SEO Packages Australia: My Experience of SEO Cost

If you’re considering SEO packages in Australia, there are a number of factors to consider. Here I’ll share my experiences with SEO services and SEO prices in Australia. I will explain the pitfalls of SEO packages and how I became a search engine optimisation specialist who helps small businesses increase their organic traffic. We’ll also examine the subject of SEO cost.

Pay-per-click advertising vs SEO cost

I started Word Nerds in 2004 with a very low budget. Digital marketing was a new field at the time and my first effort was to use Google AdWords for content marketing. When I first started, it wasn’t highly competitive. In fact, the price per click was as low as $0.15 per keyword. As time went on, more competitors entered the field and made it more competitive. For a time, it was around $2.00 per click for Google pay-per-click advertising. A few years later, it was around $4.00 per click on average.

As a result, the return on investment was not as good as in the early days. In addition, Google had changed the layout of their search page that made it less effective for small businesses. In the past, there were two to three ads at the top of the page and many along the side of the page. You could get clicks for a lower price even if your ad was on the side of the page. Google changed this so that ads only appear at the top or bottom of the page.

Cheap SEO services aren’t so cheap – hiring my first SEO company

In these circumstances, I turned to my first SEO agency for help. At only $250 per month, they offered affordable SEO services. Their SEO work improved the ranking of many SEO keywords in the short term. I even picked up a few clients overseas, including a German pharmaceutical company and a Greek cosmetics business. But then it went wrong.

Google introduced their first Penguin update in April 2012 and the website traffic was cut in half overnight. This was because many of the backlinks were considered to be toxic by Google, which wasn’t an issue until the first Penguin update.

A new SEO company with moderate SEO pricing

A few years after this experience, I turned to a new SEO company. Their SEO pricing was okay, at around $800 per month. They were a bit slow getting started but it turned out to be quality SEO that showed improvement to keyword rankings which lead to enquiries and new customers. This SEO company fixed some of the damage caused by the previous company and the Google update. The SEO campaign worked okay but I was looking for better results and hired a new company around six months later for a higher SEO cost.

The third SEO agency – high SEO prices in Australia

This agency made big promises about their long-term results. They had good feedback from business owners which made me feel confident in spending $1,300 per month on their SEO package. We agreed on a number of keywords that they would work on and they got started. They sent me a report each month that showed an increase in traffic over time. What I failed to notice was that the backlinks they created were mostly in India. This meant that many of my site visitors were from India when my target market is in Australia.

Although I was getting increased traffic from Australia, it suddenly dropped after around six months of working with this SEO company. I met with them several times and they promised to change course and turn things around. It didn’t happen. The results were so bad that I had to take a break from the business and run it part-time while taking on an in-house role with a business.

Later on, I found that someone working for this SEO agency had put links from my website to other websites advertising products like Viagra. In retrospect, I should have sued them for the damage they caused. I have since found there are lawyers who specialise in taking on SEO companies who have ripped off their customers. This shows you how big the problem has become with SEO packages in Australia and overall SEO cost.

Becoming a full-time SEO content writer and working with another SEO company

Working as a full-time SEO content writer for three years taught me a lot about the ins and outs of search engine optimisation. The first was learning how to write optimised content that ranks highly in Google. This was never something that the SEO companies I worked with talked about. By simply having the right content length and including semantic keywords, I was able to dramatically increase search rankings and website visitors for the company that employed me. Over three years, I help to increase the number of organic (unpaid) visitors to the website by around five times.

During that time, the business hired an SEO company. They paid around $7,500 per month for no results. The first thing I noticed was that this company didn’t understand the target market and what they would be interested in from a content perspective. They also provided false information about the percentage of branded vs unbranded website visitors. (Branded website visitors are those searching for the company name or a variation of the company name.) The SEO company said that the branded visitors were 75% of the total and unbranded were 25%. This meant that most of the people visiting were not finding it from unbranded content, including product and service-related keywords. It turned out that the opposite is true. Three-quarters of the organic visitors came through unbranded content. The lesson is to watch out for what companies tell you when selling SEO packages in Australia.

SEO pitfalls

These have been my key lessons from working with four companies that offer SEO packages in Australia over a ten-year period.

Not being clear with current results and targets: some SEO companies don’t give a clear picture of current results and define targets for improvement. People realise that it can take time to get results but being vague about goals and potential results is a way to avoid being responsible for poor results.
Not choosing the right keywords: keywords should be chosen to attract potential customers but not all SEO companies understand the mindset of the market. For example, one SEO company was recommending abstract articles on subjects such as “stakeholder engagement” and “business lifecycles” when the business was offering business finance solutions.
Not focusing on creating new, SEO-optimised content: the three SEO companies I hired didn’t mention anything about creating new content to improve SEO results. I later found that good content is crucial for improving search rankings. I now use powerful tools that indicate specific words to use in the content (semantic keywords) and tell me how long the content needs to be for optimising rankings. Some SEO companies have contacted me about writing content for them to help their clients improve page rankings. For example, they have asked me for a 300-word article when an 800-word article was required to get results for the target keywords.
Using blackhat SEO techniques: These mostly include creating backlinks on low-rated spam sites. Linking from these websites can damage your SEO in the long term. If you do hire an SEO company to create backlinks, make sure they provide a list of all the backlinks they have created. This will enable you to check their work to ensure they are using legitimate websites to link from.

Although the price range for various SEO companies was between $250 and $7,500 per month, the SEO cost is not always a factor in results. Good SEO requires a number of factors. One of the quickest ways to get results is to improve your content. A blog is the best way to add a large amount of content without going overboard with SEO cost.

In addition, you can publish long-form content on blog pages, which is not a good idea on your main landing (sales) pages which you want to keep short. With the right approach, you can increase website visitors by creating new optimised content. As a bonus, this content can be used in social media campaigns, so you can get an additional return on investment by getting exposure through social media.

Learn more in SEO Copywriting ─ Making It Easier for Customers to Find You.

Discuss the options for SEO in Australia

The main criteria for considering SEO packages in Australia is the return on investment. If you can improve rankings and get more site visitors and sales, it could be worth the investment. Your results will depend on many factors, including the number of sales you can close and the profitability of your products or services.

Focusing on SEO content first can be an economical way to begin your SEO campaign. If you’re on social media, you can also distribute the content through these channels and connect with potential customers.

If you want to discuss SEO content strategies for your website, please call me on 1300 731 955 or use the contact form to get in touch. I will be glad to share a few case studies and share keyword research related to your industry.

Learn more about SEO writing and SEO content writing services.

Michael Gladkoff

SEO Content Writer

Word Nerds