Talk to IT Wollongong if you want the SEO Wollongong businesses need to get ahead!
How do you give your website the best chance of reaching more people who want what you sell? The easiest and most cost-effective way is with SEO—Search Engine Optimisation.
IT Wollongong is an SEO agency with a strong record of boosting the online presence of local businesses. We use a full range of SEO techniques to help you rank high on the first page for relevant, popular Google search terms. Whether you’re from the Illawarra or beyond, we can make your website work harder and smarter for you!
Steve Perrett has been working in SEO since 2006. You can read how Steve became an SEO for the story behind that experience.
Rank high in relevant search results
On the modern web, people looking for a product or service will likely use Google to search for it. Therefore, your website has a much greater chance of receiving visitors if it appears regularly in relevant Google search results.
Also, visitors heavily favour websites that appear highest on the search results pages. Ideally, your website should rank within the top three positions for relevant and popular search phrases. If your website isn’t appearing regularly in important search results, you’re missing a big chance to improve your profitability and take your business to the next level.
Of course, you don’t just want more traffic—you want visitors who intend to buy what you offer. When you have an SEO specialist like IT Wollongong on your side, you can expect not only increased website visits, but more relevant visitors. With more and more qualified traffic, you can count on increased sales and profitability.
The SEO Wollongong Deserves: Our Packages
IT Wollongong offers a range of SEO plans to suit the size and budget of your business. All of our packages are month-by-month with no lock-in contracts to limit your options.
- Our standard SEO packages start at $320 per month.
- For businesses on tight budgets, we also offer a DIY package for just $80 per month.
Compared with other forms of marketing, these relatively low prices make SEO an attractive and affordable plan for small businesses. See our range of SEO packages for more information.
What do IT Wollongong SEO services involve?
The core goal of an SEO campaign is to raise the volume of qualified traffic a website receives. However, every website will have its own unique set of strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, an SEO campaign will involve a range of tactical activities depending on your individual website.
Keeping all possible techniques in mind, IT Wollongong directs its activities to achieve the greatest return on investment for you. To help you understand what we do, we have outlined some of our commonly-used techniques below.
Keyword research—know what your customers are looking for
A crucial component of any SEO strategy is identifying of the most important keywords or search phrases to target.
Most useful keywords or search terms relate directly to the products and services the business offers for sale. In particular, they match the language your target audience would typically use when they look for that product or service. (This may or may not include a brand name.)
Generally, the best terms also have a high search volume, which means people use them often in web searches. Looking at search volume helps us understand how people try to find what your business sells.
Another aspect of keyword research is identifying which phrases suggest buying intent. For example, the search phrase “SEO services in Wollongong” suggests the user is looking to hire an SEO company based in Wollongong. On the other hand, a search term like “SEO tips” does not carry signals of buying intent. Rather, it implies the user is only looking for information.
Relevant terms with high search volumes and strong signals of buying intent are generally the most useful to target. Read our article, A keyword research strategy, to learn more about how we find useful keywords to target.
SEO Content & Copywriting
After we identify target keywords and the search intent behind them, we recommend updates to the content of your website. SEO content isn’t simply about inserting keywords into existing text. We create and refine website copy so it explains your products and services clearly, answers the questions your customers are asking, and supports the search terms identified during keyword research.
Our goal is to preserve the character of your existing content while making sure it is:
- Relevant to the keywords chosen and the people searching for them
- Useful to visitors, such as by answering questions or solving problems
- Unique and distinct from similar content online
- Easy to read and understand
- Engaging and informative
You know your business. We know how to turn that knowledge into effective website content. We can work with you to identify the information your customers need, then shape it into clear, useful content that supports both your business objectives and your SEO strategy.
Typically, this means improving information that is already present on the site. Where a website is light on useful information, we may recommend adding new pages or sections. If several pages cover similar subjects, we may recommend combining them into one stronger page rather than allowing them to compete with each other.
