Local SEO Services

Time to revenue depends on your niche and the local search landscape. If you have lots of competitors who’ve been investing in SEO for years, it could take 6 months to start seeing consistent leads. On the other hand, if you have a handful of local competitors with terrible websites, you could have predictable revenue in a month.

(Both scenarios assume that your customers use search engines to find businesses like yours. SEO isn’t always the right place to spend your budget, which is why it’s best to work with a full-service agency that conducts due diligence, not an SEO agency that will always recommend SEO as the best channel purely because it’s the only channel they work with.)

On average, most local businesses we work with start seeing consistent revenue from local SEO in around 3 months.

Any business that targets specific geographic areas can benefit from local SEO. The ones that need it the most: businesses whose products and services can only be delivered to a specific area. That typically includes cafes, restaurants, beauty clinics, gyms, and certain trades like plumbers and electricians.

SEO also tends to be more effective the more downstream a business goes. Think of it like a net that trawls the internet, versus more targeted ‘spearfishing’ approaches like networking and ABM. The more fish there are to catch, the better return you’ll see on your investment. That means it’s especially suitable for brands targeting consumers or small business owners with less expensive offerings.

It’s also important to think about how people choose businesses like yours. For example, do they normally ask people they know for referrals? Do they look to trusted sources, like The Urban List for cafes and restaurants or Dietitians Australia for dietitians? Or do they go straight to Google and opt for one of the top 3 results? The answer to that question should guide your choice of marketing channels.

Yes and no. We can help you report reviews that breach Google’s policies. Those include fake reviews from people who haven’t used your services, reviews from competitors, and reviews that include threats, profanity, and personal information. Ultimately, though, Google gets to decide whether or not it will remove a review.

You can also remove reviews from the reviewer’s side. A polite, apologetic response/explanation and discounts/incentives can sometimes encourage disgruntled customers to remove their reviews or update their ratings. In cases where the review is fake or defamatory, you can take the reviewer to court – or, if they’ve hidden behind a pseudonym, force Google to reveal their identity.

Both can play important roles in your search marketing strategy. Local SEO tends to be more cost-effective over the long term for 2 reasons: you aren’t paying for clicks, and searchers prefer organic results to paid ones.

For example, the keyword ‘plumber sydney’ gets around 2,200 searches per month (according to keyword tool Ahrefs). Of those searches, 33% end in clicks to organic results, 9% end in clicks to paid results, 4% end in clicks to both paid and organic results, and 54% end in no clicks at all. The same holds true for more specific queries like ‘italian restaurant surfers paradise’, where 48% and 2% of clicks go to organic and paid results respectively.

But local SEO has disadvantages as well. It takes time (usually around 3 months) to start seeing meaningful revenue, and local results are often buried under paid listings. Google Ads can help generate sales while your SEO takes off, as well as give you an edge over competitors by displaying your brand twice (once as a paid listing and once as an organic listing). You’ll also only pay for the clicks you receive, which can be reassuring if you’re on a tight budget.