.

An official statement on the Yahoo notice board says:

We are working with the Microsoft team to ensure that webmasters can continue to use Yahoo! Site Explorer to view inlinks (a.k.a backlinks) to a given webpage or a website and to further be able to export them as CSV if desired.

Please note that this functionality will be available only through the Site Explorer UI and not through the Webservices API .

The good news is that the official statement says that they are working to resume the service in some capacity… however, I think that we can kiss goodbye to the Yahoo links tool as we once new it.

The extra good news is that it really is not too much of a big deal!! If you think SEO is all about the length of your link list then take this as an opportunity to consider new ways to approach your search engine optimisation.

Google Instant

Wow… Google has always constantly amazed me with their ability to consistently raise the bar and constantly improve. The latest update about Google Instant is another mind blowing concept that will again, revolutionise search.

With Google Instant the results displayed on the Google search will be displayed as you type. The Google blog says that they realised that we were able to read information faster than we type so this new change enables us to start reading & digesting information before we finish typing.

This is fantastic news for somebody like myself who uses Google 40 hours+ per week. Google search is a huge part of my creative process when brainstorming/preparing creative marketing strategies for my clients – and now my search results will be displayed as fast as my little mind ticks.

It will be interesting to see how Google Instant affects the PPC Impression count. The AdWords blog says that an impression will only be counted after the user pauses typing for 3 seconds or clicks a result.

As with most Google changes us southern hemisphere Googlers have to wait until after the changes have rolled out in US and Europe. The guys at Lifehacker have made some suggestions for how people in Australia might be able to get as sneak peak at Instant. I tested there suggestions and was not able to view ‘Instant’ but there blog makes no promise that it will work 100% of the time.