The short answer
An SEO agency runs your search visibility as an ongoing program covering technical work, content, local search and links. If you're choosing between Melbourne agencies, the questions that separate them are who does the work, what the agreement locks you into, and what the monthly report actually shows. Ours are answered below.
Melbourne's clinics buy more search than anyone, and get sold the worst of it
Look at who actually spends on search in this city and a pattern turns up fast. Health and allied health, from the Parkville research precinct through Heidelberg and Box Hill to Clayton, and out to the Northern Hospital at Epping. Physiotherapy, psychology, dental, podiatry and the specialist rooms around every one of those campuses, all buying because patients search by suburb and by practitioner.
They also get sold badly, and the way it happens is instructive. Testimonials are not permitted in advertising a regulated health service, so an agency that has only written for trades puts a five star quote on the homepage and creates a problem the practice manager has to unwind. Then the work itself gets sold by the unit. Ten blogs, twenty directory submissions, four links. Easy to invoice, and no reason to expect the phone to ring. That is the sharp version of what every Melbourne business faces when comparing agencies, which is what the rest of this page is for.
Six questions that separate one Melbourne agency from another
Who does the work, by name?
Not the account manager. The person writing the pages and the person fixing the technical issues, and whether any of it leaves the building.
What happens in the first ninety days?
A good answer lists specific fixes and pages. A weak one says "strategy, optimisation, content".
What happens to the work if we leave in month three?
Pages, content and links either stay on your domain or they were never yours.
Can I see a real monthly report with the name removed?
If they cannot produce one on the spot, they have no reporting habit or the report would embarrass them.
Who else in my category do you work with?
A live conflict question in a city where agencies specialise by sector, and the honest answer is sometimes "we already have a physio in Brunswick".
What would you tell me not to spend on?
The most useful answer any agency gives. If everything you suggested is a good idea, you are talking to a salesperson.
What a twelve month lock in is really telling you
Long agreements get defended with the same line, that SEO takes time. True, and beside the point. A minimum term does not make the work faster. It moves the risk of poor work from the agency onto you, and it says something about how that agency keeps clients, because nobody confident about month seven needs it signed in advance.
Read the exit terms before the pricing. Walk away where content or links are licensed rather than owned, where the site sits on the agency's platform, where cancelling needs ninety days of notice and payment, or where Search Console and Analytics live in their account with you added as a viewer, if at all.
Ours run month to month and projects are fixed scope at a fixed price. We would rather re earn the account than argue about a clause.
How to tell whether you're buying from a reseller
A lot of the SEO sold in Melbourne is bought wholesale and resold. That is not automatically a problem. We do white label search work for other agencies ourselves, and it is fine when the reseller says so and stays accountable. It goes wrong when nobody tells you and the supplier is a link farm.
The tells are consistent. Reporting arrives in a dashboard the agency cannot explain when you ask about a number in it. Deliverables are counted rather than decided. Content lands as generic articles with nothing about your business in them. Backlinks appear in batches from unrelated sites, often overseas. A simple question takes days because it has to go somewhere else and come back.
One question settles most of it. Ask for the name and role of everyone who will touch the account, then ask to meet whoever does the technical work.
What a report worth reading looks like
Rankings at the top of a report is a choice, usually a defensive one. Position three for a term nobody searches looks identical in a screenshot to position three for the term that pays your wages.
A useful report opens with enquiries: calls, forms and bookings, and where they came from. Then clicks and impressions from Search Console split by landing page, so you can see which pages earn and which are dead weight. Then a work log of what shipped. Then rankings, as evidence rather than as the headline, and the losses, named, with what is being done about them. Ask for a sample before you sign and read it as a document rather than a design.
Do you need an agency with a Melbourne address
Asked on nearly every first call, so here it is directly.
Your position in Google's map results comes from your own verified pin, your categories and how far the searcher is from you. The agency's address is not an input. We could take an office on Collins Street tomorrow and it would not move a Box Hill clinic one position in a Box Hill search, and organic results carry no supplier proximity factor either.
What local knowledge does buy is knowing that Melbourne buyers search by suburb rather than by city, that the same term is fought over by operators forty kilometres apart, and who your real competitors are. That is research, and research crosses a border fine. Being in the room does not, so if the work needs someone at your table every fortnight, hire in Richmond and do it happily.
What matters more is whether anyone answers. Our office is at Pallara in Brisbane, your account manager is a named person on an Australian number, Managed Support replies in one to three hours, and Brisbane keeps Melbourne time for most of the year. Ring any agency's number at 4pm on a Friday and see.
Melbourne areas we also work across
The competitor set changes completely between them. SEO agency services in Richmond, Cremorne, Box Hill, South Melbourne and Dandenong. If you have chosen an agency already and want to know what the work involves month to month, that sits on SEO in Melbourne.
How we answer our own questions
32 staff, nothing subcontracted.
Technical specialists, writers who research a sector before writing in it, a local search team, and outreach for links rather than bought placements.
You can see the work.
A written audit before the first invoice, a monthly work log, and every account in your own name.
Public reviews rather than logos.
4.9 from 96 reviews, month to month retainers, fixed scope on projects.
"We've had three agencies in four years and can't tell what any of them did."
A reporting failure more often than a work failure. Ask for the work log every month and the question stops being unanswerable.