{"id":45431,"date":"2023-10-20T15:43:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/battling-search-engine-invisibility-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:43:33","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:43:33","slug":"battling-search-engine-invisibility-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/battling-search-engine-invisibility-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling search engine invisibility – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Matt<\/div>\n

\"MattOperating online is the norm these days, particularly if you\u2019re a new business. But as Matt and Richard Burgess found out, setting up a website is the easy part. Being found online presents an entirely new set of challenges. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Burgess brothers are the founders of vehicle financial brokerage service 360 Financial Services, established in 2007 with the sole aim of providing finance products.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cTo do this, we needed to own the relationship with the customer and to assist them through the sales process when buying a new vehicle to ensure the best outcome,\u201d Matt says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe achieve this by having an online business, which attracts customers who are researching their next car finance package online.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While deciding to operate online was a no-brainer for the brothers, the biggest challenge they have faced is being seen <\/i>online.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cCar finance is an extremely competitive industry and there are some very big competitors who dominate the online market,\u201d Matt says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout the massive budgets of these competitors, we have had to slowly and gradually invest profits into search engine optimisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matt says he and his brother knew they needed to train themselves up in SEO but didn\u2019t have the resources to do it in-house, hence the decision to outsource.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew we had to get our website organically ranking, but neither of us had a background in IT or SEO. We have outsourced our SEO requirements, which has been a challenging process to find the right partner to work with,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cGoogle doesn\u2019t give you a black-and-white rulebook, which makes it easy to be taken advantage of. Being two new guys, there were a lot of people out there guaranteeing results in SEO but we realised they rarely gave you the results they promised.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on our fifth SEO vendor now and we have finally found someone we can work with.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matt says he has and his brother learnt what it takes in order to be seen online, and have refined the company\u2019s sites to get the best conversion rates.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have also become quite knowledgeable about SEO and now take a very hands-on approach with our SEO partners,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe also subscribe to about half a dozen online providers who give you the tools to check what your vendors are doing, making sure it\u2019s all white hat.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a business owner, you want to be able to focus on what you do well but up-skill yourself so you can keep SEO vendors accountable and get the most bang for your buck.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The company has come a long way since its struggle to be seen, recording revenue in excess of $500,000 last year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started our business, all our enquiries were generated via Google Adwords. It is now a 50\/50 split between organic visits and Google Adwords. We would average 15 unique enquiries per day,\u201d Matt says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWith our Adwords, our click-through rate averages 6-10%, with the conversion rate between 10-15%. We know these figures are a great result in our industry from the feedback we\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Operating online is the norm these days, particularly if you\u2019re a new business. But as Matt and Richard Burgess found<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,25,23,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}