Turn heads with our SEO Melbourne company.

Search engine optimisation is an essential part of any business strategy and online marketing journey, whether you’re in Melbourne or not. It can be used as a standalone service or it can be combined with social media, content creation and paid advertising campaigns like Google Ads. At Shout, we offer both local SEO and national services to suit the size and nature of those we work with.

Our approach as an agency in Melbourne is simple – we use our expertise to create strategies that deliver real ROI for businesses by increasing your rankings on search engines like Google. In turn, you receive more online users to your website and a higher conversion rate that keeps those analytics trending upward.

Local SEO strategies allow your business to be seen by the most interested audiences in your postcode, making them more likely to engage and convert.

Local SEO is designed to get you more website traffic from users in your postcode area. If you’re looking to target potential customers who live close to your location, then local SEO can play a vital role in helping your business grow online. Because these campaigns are focused on reeling in more interested traffic, the investment is often far more worth it if you’re not looking for a wider campaign. 

How do local SEO services work?

A localised SEO strategy optimises a website for searches across a specific geographical area. This includes things like city-specific keywords, address specific keywords, or even neighbourhood-specific keywords.

The goal of any good SEO campaign like this should be to get as many people from their target area searching on Google for what they offer. If someone in your target market types “best plumber in Melbourne” into Google’s search bar, then it makes sense to optimise your site for plumbing services in that area.

Why it deserves your attention

Hear us out. There are many reasons why local businesses should optimise their online presence for geographical searches over broader ones. Some reasons include:

• Attracting customers who are physically located near where you do business.

• Increasing sales locally.

• Ensuring potential clients see your name before they call a competitor.

• Having your competitors think twice before targeting your market.

The most important things to include

If you’re looking to target a local area in Melbourne through your SEO strategy, it’s important that your chosen agency (hopefully us) focuses on the following:

• Optimises your website for geographical intent and technical details
• Adding your business to Google My Business and directories
• Ensuring your address is up to date and physical
• Running geo-targeted ads simultaneously (if you’re doing PPC at the same time)
• Aligning social media marketing if needed
• Optimising the campaign for mobile devices
• Targeting geographical keywords for your local market.

Think you’d like to dominate Google search on a localised level? Let’s get talking now. We will provide you with a free SEO strategy session and audit to help you understand your search engine rankings and where they could sit in the future.

Search engine optimisation is not easy. It takes knowledge, skill, dedication and patience. But it doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars. At Shout, as a Melbourne SEO company, we believe that quality should never come at a price tag that makes you cringe.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way for websites to appear higher in search results when someone looks for information relating to the same theme. The goal of this online marketing method is to increase organic traffic to a website by making it easier for users to find it.

Ultimately, SEO helps businesses reach potential customers who are searching for their products or services. There are many factors involved in achieving successful SEO. Some of these include:

• Keyword research – Finding keywords people actually type into search engines so you can build pages around those terms. Keywords aren’t always obvious though; think carefully about what words might mean to your target audience before choosing them. During your consultation with Shout, we will highlight the most competitive keywords in your niche.

• Website structure & coding – How easily did you scroll down this page? Is everything clearly visible? Are there any broken images or text issues? If something isn’t displaying properly, it can affect your user experience and bounce rates, correlating to negative rankings on Google.

• Content creation – We will work hard to create high-quality content that not only ranks but provides your users with value. We will also make sure it matches up with your overall branding guidelines.

• Link building – This involves finding other relevant webpages/sites for your own to link to and vice versa. This “juice” tells Google that you’re an authority, resulting in better rankings.

• Local listings – Local citations like maps, phone directories, local news articles, reviews, etc. all play a part in helping searchers find you. During the initial stages, we will ensure you claim your address and contact number on all major listing platforms.

• Social media signals – Social networking profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. also play a role in improving your visibility, even in SEO. We will try to guide your social signals through to your website traffic.