Whether we produce content on your behalf or work collaboratively with you, IT Wollongong shapes website content around the needs of both visitors and search engines. Read The importance of high-quality content for SEO for more about our approach to SEO content.
UX and UI—Improving the human user experience
Good user experience (UX) is a central pillar of modern SEO. It’s easy to understand—nobody likes to spend their time on a website that’s slow, broken or unintuitive. But even beyond the basics, just about any improvement to user experience has the potential to increase traffic.
When visitors have a good experience on your website, they build a positive first impression of your business. As all marketers know, first impressions are hugely important for the selling process!
A good first impression doesn’t just assist in a purchase—it also has the potential to prompt a social media recommendation. This is a big benefit to your business, since it means a naturally-occurring link back to your site.
Google also looks for strong UX when it evaluates your website; after all, its reputation may suffer if it consistently sends people to pages where they have a poor experience. Because of this, UX is one of many factors Google considers when it assigns a page’s rank in search results.
User experience depends on many factors, some more obvious than others. Some aspects we consider include loading speed, ease of navigation/menu organisation, accessibility, content structure, and compatibility with various devices. Our best practice SEO includes assessing all relevant UX factors and improving them where necessary.
The local SEO Wollongong businesses need
For businesses who target a particular location, appearing in Google’s local search results (or “map pack”) has become increasingly important. Creating a listing on various local business directories—such as Google My Business, True Local, Local Search, Yellow Pages and Yelp—helps establish your credentials as a trusted local business. You must also ensure that the info on these “citation sites” is accurate and kept up-to-date.
Citation sites also help establish your trustworthiness, because they provide an independent channel for public feedback. Because they are likely to receive poor reviews, shonky businesses are reluctant to expose themselves to feedback that’s outside their control. Conversely, inviting genuine feedback shows that you are an authentic business who is confident in your service.
Public ratings are valuable for web users choosing which businesses to approach. Obviously, good reviews are desirable—however, even if your service is great, it can be hard to motivate people to give positive reviews. This difficulty leads some SEO agencies to to create fake reviews in an attempt to boost business ratings, a practice we strictly do not employ.
Beyond the obvious ethical concerns, fake reviews are much easier to detect than you might expect! Reviews that don’t seem genuine can have a worse effect than negative reviews, as customers immediately find your business suspicious. Google also has ways to detect fake reviews, and may penalise your local search rankings if it suspects foul play.
A more honest tactic is to actively request reviews from happy customers. However, IT Wollongong still recommends a cautious approach; even with genuine intentions, gathering many reviews quickly (such as by a promotion) can appear unnatural to Google, and may suggest questionable business practices.
Off-page SEO—Link earning, rather than link building
Another factor Google considers, is how many inbound links a page receives from other websites. When other sites link to your page, it shows that they consider your content valuable, worthy of their visitors’ attention. That makes inbound links a sign of popularity and trust—a sign which Google is watching for. Therefore, pages with many inbound links tend to rank higher than those with few.
However, knowing the value of inbound links has led some website owners and SEO agencies to gather them through underhanded means. For example, you might have seen social media accounts which seem to do nothing but spam random links. Blog comment sections are another common target. Some agencies even make whole websites for link spam, all because they can sell the opportunity for a backlink.
This may have been effective once upon a time, but fortunately that’s no longer the case. Google has developed highly sophisticated tools to judge the real value of inbound links, and may actively punish sites that appear to use dodgy link-building tactics.
For long-term results, cheating to gain inbound links isn’t going to cut it. Links must be earned rather than purchased; they are useful only if the pages providing them have merit.
Obviously, IT Wollongong does not engage in dodgy link-building schemes. However, we might suggest reaching out to request links from sites that have a genuine reason to connect their visitors with your content. If you have relevant information on your site, receiving a link in this way is definitely an opportunity worth pursuing.
The most important rule to remember is that to get links, you should publish content worth linking. Whether you request links or not, providing high-quality, uniquely valuable content is the most likely way to earn genuine inbound links.
