From Nowhere to 10th in 5 Months with SEO

The Problem

It’s vital to make sure that when you’re working with a digital marketing consultant or SEO company that you have a broad understanding of the basics with your search engine optimisation strategy. There are three key points to make sure you’re confident with.

1. You know what keywords you’re focusing on
2. Those keywords have actual traffic through them (it’s very easy for agencies to push obscure, low-traffic keywords – or even zero-traffic keywords – that are easier for them to get you high up on)
3. That you can see tangible improvements in the SERPs (search engine ranking position) over time

Below is an example of a client’s reporting that shows exactly that clear improvement in their SERPS over time. Whilst I’ve hidden it here (for the benefit of the client’s privacy, so you’ll just have to trust me!), this keyword has 4,400 searches any given month across Australia.

You can see that they launched a new website in February 2017 (prior to that we hadn’t invested in any SEO activity) and there was been a focus on gaining better rankings since then. The website started ranking at position 67 in mid-March and has climbed to position number 10 – on the first page – by the start of August. The red line is a competitor we’ve been tracking since we originally set up this client’s account – almost a year ago now.

Monthly SEO value

One other quick note – our software allocates a ‘monthly value’ to this particular keyword which it deems as the ‘estimated monthly financial value of the ranking’. This number is based on the bid price in Google and the average number of monthly searches across the Google network. Whilst I personally wouldn’t hold 100% faith in this value, it certainly does give an indication of the value of this position within Google, which you can compare to the budget you have invested in maintaining your SERP positions. For example, spending $1,000 a month to maintain a position with a monthly value of $16,000 is obviously a good return investment.

In this case, the budget is higher but another 19 or so keywords are included in the strategy, so it’s great value all round. As an investment guide, I’d be looking at at least a $10 return to every $1 spent; if not a $20 return for every $1 spent.

Key action points

This result was down to a number of key things:

• Well-optimised page – both title, description & basic page content
• Constant adjustments using ranking as an indicator of what was/wasn’t working
• High traffic through Adwords campaign and other PPC
• Regular new website content

None of these factors are out of reach to the average website owner.