On-page SEO is all about making sure your website is optimised for search engines, particularly all the elements on the given page. This means making sure it has clear navigation, easy access to information, and relevant, high-quality content. It also involves using keywords in the right places.

The importance of titles and meta tags

A big part of on-page SEO is your meta tagging and title tags. For example, your meta description should tell browsers exactly what’s inside your page. Search engines will look at the first few hundred characters of your page’s copy to determine whether it meets user needs and expectations. In addition, titles and descriptions matter when it comes to increasing conversion rates.

A well-written description makes it easier for users to understand the benefits of clicking on your link in search results. Meanwhile, the title gives further clarity about the page’s context and primary keyword.

And then there’s internal linking

The internal link structure refers to the way your links are placed throughout your entire website and how they connect together with relevancy. When creating these links, keep in mind that most search engine algorithms prefer natural links rather than paid link building. Paid links often come across as spammy and could negatively impact your ranking. Natural links, however, provide value to both readers and search engines. They can improve the quality of your pages by directing people back to them via hyperlinks.

Weaving in keyword research

Once we’ve selected what keywords to target, the next step is determining their competitiveness. To do so, we carefully keyword research using our many proprietary tools. Some popular methods for SEO success include analysing market trends, looking at competition levels, and brainstorming with colleagues. But the best method is usually some combination of those three, complete with analytics.

Off-page SEO is about optimising your website OUTSIDE of your own platform. It allows you to increase authority and let Google know that your website is genuine, high-value and credible. But in order to optimise your website for off-page. Off-page optimisation is also often referred to as link building.

How to optimise your off-page SEO strategies

Unfortunately, there are many of these elements that are also outside of your control. But for those you CAN control, here are the most important off-page factors:

Links – Links play a huge role in how well your site performs in search results. The more links pointing back to your site, the better chance you have at ranking highly on the Search Engine Rankings Placements (SERPs). You should focus on building quality content with relevant keywords, but don’t forget about link building! Shout conducts only white hat SEO techniques and we never use black hat tactics.

Social Media Engagement – If people like what they see when searching online, chances are they will share their experience with others through social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter. These social signals are crucial to your overall authority, and let Google know that you’re the real deal. 

Content Marketing Strategy – Content marketing is one of the best ways to build trust with potential customers. Create valuable content around topics related to your industry, then promote this content across multiple platforms. Whether it’s on a guest blogging site or a high-authority publication, all of your efforts in this part of the strategy create more and more connections back to your website.

Backlinks – Backlinks are another way to improve your rankings. They come from other websites linking to yours. When someone else mentions your name, it tells Google that your site has something worth mentioning. And if enough sites mention you, you’ll rank higher in search results.

Keyword Research & Competitor Analysis – Even in your off-page content, you’ll need to target the right keywords and phrases. If you go in blind, you’ll likely not appeal to the right audience or won’t receive any traffic as a result. 

Reviews – This is a big one. Your reviews on pages like Trustpilot, Yelp and even Google itself all have an effect on your overall rankings via off-page optimisation. Even your company information on listings plays a role, so it’s important that all of these are maintained continuously. 

When you engage Shout’s Melbourne SEO services, we will go through all of these bases to ensure that your off-page SEO meets the needs of both search engines and your audience. 

Hiring an agency for SEO helps you avoid common mistakes that can otherwise end up with a penalisation from Google. Black-hat tactics are still used by inexperienced or untrustworthy ‘experts’ out there, so it’s important to choose an authority to help you with your SEO services.

Black-hat techniques are a big no-no

These shortcuts include things like keyword stuffing, which can cause Google to punish your site and plummet your rankings. Also, hiring an agency allows you to focus on other aspects of your online business, like product development, while they handle the technical side of SEO.

Without using an SEO agency in Melbourne that knows all the white-hat techniques of SEO, you’re gambling the integrity of your website. Taking shortcuts or trying to do it for yourself (especially link building) can mean your campaign doesn’t work at all, or you end up with a penalisation that you can’t get back from.

