Reach your ideal customers and clients through Google with expert Gold Coast SEO.
We back brands big and small.
Solutions
Most SEO agencies have the same approach:
They push SEO as the best channel for your business – without reviewing all possible options.
They chew up thousands in budget each month – but only measure themselves on things like keyword positions, not hard financial metrics.
They promise innovation – and deliver mediocrity.
We take a different path.
Holistic marketing strategies that only include SEO when it makes sense.
Clear KPIs that include net new revenue and marketing ROI.
And an approach that blends frontier tactics with principles we’ve validated across more than 24 years of SEO.
Find out how we can help your Gold Coast business get the SEO results you need.
Solutions
SEO Strategy
SEO Copywriting
Digital PR
Technical SEO
Backlink Acquisition
SEO Site Audits
Find out how we combine Google Ads with SEO under a surround-sound approach that drives results quickly.
Differences
When we build your brand’s strategy, we look at the whole house, not just each room.
That means a holistic approach centred on your business goals – using whatever digital channels work best.
We’ve been blazing a path through digital landscapes since 2000.
Our SEO team has seen everything from Hummingbird to the HCU – and we know exactly what Google wants.
Our SEO team works from our office on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
We understand Australian audiences and know how to stay compliant in regulated industries.
We’ve worked with iOnline on our online presence, and they have been exceptional from start to finish.
Their team provided clear strategies that not only improved our SEO rankings but also helped us drive real business growth.
We highly recommend their services to anyone looking for a reliable and results-driven digital partner.
Luciana Oliveira
Director, Mr Wombat Cleaning Services
On-Page SEO
You’ve seen bad SEO content writing before.
(You know, stuffed with keywords and almost unreadable.)
And you’ve seen mediocre writing too – readable, but almost offensively bland and boring.
Our SEO content is the opposite.
Each asset we create must:
It’s the kind of writing that Google rewards – the kind that helps move your site up to the first page for competitive keywords.
Ask us about content we’ve written for brands in your industry.
Local SEO
Ranking for keywords like ‘seo gold coast’ or ‘electrician gold coast’ isn’t just about good on-page SEO.
Imagine you’re Google.
How do you tell a genuinely local business from a large corporation with similar website content?
Answer: off-site signals like local citations, Google Business Profiles, and social media profiles.
Each one of those signals is like a thread that connects your business to the Gold Coast.
The more threads there are, the stronger your rope is, and the higher Google will rank your site for localised searches.
We’ve helped more than 200 Gold Coast-based businesses drive revenue through local SEO – and we can do the same for you.
Apivut Chakuthip
General Manager, Seniors Plus
Offsite SEO
Think of your website like a spark in the vast wilderness of Google.
Digital PR is the process of building that spark into a bonfire – a beacon of light that draws your ideal customers in from all directions.
It’s about getting backlinks and mentions from other sites in your industry.
Getting featured in media outlets to reach new audiences.
Building partnerships with influencers and thought leaders.
Yes, Google takes notice of all those offsite signals – but digital PR is worth engaging in for its own sake, not just because it helps boost your site’s rankings.
Technical SEO
Great SEO content can’t win in isolation.
It needs to be built on a strong technical foundation – a fast site with a logical structure and no major errors.
But, sometimes, that’s easier said than done.
A plugin can clash with your site’s code, causing redirection loops on every page.
A stray robots.txt tag can block key pages from being indexed by Google.
A domain migration gone wrong can halve your traffic – and your revenue.
As a Gold Coast agency with both in-house SEOs and developers, we can diagnose and solve even the most complex technical SEO problems, clearing the way for your content to do its work.
Logan-based car rental company Cheapie Car Rental received more than 600 leads from its new website in just 6 months.
That included ranking on Page 1 for 90 high-intent keywords – keywords that global rental companies were also competing on.
Find out exactly how Cheapie did it.
People
Jessica Deacon
SEO Strategist
Duncan Croker
Content Strategist
Thinking
Get actionable insights from the frontier of organic search marketing.
SEO
Questions
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of getting your website found organically through search engines by your ideal customers. Google is the most widely used and technically sophisticated search engine, so almost all SEO revolves optimising sites for Google’s algorithm. (The rise of LLMs has done nothing to change that so far.)
SEO is a marketing distribution channel. In other words, it’s a way to promote your business and your offerings – people can’t buy from you if they don’t know about you. Other common channels include social media, networking, word of mouth, Google Ads, cold calling, and out-of-home advertising (such as billboards).
A business can survive and thrive purely through other marketing channels. But, because so many people use Google to research their problems, explore potential solutions, and compare vendors, SEO is a key part of marketing for most companies. It’s especially useful because you can reach people at different parts of their buying journeys – something that channels like Google Ads can’t do effectively.
