SEO Gold Coast

There is no fixed timeline for SEO results – every scenario is different. In general, an effective SEO strategy with good execution will lead to revenue in around three to six months.

If search competition is low or you already have a strong website, you could see results much sooner. Alternatively, if you’re trying to rank for high-competition queries or have a website with extensive technical or content debt, results could take up to 12 or even 18 months.

Keep in mind that these timelines assume consistent execution. If you have a very low content velocity (under four landing pages/articles produced per month), expect results to take longer.

Most free ‘audits’ are very basic indications of ranking positions and page speed. They’re pulled straight from tools like Ahrefs and Google PageSpeed Insights, take SEO agencies very little time to produce, and are mainly used as lead generation tools. As such, they contain minimal value, especially for businesses that already have a good understanding of their search performance.

Our audits, by contrast, are comprehensive diagnoses of your website. Each audit includes segmented query analyses, historical query and page performances, diagnoses of technical issues, plain English executive summaries for each section, and an easy-to-understand video walkthrough (in addition to a range of other reports and analyses). All recommendations are flagged with a priority level and consolidated into a digitised checklist for use with your project management software.

You can use our SEO audits to get an unbiased perspective on your current agency’s work, discover hidden technical issues that could be impacting your performance, and project buy-in from non-technical stakeholders.

If you want a free review of your website, try our zero-cost website analyses – just keep in mind you’ll get holistic marketing feedback (not just SEO-related advice), and that it’s not a replacement for a proper SEO audit.

No. Running Google Ads will have no effect on your SEO. Although Ads can be useful for complementing a fledgling SEO strategy, it won’t impact your organic rankings in any way.

Yes. You can use tools like ChatGPT and SEOwind to create synthetic content for organic search. In search landscapes with low competition, synthetic content may perform well. For brands that thrive on very long-tail searches, even programmatic SEO can be a good option.

The issue, of course, is that synthetic content doesn’t typically meet Google’s quality guidelines. In highly competitive search landscapes, raw AI output rarely ranks well – a fact that has been attested to by almost every major SEO publication and expert. The nature of generative AI means that raw output will likely be low in professional expertise, personal experience, and information gain (all of which are increasingly important to Google).

While synthetic content can be edited and improved by humans to produce effective SEO assets, it’s often more cost-effective to write high-quality content from scratch.

Keep in mind that ranking well isn’t the only consideration. Readers need to actually get value from your content for it to have the marketing impact you’re looking for – and, at the moment, that’s something AI often struggles with.

You can read more about Google’s own stance on AI content here.

Ahrefs (one of the world’s top SEO software companies) conducted a comprehensive survey of SEO pricing in 2023. These are the key takeaways (in USD):

• The average hourly rate for SEO freelancers is $71.59 per hour (AU$107.4).
• The average hourly rate for SEO agencies is $98.90 per hour (AU$148.37).
• The average hourly rate for consultants is $171.18 per hour (AU$256.81).
• The most popular monthly retainer band is $501–1,000 (AU$751.61–1,500.21).
• The second-most popular monthly retainer band is $2,500–5,000 (AU$3,750.52– 7,501.05).

You can read the full report here.

While you can find people offering SEO services for much less than the above figures, there’s generally a correlation between price and quality.

When SEO ‘doesn’t work’, it’s normally due to one of two issues:

1. Unclear time horizons
2. Lack of revenue attribution

Unclear time horizons are an issue across the SEO industry. Often, business owners and marketing leaders approach SEO with a direct-response mindset: they expect to see results a few days or weeks after strategy execution has begun.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the way SEO (or most forms of marketing) actually work. While there are scenarios in which SEO can deliver quick results – for example, with low-competition, BoFu keywords – revenue normally follows a build-up of high-quality content. As such, you should expect to see positive indicators (not necessarily revenue) after three months of execution and revenue after six months of execution.

Don’t kill your SEO initiative after a month of not seeing results. If you don’t have the runway for at least nine months of execution, you shouldn’t start SEO at all.

The second reason many businesses view SEO as ‘not working’ is due to a lack of revenue attribution. In other words, there’s no way for the SEO agency or the business to accurately tie SEO work to revenue. Bad attribution cuts both ways – it can result in other channels unfairly taking credit for SEO-delivered revenue, but it can also mask bad SEO that actually isn’t working.

To keep your SEO agency accountable, use a hybrid attribution model: software-based attribution (via your CRM or e-commerce platform) and self-reported attribution (ideally via contact form submissions or new customer accounts). You can combine and compare both data sets to see exactly where your new buyers are coming from – organic search, Facebook, Google Ads, or some other marketing channel.

While some website agencies do offer SEO, it’s important to understand that building a website and optimising for search are two totally different skillsets.

Good website developers are generally fluent in coding languages like HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. Their skillsets revolve around building robust, cleanly coded websites that are pleasant for users and easy to manage.

While a good website does matter for SEO, it’s just one small piece of the optimisation puzzle – and, even if a website is good for users, it may not be suitable for search engines. For example, dynamically loaded or JS-based sites are often complex for search engines to crawl and index, which is not something that the developers building them generally think about.

SEO specialists aren’t coding experts – they’re marketers who understand how to reach people through search engines. While certain aspects of SEO (such as technical SEO) do involve optimising code, the SEO skillset is mostly oriented around understanding search engines, knowing how to conduct effective audience research, and being able to create high-quality content.

Ideally, your website developer will work with a marketer who specialises in SEO to develop a website that builds in SEO from the ground up. Post-build optimisation is certainly possible, but it’s normally easier to have your search specialist involved from the beginning.

In summary: don’t assume that your developer is a trained SEO professional, because they probably aren’t. If they do offer SEO, make sure you ask to see evidence of their skills, such as their own website or prior work.

There are a few reasons that specialist support firms like us cost more than SEOs on Fiverr or Upwork.

1. Like most agencies, we’re focused on results, not just deliverables. You might be able to pay a freelancer on Fiverr $50 to write an SEO blog for you, but it probably won’t deliver the outcome you want.
2. We’ve been successfully supporting clients since 2018. Most freelancers on sites like Fiverr are early in their careers and don’t have the experience or proven record to charge more.
3. You get what you pay for. While it’s certainly possible to find good SEOs who charge less than the average, there is, as with most professional services, a correlation between price and quality.
4. SEO software like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs cost a lot of money. Freelancers with very low rates often cut corners and use free tools with less reliable data, which can lead to worse clients outcomes over time.
5. We’re based in Australia. Agencies and freelancers based in other countries with low costs of living may be able to charge substantially less than we do.
6. We have established processes that streamline delivery, improve quality, and maintain your rights under legislation like the ACL. Many freelancers don’t.