Earlier this year, as a partner business with Regional Web Developer, I embarked on a mission to demonstrate the transformative power of content for a new business’s website ranking. The project’s central goal was not simply to create a functional, aesthetically pleasing website, but to use strategic content creation to elevate the website’s visibility and competitiveness.
The website was part of a pioneering initiative networking agencies in the regional areas within Australia, including Wagga, Albury and Griffith. By providing quality specialist services, we aimed to level the playing field, enabling these agencies to compete for larger projects that would typically be awarded to big networks in major cities.
However, the larger networks had a different approach. As part of a campaign called ‘Boomtown Marketing,’ they were marketing their services to the regional areas. This approach was essentially pulling the grant money from the regions that could potentially create jobs locally.
In contrast, our initiative focused on fostering local growth by empowering businesses to increase their online visibility. The goal wasn’t to outsource marketing to big city firms but to enhance the regional business’ competitiveness using sophisticated SEO strategies.
Our method centered around conducting extensive keyword research. By identifying lower competition keywords relevant to the businesses we were supporting, we could create articles filled with rich metadata to help rank for those keywords. You can see the article on this here for Albury SEO Tier 1. There’s also a cluster of “Albury SEO” based articles spread throughout the insights area of this site. You can clearly see the strategy and if you search “Albury SEO” you’ll see how effective it has been. The purpose of this was to steer a reader or agency towards those agencies in Albury that know their stuff. Not to take on the business but to provide a client a local contact in the Albury area.
SEO isn’t just about keyword stuffing or excessive link building; it’s about strategic content creation that provides value to the audience while helping to increase website visibility. By continually releasing high-quality content centered around the selected lower-competition keywords, a website can gradually build domain authority. Over time, this authority allows the site to target higher-volume, more competitive keywords, further boosting visibility and potential customer engagement. You can read more about our SEO services on Search Engine Optimisation Services page.
This project was more than just web development. It was about integrating best practices in SEO from the ground up, an aspect often overlooked by other “professional” agencies. In our perspective, a truly successful website not only looks good and functions well, but it is also well-optimized for search engines and designed to grow over time.
In conclusion, this initiative has underscored the incredible power of strategic, well-executed content in boosting a website’s ranking. Through systematic keyword research and the consistent release of rich, relevant content, regional businesses can compete on a larger scale, keeping jobs and resources within the region.
The biggest lesson from this project? SEO is not an afterthought or a bonus service. It’s a fundamental part of building an effective, competitive online presence. Businesses, regardless of their size or location, can leverage this power to enhance visibility, engage more customers, and ultimately drive growth.
Update August 2024
“I’m excited” says big Kev and also me, we’ve scored number 1 for Google rankings across all of our keywords this month overtaking all of our competitors. Thank you Google for making my birthday month. What I’m putting it down to? Not anything I did all of a sudden to boost my ranking. Google have released this month an AI detection crawler and I think some of our clients have been penalised due to this not that I’ve done anything right except writing original content.
- “Web Design Wagga” No.1
- “Website Designer Wagga” No. 1
- “Marketing Wagga” No.1
On top of all this I’ve also just launched a couple of one pages and connected these to a Google Ads campaign. My goal for this is to have at least two new clients convert and to have a tool in my pocket I can use whenever I want.
I have way too much on for the rest of 2024 and probably should cool it with the advertising with the phone ringing off the hook every day but my goal is to have 20-25 in the queue set for 2025. This year is booked out which makes it hard if clients want their eCommerce site delivered by Christmas. I had one of these yesterday which I think I’ll say “yes” to as there’s an opportunity here to work with a new eCommerce setup in WordPress that could work out to be my Shopify killer. Something I’m in desperate need of. I would have missed this if I pulled my Google Ads potentially so I’m going to continue to run these for September and October. Not being able to deliver is more of a sign you need additional resources than it is you should say “no” to work.
