The goal is to transfer the RWD authority and action to the best local SEO agency in Albury or keep work local for other towns like Beechworth SEO and Yackandandah SEO to cut out city-based agencies, overseas players and to leverage skills within members of RWD.
As of today as we grow Regional Web Developer's online organic profile we have a ranking of no. 3. Leveling Up from absolutely nowhere in particular in 30 days to a top 3 competitor with very little in the way of Domain Authority. Yes, some of the success lies in the Keyword Difficulty but still there's volume here and from my tier-based SEO article getting ranked in Albury we can see a lower volume can snowball your Authority in a particular area.
As of today, we have now five articles targeting SEO in the Albury area.
Building a search engine optimisation profile around a root keyword like "Albury SEO" and clustering several articles to see the content strategy in action has been excellent fun. Today I received a report from Google saying well done you've increased click-throughs by 200%.
A lot of this authority though is very, very volatile and can rock your rankings at a moment's notice. So by the time you read this who knows I might not be on Google ranking anymore. 🙁
Beechworth Victoria Web Designers and Agencies
Up front let's say the purpose of this article is not to take work away from the local economy in Beechworth. It is to simply identify those truly local people in the industry doing good work and to hook them in with some others in the area through the RWD network. Interesting RWD doesn't even have one. location page for Beechworth because we cut off at 20k population. I've listed Beechworth and Yack because I love these areas so much and admire the people that live here. If you have. website project and live in the Beechworth area you're spoilt for choice, keep your work local.
Let's talk about the area of the Indigo Shrire, I'm not by any means a local to any of these areas but spending loads of time down and around the Victorian border, south of Albury specifically for the purposes of mountain biking at Yackandanda I can tell some stories around the area. If you're a keen mountain biker this is the no.1 place to visit in my opinion with three distinct trails and a new trail called the epic indigo trail recently opened in 2021. I've ridden XC throughout the world and can tell you these trails are my favourite in Australia. There's a great review on Flow mountain bike recently about the Epic trail I'm planning on riding with the coming weeks with friends.
You can do Yack in a day and head to Beechworth for a Ned Kelly pie at the Beechworth bakery or better still go to the brewery that has some of the best pizzas I've also tasted with one of their Beechworth ciders it's a great day out.
SEO Strategy & Local Beechworth Agencies
Enough about the area, let's start with the best agencies in Beechworth and help some of these local businesses out. If your a small business in Beechworth you have a couple of good options but clearly knowing what their strengths are is also essential.
Beechworth is a small town of only 3,859 and is not an area where you will expect to get lots of web design business through SEO. In a small town like this, it's all about word of mouth and it's only big enough for one designer to live the ideal lifestyle. Satellite towns from Albury like Beechworth can be expensive with a lot of people looking for a quiet life.
WWWART - I've been tracking these guys for a long while now and are the quiet achievers that absolutely can. Their strength is design although they claim web development which I think they are capable. I would say their current website doesn't do them justice in today's industry but who's does? They are also affiliated with fishbowlpr.com a collaborative approach to creative services. Love it! Especially because fishbowl is local Beechworth,
They clearly target North East Victorian area with some other area-based SEO keywords.
They have a cracking Domain authority (DA) of 25/100 also higher than almost all Albury agencies partly due to age and also backlinks. Heaps and heaps of referring domain backlinks. Here's a list of their top 10 target keywords a little disappointing they aren't utilising their authority to good effect. More planning needed I'm guessing for content strategy in articles:
Let's have a look under the hood to see 25/100 backlinks look like as from the outset this should be doing more for them in the Albury space.
I had a look at their top 10 backlinks but didn't want to share the secret sauce here. If you are an SEO agency around Albury then perhaps use your own tool to do a look like Moz, SemRush or my favourite AHREFs
They have a good set of case studies worth checking out. Some of them a few years old but still good. One that stood out to me was reset therapy even though it is Brisbane based it shows how a little agency from Beechworth can do great things.
Their site ticks a few of my technical boxes you will find few agencies doing in Albury, such as providing a lead capture in the way of free resource signup, they actually have a content blog generating traffic with useful articles. Also, love the use of Wistia instead of just using a Youtube or Vimeo embed.
I also love the mentoring services she offers. Pixels and GA4 in use for analytics. Cloudflare and PWA for speed, caching and security. I think her mentoring site is a separate WordPress instance. This one scored a "B" while the base site scored a "C" on GT Metrix.
I must say I'm a bit excited for this group to see where this takes them if Fiona from WWWART ramps things up with her site and fishbowl she could dominate the Albury area if she's willing to expand the team. OGA is probably the only competitor with a similar DA.