SEO Reporting—Performance tracking and analysis
Typically, SEO is an ongoing process with no quick fixes; that’s why it’s so important to track how your page’s rank changes over time. By mapping optimisation efforts to performance, we keep our SEO activities on track and make sure we’re seeing the desired outcomes.
SEO is a complex exercise, and targets can move without warning. The constant updating of search engine algorithms sometimes leads to both unforeseen outcomes, and new opportunities. Performance tracking allows an SEO specialist to better understand what the search engines want, and also lets us undo any changes that lead to unwanted results.
Analysing data is also an important aspect of performance tracking. Critical thinking is key when we must determine whether a change in performance is due to algorithmic changes, recent SEO activities, or some underlying factor. The better we understand the data, the faster we can respond to any emergent issues.
IT Wollongong uses various methods to track search performance, and perform data analysis. This lest us maintain high online visibility, and make ongoing gains in relevant search results with a lasting impact.
Technical SEO—Find areas for improvement with an SEO audit
Technical knowledge also forms an important part of the complete SEO picture. There are countless technical aspects of your webpage that can impact your ranking for better or worse, especially in terms of performance. Here are just some of the technical aspects we typically work on:
- Creating 301 redirects when you need to move or delete pages
- Cleaning up HTML markup and CSS files to reduce page loading time
- Finding and correcting JavaScript errors
- Implementing caching, compression, and other techniques to speed up page performance
- Optimising server-level configuration
- Adding schema markup to help search engines identify your business
- Adding canonical URLs to avoid the appearance of repeated content
- Updating code to follow best-practice guidelines
We pride ourselves on our technical SEO—in fact, we guarantee the performance of websites we develop. Our full technical expertise is available to you when you opt for SEO with IT Wollongong.
Tailored SEO Strategy
Every website and business is different, so we don’t apply a fixed set of SEO changes to every client. We consider the website itself, the business it represents, its customers, its competitors and the search terms that matter before deciding what work is appropriate.
Our approach combines established SEO principles with practical judgement about the particular circumstances of each website. This allows us to prioritise the changes most likely to improve the usefulness, accessibility and search visibility of the site.
A Methodical Approach to SEO
SEO isn’t a one-off exercise. Search results change as websites are added and updated, competitors change their content and search engines refine the way they understand and present information.
That’s why we take a methodical approach that includes analysing search performance, monitoring results, keeping records and making further changes where appropriate. The aim is to understand what is happening and make informed improvements rather than simply applying the same checklist to every website.
Steve Perrett has been working in SEO since 2006. His experience is reflected in the way IT Wollongong approaches SEO as an ongoing process of research, optimisation and measurement.
Web design and development that puts performance first
For best results, a website should be designed with SEO factors firmly in mind. Unfortunately, many websites aren’t! This can result in long page load times, poor user experience, pages that break on mobile or tablet devices, and the absence of important features that support SEO activities. Sometimes, the design of a website is so poor that fixing its problems would take more work than creating a new site from scratch.
In this case, we usually recommend a complete redesign. With our understanding of performance-first web design, we can create a rock solid foundation with maximum SEO potential. If you are attached to your existing design, we can even rebuild while preserving the existing appearance. You might not even notice the difference, until you see the improvement in performance!
Check out the rest of our site if you’d like to learn more about our web design philosophy.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO
SEO can seem complicated, particularly if you’re trying to understand what work is actually involved and how long it takes to produce results. Here are some of the questions we are commonly asked about SEO and our approach to it.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of improving a website so that search engines can understand its content and show it to people searching for relevant information, products or services.
Good SEO considers both search engines and the people using them. This includes understanding what people are searching for, creating useful content, improving the technical quality of a website and making sure important pages can be discovered and understood.
Do I really need SEO?
If you want your website to attract visitors through relevant web searches, SEO is worth considering.
