Climbing the Search Rankings for ‘Web Design Cairns’

A Transparent Look at SEO Manipulation, Authority, and Google’s Ranking Game

The Move to Cairns & The SEO Challenge

Some of you may know if you’ve been reading the Get Leads blog that I have had to move from Wagga to Cairns at the beginning of 2025 for family reasons.

March 2025 specifically is when I’ve actually arrived here for those of you interested. I still have lots and lots of lovely customers in Wagga and I don’t intend on changing my servicing of these businesses anytime soon. COVID changed everything thankfully working remotely and I have so far had zero customers care that I’m not in Wagga.

I am however blessed to have a well know local Graphic Designer Milla McGill in location meeting face to face where customers need that local trust. Thanks so much Milla if you’re reading this you’re doing an amazing job.

This article isn’t about the move so much as what it means for SEO when a business like mine picks up and moves location. Once ranking no.1 for a location that is no longer the primary place of business.

On moving to Cairns I quickly established a location page and readjusted some of my location keywords to do with web design. This of course smashed my ranking in Wagga from no. 1 to no.3 and then we had some algorithm changes and an over optimisation penalty which pulled me down a few extras to 5. Annoying as it is for the time being in Wagga this is where I’ll sit against people ranking their homepages for that location. Really a page level authority vs. site level should be somewhat less when you think about it. You can’t rank for everything.

In Cairns I as of March I rank page 7 of Google rankings for “Web design Cairns”. Oh, my goodness. A site that is 100 across the board for onsite lighthouse numbers and has an extremely well optimised presence ranks only on page 7.

Site Optimisation

With any SEO job it’s important to set the scene for the keywords your targeting. I had a client come to me this week who I did a bunch of SEO work for a few years ago and asked to have anther look. On having a look at his site I found him to be ranking outside the top 3 for those keywords he was interested in ranking for. His domain authority though was less than his competitors. If you want to know more about the metrics used within SEO you can read this article I wrote about my journey increasing rank in Wagga to no. 1. Here’s a few dot points to consider:

• Backlink Strategy
• Internal Linking Strategy

In any case as I explain in that other article there is “onsite” and then there’s “offsite” SEO and most agencies will try to pick the low hanging fruit and make a bunch of changes onsite to optimise the websites content. If you want to know about ranking factors I also have this other article I’ve written about the topic. As I explained to this customer his site needs to be binned and started from scratch with a fresh new approach and off-site links need to play a bigger part in his strategy.

The Realty of SEO

“Content is king”, “just build high quality articles” — all crap that designers spin when their poorly built websites don’t rank by the way and while content and keywords do need to exist they are one factor in building your authority. My customer who contacted me I’d done all the onsite stuff possible to get him to rank but his authority was still not great needing backlinks from other sites to increase his authority which he hadn’t done.

White label Backlinks are where it’s at in 2025 and my 20+ competitors have had 20+ years to grow their authority backlinks offsite to get them where they’re at.

SEO is a terrible, terrible game, 99% of service providers in this area are mugs and charlatans looking for a retainer to do the minimum. There is NO qualification or gate for the industry and at one level I hate the game as much as Google does to stop people trying to mess with their algorithm.

Using manipulation in the past has worked but more and more I’m seeing those well established long standing brands rank higher despite higher authority on the lower less aged websites. Does this then mean that new sites can’t rank? I would say we’re certainly getting to that point but freshness of content is still a factor when compared to the bigger competitors.

The Competition in Cairns and why it’s harder than Wagga

SEO is actually all about not only what you’re doing but it’s about what you’re competitors are doing as well as what Google is doing. Three areas to consider, the last one is the one people forget.

Wagga was far less competition = easy ranking vs. Cairns (20+ agencies and freelancers means a far more saturated market.)

If your “SEO strategy” is about location pages it’s a different beast and for that reason I’m considering creating other location based sites that purely focus on Cairns. (backlink strategy).

Google’s well established knowledge about the area means those agencies ranking for those keywords will maintain their rank even if you blow in from out of town with a higher domain authority. I actually have a higher authority for probably 10 out of the 20 but still rank lower.

It may not be enough to just do things better than your competitors given they’re super cheap in comparison to my previous location.