They aren't currently ranking in the top 10 organically for anything "* Albury" which I would consider giving them good traction. Perhaps they just don't need it though. As I said at the start Small towns like Beechworth it's all word of mouth. Fiona has been doing her thing for over 20 years clearly knows how to do it well. Expanding isn't always the end goal for many freelancers and agencies in regional Australia. Sometimes it's just. enjoying what they do.
I look forward to touching base with WWWART in 2023 to see if they are open to partnerships with the local out town in Wagga and to see if I can help be part of their story. I'm always down that way and I do love the Cider at the local brewery and am happy to buy you one if you wanted a chat.
Red Sally Studio What a cool name, I'm imagining Sally is a red head but I could be totally wrong. Dam, I'm glad I'm in Wagga, not Beechworth or Albury. Did you read before population 3,859, but wait theirs even more agencies and designers yet to come.
Impressed it's WordPress and not SquareSpace or Wix, I can take the site seriously, quirky design the owner of Red Sally strength is absolutely 100% design. Check out her Indigo Shire Community Profile portfolio item . I would engage these guys for Branding work, many agencies and freelancers lead in with "Full service" but if I really pushed hard here with the analytics and SEO side of things Red sally would struggle Likewise you ask me to do some logo work and you may as well get your five your old to do it. I have no doubt red sally is doing good work here.
Gracebook vineyards is one of their sites and is a bit simple, lacks messaging for me despite the slideshow. I do like the logo work. St Annes Primary is the next example site as I felt they needed a second go. I've done a few school sites myself which tend to be designed by committee your beautiful creation never stays that way for long. Usually a school will see the website as a place to put information rather than a marketing tool St. Annes Primary North Albury is no different. Prospects are almost considered a given from the Catholic faith so why bother?
Overall Red Sally, if you need logo or brand I'd get a quote but not from websites. At least not the ones I saw.
Flat Elephant I'll be up front I contacted Tom a while back, and unlike many others, he actually responded. He's a white sheep farmer and I also have a customer who is also a white sheep farmer so had something to talk about. Anyway Tom's site attracting more traffic than many of the bigger teams in Albury. He's clearly doing something right and I'd totally give him a try.
What I love about his site is it's clean design, his logo is super simple, mechanical and a psychological bender. I'm sure there's a story there. 🙂 His portfolio page is steller and tells his story from Melbourne to Rutherglen to Beechworth.
Tom has a WordPress site as well, so big tick there; his work on Adaptology, helping people become innovators, is fantastic. Straightforward messaging, empathy, and you're the customer is the hero here. Donald Millar from StoryBrand would be happy. UI/UX is good and not over complicated. "A" grade speed performance.
Tom appears as an all-rounder, personally, I'd prefer to see a specialist approach to share the work rather than burn out but I have no doubt he can do all things to a higher standard if you after your following new website.
North East Web Co and the agencies and freelancers just keep on coming for Beechworth why you'd ever need to use a Sydney or Melbourne agency or beyond me.
Martin from North East has a great portfolio of work and is another professional in the area. I would say his strength is web development in the Northern Victorian areas. Looking at his work on fallscreek.com.au this is quite a nice design but just not enough message or story.
I do like the simplicity of Ride Republic some of the visuals could be using better photography but sometimes this can be hard with a client budget.
North East Victoria Co Web Design Technical Facts
North East Victoria Co (NEV Co) Web Design Marketing facts
I'd love to see guys like Martin team up with WWWART collective in order to provide more assisted throughput for WWWART. Focus on what NEV Co is good at and leave the rest for WWWART and associates. The problem can sometimes be creatives agreeing on who does what and the technology used. Who get's to make what from Web hosting as an ongoing and care packages? I totally get it, we all have to make a wage for the family at the end of the day.
Other location or areas from the South of Albury that would also use Albury SEO Services includes bright and Wangaratta SEO.
Next week we'll be looking at some of these other locations and creative businesses in these small towns.
If you’re looking for a fresh start with a new website or want to update your existing site to look its best, pick from one of the above or contact RWD to hook you up with a local.
The last little bit of advice is it might sound strange. Jase you're an IT guy, you went to uni and studied IT for three years in the 90s. Don't choose an IT company in Albury to host your website. Websites are marketing tools.
Key to this claim because there are three layers of online management and your web host an IT company will choose will only look after the first layer, you need a website company that does it all.
Most IT companies in Albury will simply outsource the layer 1 of hosting a site and charge the same dollars for it.
What is this "Helpful" update? Around a week ago we heard that Google’s “Helpful” update was coming and was going to shake up the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) world. For those of you who haven’t heard much about SEO, there is an entire industry structured around getting your customers' sites to rank better and to […]