The amount of SEO work a website needs depends on its circumstances. Some websites need fundamental technical and content improvements, while others may require ongoing work to compete in a crowded market.
Our approach is to identify what is actually needed rather than applying the same set of changes to every website.
Can I do SEO myself?
Yes. There is plenty of information available to help business owners learn the fundamentals of SEO, and many improvements can be made without employing an SEO specialist.
The difficulty is that effective SEO involves more than making a checklist of changes. It requires research, judgement and an understanding of how different parts of a website work together.
Most of our clients have their own areas of expertise and would rather concentrate on running their businesses. Our role is to provide the SEO knowledge and experience needed to support them.
How long does SEO take to produce results?
There is no fixed timeframe for SEO results.
The time required depends on factors such as the existing website, the competitiveness of the market, the quality and relevance of its content, technical issues, the amount of work being undertaken and the website’s existing search visibility.
SEO changes also need to be discovered, processed and evaluated by search engines. Some changes can produce relatively quick improvements, while more substantial changes may take considerably longer to show their effect.
For that reason, we prefer to treat SEO as an ongoing process of research, improvement and measurement rather than promise a particular result within a particular number of months.
What does IT Wollongong’s SEO service involve?
Our SEO work can include keyword research, content optimisation, local SEO, technical SEO, website performance, search-engine-friendly website development, structured data, internal linking, redirects, canonical URLs and monitoring of search performance.
The work we recommend depends on the website and the objectives of the business. We don’t assume that every website needs every possible SEO technique.
How do you approach SEO?
We take a methodical approach based on understanding the website, the business, its customers and the searches that matter.
We begin by identifying opportunities and problems, then prioritise the changes that are appropriate for the particular website. This can involve improving existing content, creating new content, resolving technical issues, improving website performance or restructuring pages where several URLs are competing for similar searches.
We also monitor search performance so that subsequent decisions can be based on what is actually happening rather than assumptions.
How do you measure SEO results?
There is no single measurement that tells the whole story.
We can look at factors such as search impressions, clicks, search queries, the visibility of important pages and changes in organic search traffic. Depending on the website, we may also consider conversions and other business outcomes.
Search rankings can be useful when examining individual searches, but they are only one part of understanding how a website is performing.
What happens if my website suddenly loses search visibility?
A change in search visibility does not necessarily have a single cause.
Possible explanations include technical problems, changes to a website, indexing issues, changes in search demand, changes made by competitors, changes to search results, or changes to Google’s ranking systems.
The first step is to investigate rather than assume that an algorithm update or a particular SEO problem is responsible. Google Search Console can provide useful information about search performance and indexing, while examining the website itself can reveal technical or content changes that may have contributed.
Why does IT Wollongong use WordPress?
We prefer self-hosted WordPress because it gives us substantial control over the website’s content, HTML, plugins, performance and technical configuration.
That control is useful when building and maintaining websites where SEO, performance and long-term maintainability are important considerations.
WordPress is not automatically the right choice for every website, but it is the platform we have chosen to specialise in for our business website projects.
Can SEO guarantee that my website will rank first?
No. Search results are determined by search engines, and there is no responsible way to guarantee a particular organic ranking.
Our aim is to improve the factors we can control: the quality and relevance of the website, its technical implementation, its content, its accessibility to search engines and its usefulness to visitors.
Our SEO case studies provide examples of the search visibility achieved by some of our long-standing clients.
Proud to be an ethical SEO Company
The style of SEO conducted by IT Wollongong is ‘best practice’, ‘white hat’ and ethical. We are fully transparent about what we do, and clearly explain anything our clients ask about. In our view, communicating what we are doing and why, is essential to the overall success of any SEO strategy.
For SEO Wollongong can be proud of, contact us today!
If you are impressed with our approach to search engine optimisation, don’t delay! Consult Steve Perrett on (02) 4227 6630 to find out how IT Wollongong can implement an SEO campaign to boost qualified traffic to your website.