What they look like

While established agencies stay away from these tactics, black-hat techniques are still commonplace. If you’re not sure how to spot them, run far, far away from anyone who tries to use the following in your SEO services:

Keyword stuffing

As we said above, this technique involves using an abundance of keywords on one page and then trying to rank for those terms. It’s considered bad practice because it can be seen as spammy by search engines when it reads unnatural or only has the purpose of serving the algorithm.

Link farms

These sites have lots of links pointing back to their site with no content at all. They exist solely to manipulate Google rankings. Using these websites to build your link profile is never good news.

Content duplication – copying and pasting content from anywhere across the web is not only plagiarism, but it’s also a huge no-no in terms of SEO. Even automating your material can be risky, so it’s important to use proper, human-written, high-quality content on your site.

Fake reviews

Need we say more?

Hidden text

This was something that was extremely common even just a decade ago, where businesses would hide keywords and text on their site so that they didn’t have to have content showing, mostly due to design purposes. But this is something that Google definitely doesn’t favour, so we recommend against hiding any content on your pages. 

Misleading redirects

When a user clicks on a link, they’re expecting to land on the page they were interested in. When a site redirects to something else as a way of tricking the user into looking at a different URL, this is extremely negative – both for user experience and for SEO.

There are many other ways that black hat SEO tactics can be used, and they still continue to evolve as the years go on. When in doubt, always do the hard work to create authentic rankings. 

1. On-page SEO is the most important part of any SEO campaign because it directly affects how well you rank in organic searches. This includes things such as optimised content, internal linking and site structure, heading tags, alt text on images, and other factors that impact user experience.

2. Off-page SEO refers to all those activities outside of your control that may negatively affect your rankings including link building, social media marketing and reviews. These include guest blogging, forum posting, article writing, press releases, bookmarking sites, and others.

3. Technical SEO involves using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and other technologies to create better experiences for users. For example, if you have ecommerce businesses, you should make sure that products load quickly from different browsers. In this case, we recommend having separate mobile versions of your pages so they render properly across devices.

4. Local SEO allows businesses to target specific areas within their city/state. The goal is to increase awareness among local customers via online reviews, directory listings, and citations. For smaller businesses, this is far more beneficial than a broader campaign.

5. International SEO is similar to localised SEO but focuses on a global target audience and multiple countries, rather than suburbs. If you’re an enterprise or large company, this is likely to be on your agenda.

5. Mobile SEO focuses on optimising websites for smartphones and tablets instead of desktop computers. A holistic campaign will always incorporate both formats of SEO.

6. White-hat SEO does not involve spamming links or keyword stuffing. Instead, white-hat techniques focus on producing useful information that people will be interested in reading and gain value from. It also includes building high-authority links through manual, credible processes, and zero shortcuts to get rankings.

7. Black-hat SEO uses unethical methods to achieve higher rankings. For example, a big part of black-hat techniques is to try to trick algorithms into thinking their content is unique when it’s really just copied from another source. This content is also often keyword spammed and unnatural. Ultimately, this type of SEO is anything that goes against Google’s guidelines.

8. Negative SEO is one of the worst forms of black-hat SEO. It attempts to damage a competitor’s reputation by spreading false stories and negative comments through blogs and forums and having them rank.

At the end of the day, a high-quality and credible agency will only ever use white-hat techniques that focus on your unique business goals. For example, if you’re only wanting to target a specific postcode, they will focus on local SEO. If your website is struggling to keep bounce rates low, they will focus on on-page optimisation.

When you choose Shout, you will gain an SEO audit that covers all of the ways we will rank you in organic search results through proper techniques. At the end of the day, the right SEO campaign all starts with personalised services; our SEO team always offers bespoke marketing efforts to help you gain more traffic and target relevant online users.

Sound like a plan? Let’s get chatting to give you your personalised X-Chart.