The Authority Strategy for Web Design Cairns

Building Authority over Content

This seems strange even hypercritical when you consider you’re reading an article which has content about Cairns and why would I prefer external authority then. At the end of the day my blog isn’t about ranking factors alone. It’s about getting my thoughts out of my head and communicating value and knowledge to my customers who may or may not read these. I often will refer to blog articles from my monthly emails.

Authority Factors I’m working on in 2025

• Citations — I’m currently going through citation websites to try to get backlinks from as many as possible to my “Cairns” location page.
• Cairns Chamber of commerce — I’m not a fan of chambers, these guys are about presenting value for their clients which can mean promoting out of town services. It’s also full of positive people and coaches who know absolutely nothing about running a digital agency in cairns and focus on changing your mindset and being positive. Being all you can be. If I want that I won’t be looking at some local Joe for that, I’ll look to online and people who are contextually relevant. That said getting a backlink from them is super important so I will sign up to be a member in 2025. Price is about $500 to get listed.
• Other relevant sites – This is no a PBN or a private blog network. I have a few other sites who have aged authority that I’m currently working on linking. For those of you that don’t know you can buy aged domains with backlinks that give them authority. Perhaps someone forgot to renew their domain and it got snapped up.
• One Flare — I hate being on any freelancer network and as some of you may know I built my own one of these in 2018 called regional web developer. It’s a race to the bottom for customers already seeking price over getting something of quality. However I’m a bit more interested in this area to grow local customers and seems like it might be a good way to pickup some customers form cairns even if it’s going to mean I need to provide them a more affordable service than I would “real businesses”. It remains to be seen if I want to stay in this area long term. I do however know that one of my successful competitors is playing in this space. For $580 I can too.
• Social Ads — I really don’t mind having great social ads that reach the right audience and provide impressions. While this area will gain momentum with customers who are price driven and not necessarily established businesses I need to start somewhere. Planning $100 per month boost posts
• Google Ads — I’ve spent maybe 10k in the last 12 months in this area and it’s completely sucked. Not only has it been a waste of time but it’s resulted in zero customers. Yet, I’m learning and a bit more prepared. While I’ve had verification issues with their platform. It’s broken on my account eventually I’ll start spending a little bit in this area. I’ll limit my bids though which I’ve found because marketing and agency buying power is far more than mine i was spending $30+ dollars on a click at one time which is absolutely absurd. While it might lead to a 20k customer it’s more likely my competitors taking all my budget. I’m a bit wiser in this area and plan from July to spend between $200 and $500 per month to see if they can redeem themselves.

What is actually worth it and what’s a waste of time

To be completely honest I thought ranking for “Web Design Cairns” would be super easy given existing authority. Turns out it’s not and I’m feeling like I’m coming in brand new with no authority.

We’ve been here and we’ve done it before though, only two years ago I managed to rank no. 1 in Wagga. Surely I can rank on page 1 for Cairns.

While I continue to add content about Cairns with the expectation that it’s going to have a minimal impact. This is where I live now and so writing about Kuranda, Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef actually excites me more and makes the site more contextually relevant to the area. I’m only 30 minutes from Kurdanda and Port Douglas, one and a half hours form the Great Barrier Reef.

I won’t ignore content but it won’t be part of my strategy to rank.

I’ll update the list as I know what is working and what’s not.

So far:

• A few citation updates
• Optimised site internal links for the keyword set
• Updated Google My Business to include Cairns

What Businesses Need to know About SEO

It’s not a checklist and it’s not something that’s simple or short term you’ll be no.1.

Taking your time is important which I have the luxury to do that. I’m setting aside a few hours every week on a weekend to do some content or backlink work. I’m being mindful of not wasting too much time developing articles like this that wont’ get you ranking any higher.

I’m considering gaining business from non-online methods. I expect as I get businesses onboard with the right keywords in their sites I’ll slow start to be ranked for the keywords I’m after simply as a bi-product of the work and not because I went straight to get the valuable backlink.

What I’m looking at in the short term is what takes me from page 5 to page 4 and page 3 and then page 2 without really doing too much of anything other than citations and backlinks.

I’m also interested to see what discounting methods may need to be used to onboard customers. It seems that pricing is alot lower than what we had in the Riverina for ongoings probably a result of the competition. In any case I’ll pursue a variety of pricing strategies for the “right” customers.