The cost of SEO varies based on the vendor and the pricing model. Ahrefs, one of the top SEO software companies in the world, conducted a 2024 survey of SEO providers globally (freelancers, consultants and agencies).
It found that, in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, the most common monthly retainer was US$2,500 to 5,000 (around AU$3,850 to 7,700 per month). The next most popular retainer band was US$1,000 to 1,500 (around AU$1,540 to 2,300 per month). The most common hourly rate was US$75 to 100 (around AU$115 to 155 per hour), followed by US$100 to 150 (AU$155 to 230 per hour).
On average, agencies charged more than consultants and freelancers, providers with over 5 years of experience charged more than double those with less than 2 years of experience, and worldwide SEO costs more than local SEO.
So, as a Gold Coast-based SMB aiming to rank in local results (for example, ‘family lawyer gold coast’ or ‘pest control gold coast’), you can expect to pay around AU$1,540 to 2,300 per month.
No-one is the ‘best’ SEO in Australia. It’s a bit like asking ‘who is the best doctor in Australia’. Different SEOs have different strengths – a technical SEO specialist, for example, won’t necessarily be great at designing a sustainable content strategy. Similarly, an enterprise SEO expert may not have the local SEO experience to rank well with a small budget.
When you’re looking for an SEO, find a provider that has experience in your vertical or a related niche. It’s also important to think about provider–brand fit. Just like different doctors are right for different people, you need an SEO that matches your selection criteria. For example, a leading SEO agency might deliver excellent results – but, if you’re working with a lean budget, they might not be appropriate for you.
Your SEO costs will fall into 5 different buckets:
As a general rule of thumb, the bulk of your SEO budget should be allocated to content creation. That’s the main recurring cost for local SMBs. You’ll also need to invest in ongoing digital PR, which involves building trust and brand awareness through offsite activities like backlink acquisition and media features.
Most technical work, on the other hand, occurs at the start of an engagement. Your SEO agency will normally spend time identifying and correcting any suboptimal technical aspects; after that initial round of ‘fixing’, they’ll typically focus on maintenance. Finally, strategy, governance, reporting and operations will take up a relatively small percentage (15 to 20%) of your budget.
Keep in mind that you may have associated marketing costs that won’t technically come out of your SEO budget. For example, your SEO agency might recommend that you rebuild an old or poorly constructed website – most of which wouldn’t be an SEO cost per se.
It’s one reason why many Gold Coast businesses prefer to work with a full-service agency like us; you pay a fixed retainer each month, and we deploy that budget to get the best marketing results possible. That’s a lot simpler than trying to assign costs to different budgets or coordinate a stable of different vendors.
Yes, local SEO is ‘worth it’ for most local businesses. Localised queries – like ‘plumber gold coast’ or ‘small business accountant gold coast’ – normally have a high level of buying intent and are less competitive than national or global queries.
If you ranked in first place for the keyword ‘plumber gold coast’, for example, you’d get around 800 clicks per month from high-intent visitors who want to hire a plumber now. On the other hand, if you got that same number of clicks through Google Ads, you’d pay around $27 per click – that’s $21,600 per month.
There’s no specific timeframe for SEO results because every brand is different. If you’re a local micro-business trying to rank for non-competitive keywords, you could see results in as little as a few weeks. (Fixing technical issues can lead to big gains even faster.) A large company trying to rank for a competitive global keyword, on the other hand, might need to invest months and thousands of dollars to see progress.
Generally, many brands start seeing revenue from SEO within 3 months of consistent work. Keep in mind that also depends on how much work is actually completed and taken live – if a brand takes 2 months to approve blog posts for publication, it’s unreasonable to expect those same posts to deliver results straight away.
We start by researching your ideal customers. Depending on your business, that includes talking to your frontline staff (such as CS and sales personnel), listening to recorded sales calls, reviewing previously collected FAQs, interviewing ICP-fit buyers, and trawling online communities like Reddit.
Once we understand how your ideal customers explore their problems and possible solutions (and the challenges they face along the way), we’ll undertake keyword research to identify the exact wording they use when they search for answers. Google’s algorithm is getting smarter and smarter (it doesn’t text-match keywords the way it used to), but using the right language can still give your site a competitive edge.
We use best-in-class keyword research tools like Semrush, supplementary tools like AlsoAsked, Google Ads Keyword Planner, your Google Search Console account, and manual research from organic results and competitor sites. We don’t use LLMs like ChatGPT. Despite what some agencies may tell you, those tools don’t have access to keyword data. Instead, they calculate likely keywords probabilistically – in other words, they guess (and often hallucinate).
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