Marty Spargo – SEO is Life

If you’re like me, you’ve probably searched for “best SEO agency Sydney” at least once or twice. The idea of finding a good SEO agency in Sydney sounds great. You’ll be able to keep a close eye on them, pop in and visit them whenever you want…. Yada yada yada. Unfortunately, there is often a mismatch between Sydney-based SEO agencies and the customers who are seeking them out. How to find a good Sydney-based SEO agency First and foremost, you should either find them in organic search or they should be recommended. That’s it. If they are so good at SEO, they should be using their knowledge to help you find them when you are looking for “SEO agency Sydney” in Google or other search engines. If they can’t even manage to do that for their own business, there’s no reason to think that they will be able to help you with your business. Alternatively, they could be recommended by someone you trust. That's a perfectly fine way to find a great Sydney SEO agency. Let someone that you know and trust give them a try, spend their own money and see if they are any good before you put your own money on the line. But if an agency hasn’t been recommended to you by someone that you trust, it’s important to make sure that they are actually capable of using their techniques to help you find their services. After all, that’s what SEO is all about, right? On that note, how did you come to be on our website? Yep, that’s right. You found us for free in Google or Bing. We didn’t pay to show up there – you came to our website under your own steam. How to get started with an SEO agency in Sydney Unfortunately, most SEO agencies in Sydney don’t allow you to dip your toes in the water for just a few hundred dollars (as we do, but more on that later). After a complimentary call or introductory meeting, you’ll be on the hook for somewhere in the region of $2,000 - $6,000 per month as a retainer for their services. There often is great transparency with what is happening either. Beyond your monthly face-to-face with your local SEO agency Sydney, you might find that where they are spending their time, and exactly what they are doing is a bit of a mystery. From my experience, it’s usually about 2 months until you’ve had enough time to properly figure out if an SEO agency is a good fit for you and your website. By then, you may have already wasted several thousand dollars. As a small business owner, these are dollars that you can’t afford to waste. How much to expect to pay This is the painful part. The average SEO expert charges their clients between $100 and $300 per hour. That seems absurdly high for someone who isn’t performing open-heart surgery on you. Of course, most SEO agencies in Sydney won’t quote you based on an hourly rate. Instead, they’ll typically ask you to commit to a monthly retainer or charge you a fixed fee for a project. In either case, the number of hours that you’ll get for your money will fall somewhere in the $100-$300 price range if you break it down. Fortunately, there are alternatives. More on that below. What services to expect Some SEO agency Sydney operators offer the full suite of digital services. Web development, conversion rate optimisation, growth hacking or graphic design. You name it, they do it. These types of agencies are generalists and they aren’t living and breathing SEO every moment of their lives. It’s simply not possible to be the foremost expert in all of those fields simultaneously. Other Sydney-based SEO agencies look like they only offer SEO services. On page SEO and off page SEO. But their price is beyond the reach of most small businesses, with a monthly retainer of $6,000, or even more. We would have to assume that you would only get around 20 hours of “account coverage” for that money. Six thousand big ones don’t go very far in Sydney when you are paying $300 per hour. Also, just because you’ve hired a SEO agency from just around the corner in Sydney, don’t expect to see much of them. They are busy running their own business. You’ve only paid them for about 20 hours of their time, so you shouldn’t expect them to be working for you around the clock. Typically, you’ll get a monthly client meeting where they present reports and progress to you. But that’s about all the face time that you can expect. Why hire a SEO agency in Sydney at all? Instead of hiring an expensive SEO agency in Sydney, what if you could hire an outsourced team of SEO-wizards for a fraction of the cost? I started SEO is life agency to offer Malaysia’s brightest SEO minds to Australian businesses for a reasonable price. I’ve been an Australian small business owner myself, but now I live in Malaysia. I know the struggles faced by Aussie small businesses. When I first moved to Malaysia I was running my own eCommerce site and was deeply involved in SEO to increase my own website traffic. I started giving presentations on “how to use SEO to grow your business” to entrepreneurs and small business owners around Kuala Lumpur and it wasn’t long before I connected with some very impressive SEO minds. I realised a few things: 1. The calibre of SEO talent in Malaysia is on par with the calibre of talent in Sydney 2. The level of spoken English in Malaysia is very good. Indeed, many people speak better English than I do. 3. The cost to hire talent in Malaysia is much cheaper than in Sydney It didn’t take long to see the opportunity to start my own agency. Why not find someone overseas yourself? Sure, you could try that. I tried that myself quite a few times in the past too. It’s a pain in the ass. You need to interview potential people. Then you need to give them a go, only to find out that they aren’t as good as you had hoped they would be. Or if they are good, they want more money, days off without notice or they become uncontactable for weeks at a time. Eventually, all of these working relationships fizzle out because of a lack of structure to your working relationship and you end up starting the process all over again. Another reason that I decided to start the SEO is life agency was because of a great experience that I’d had hiring outsourced web developers. I hired an Australian guy who runs a team of outsourced talent in Vietnam. I’ve worked with him for more than 2 years now. It’s been a pleasure to work with him and we’ve never had any issues. From my perspective as his client, I feel like I have hired an Australian. But the bills are a lot cheaper than if I had hired someone in Sydney. Now, I’m offering you that same type of service for SEO. How it works We don’t have monthly retainers or fixed fees for projects. We understand that your business is unpredictable and that you never know what’s around the corner. Instead, we let you buy small chunks of hours as and when you need them. You get to decide exactly how and when those hours are used. I’ll assign an SEO-wizard to your account and you can either work closely with them, or you can sit back and watch them work their magic for you. The hours don’t need to be used in the space of a month. They can be saved until you need them. If you don’t know much about SEO, we can guide you on what’s most important at each stage. If you already know a lot, you can guide us on what you want done and we’ll execute. Once you get started with us you will be in direct contact with myself and your SEO-wizard at all times. You can contact us whenever you need to. Ultimately, I guarantee the work of my team. I’m your single point of contact if there are ever any issues. Unlike hiring your own guy from India, if you’re not happy about something I’ll take care of it for you myself. You’ll feel like you’ve hired a Sydney SEO company, but the price will be a fraction of what you would pay if you actually did. Our commitment to you We are SEO nerds. We love it. In fact, before starting this agency, it’s all we did and thought about for years. Even if we weren’t being paid to do SEO, we would still do it for our own websites because we love it so much. And because it works. We promise you that we will help you to optimise your website and grow your traffic as much as we know how to. From our track record, we’ve been quite effective, so there’s no reason to think things are about to change. We guarantee that we will always treat you as a person, not as a number. You’ll get personalised attention and we will listen to the unique requirements for your website and business. Although we are not an SEO agency based in Sydney, we will never be far away. You’ll be able to contact us and we’ll be responsive to your requests. I hope that this article has persuaded you to give us a try. Compared to working with another SEO agency in Sydney, the risk that we aren’t a good fit for your business is quite small. You can give us a try for a very small commitment of money and time to see if you like our approach and style. If you don’t, you’re welcome to try someone else and you won’t be out of pocket very much. But…. If you decide to hire an expensive SEO agency Sydney company you may be looking at 5-figures before you realise that they aren’t a good fit for your business. Give our affordable SEO services a try today.