The short answer
We're an SEO agency working with Blacktown businesses, with the technical, content, link and local search people employed here rather than bought from a wholesaler. Our only office is in Brisbane, at 1 Cheshire Street, Pallara. Retainers are month to month and the audit comes before the invoice.
Westpoint takes the foot traffic and the strip lives on what search sends it
Blacktown's retail sits in two halves that behave nothing alike. Westpoint pulls a crowd from across one of the largest local government areas in Australia, and if you trade inside it the centre's own site and your national neighbours outrank you for your own business name. Then there's Main Street and the streets off it, where a very diverse independent trade sits shoulder to shoulder: grocers, tailors, phone repair, barbers, restaurants, and above them accountants, migration agents and tutoring centres.
For a strip trader the phone rings because of a map listing more than a website. Twelve competitors inside a few hundred metres means proximity decides a share of the results before anyone's SEO gets a vote, and the rest is fought over with categories, photos, reviews and correct hours.
So the supplier matters more here than in a thin market. On this strip, an agency that has never opened a Business Profile will bill you for a year while the shop four doors down takes the calls.
How to tell whether the agency does the work or resells it
Reselling isn't illegal or always bad. Plenty of small agencies buy white label SEO wholesale and add value on top. Not being told is the problem, because it changes who you can speak to and how much of your money reaches the work. Five checks, none of which can be talked around.
Ask them to make you an owner of your own Search Console property while you're on the call.
A reseller often can't, because the property sits in a wholesaler's account they don't administer.
Ask for the name and job title of the person writing your content, then ask for them on the next call.
Not the strategist selling to you. The writer. Friction here is your answer.
Ask which parts are done by employees and which by contractors, and where each sits.
Look at what the reporting is built from.
If the only artefact is a branded dashboard you can't trace back to raw Search Console and Business Profile data, you're reading a wholesaler's template with a new logo on it.
Look hard at a quote well below the rest.
SEO is mostly hours. If one figure is a fraction of the others, the hours are coming from somewhere cheaper, and the gap between what you pay and what they pay is the business model.
What a real monthly report has in it
Reporting is where agencies get graded, and most mark their own homework. Ask to see a current client's report with the name blanked before you sign. Six things belong in it.
Enquiries first: calls, form fills and direction requests with the source attached.
Impressions and clicks from Search Console, grouped by kind of search rather than thirty tracked terms chosen because they were winnable.
What was done last month, as specific URLs and specific changes.
Links built, listed as live URLs, every time.
The things that got worse. A report with no bad news in it is a sales document.
Access to the underlying accounts, so you can check any figure without asking permission.
Us, against both lists
We employ 32 people and the search, content and development staff work in one building, so you get the writer's name and can have them on a call. Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile stay in your name, with us added as users rather than the reverse. On exit you keep the pages, the accounts and the links, because they were never ours. The report leads with calls and forms, lists the URLs touched, names the links, and includes the bad news.
An office you can drive to proves nothing about who does the work
We don't have a Blacktown office and we won't rent a mailbox to look like we do.
The part worth sitting with is this. Proximity to your agency and proximity to your customer are different measurements, and only one is a ranking factor. Your position in local search comes from your own verified pin, your categories, your reviews and your pages.
Where else we take on accounts
SEO agency work in Castle Hill, Westmead, Parramatta and Bungarribee, plus traders and practices across Seven Hills, Doonside, Prospect, Marayong and Kings Park. Everywhere we work is listed on service areas.
Buying the work rather than comparing suppliers? SEO services in Blacktown covers the programme itself.
How an account starts here
A free audit you can take to your other meetings
Findings on the site, the profile and the competitors ahead of you, yours whether you hire us or not.
A scope with a number on it
Fixed price on projects, a fixed monthly figure on retainers.
Access set up in your name
Your accounts, your ownership, us added as users.
Monthly reporting
Enquiries at the top, work listed by URL, setbacks included.
Reasons to put us on the shortlist
Eleven years of the same company answering the phone.
Trading since 2015, Australian owned, 4.9 across 96 reviews.
One invoice and no middle layer.
Nobody takes a margin between you and the person doing the work, which is the difference between a budget that buys hours and one that buys hours minus somebody's markup.
Managed Support answers in 1 to 3 hours.
When the site breaks on a Saturday during a sale, that's the number that matters.
"How do I know you're not reselling too?"
Fair, after that list. Ask us all five.