How To Run A Profitable SEO Campaign On The Sunshine Coast

One of the biggest mistakes we see SEO companies make, who don’t understand the Sunshine Coast on a geographic level, is not targeting the right geographic regions based on the companies objectives.

Offshore agencies or even those operating from major cities like Sydney or Melbourne, with limited knowledge about the Sunshine Coast often don’t understand that the Sunshine Coast is a region; spread along the coastline.

Just for verification, here's the map. 

The Sunny Coast stretching all the way from the bottom of Glasshouse to Noosa.

Many times when we talk to consultants or even our clients from Sydney they’re convinced that Noosa & the Sunshine Coast are one and the same thing.

Us locals know however that while we’re proud to call Noosa part of the Sunshine Coast, there’s a lot more to the coast that needs to be considered; especially when it comes to SEO.

Let’ me explain.

We often work with tradies such as Plumbers, Carpenters, Builders, Air Conditioning Companies and everything in between.

One particular example is a plumber based in Beerwah.

Before this client started working with us he used to get all his work as a sub contractor, which if you’re a trades contractor is probably how you got your business off the ground too.

While this isn’t a bad thing and the work usually comes in thick and fast… it takes ages to get paid, you can’t choose your jobs and builders are notorious for going bust and leaving their subcontracts out of pocket.

Our particular client was in this very boat and decided he had enough and wanted to generate his own clients via Google.

Until the day we met he received a little bit of advice from a national marketing agency who told him he had to rank No.1 for the term “plumber sunshine coast”

Right there, in that recommendation is the problem with not understanding Sunshine Coast on a geographical level.

Our plumber friend lived on the very bottom end of the Sunshine Coast; Beerwah (Wikipedia classifies Beerwah as a rural town and locality in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast region.)

Now a quick search on the Google Keyword Planner reveals that from February 2022 - January 2023 the keyword “Plumber Sunshine Coast” was typed into Google an average of 1,300 times.

So yes it’s an attractive keyword target to go after for a Sunshine Coast SEO campaign.

However what this well meaning SEO agency didn’t understand is that those searches could have originated anywhere from Caloundra, Maroochydore, Maleny and all the way up to Noosa.

Because this plumber was a one-man-band it didn’t make sense for him to travel over 1 hour from Beerwah to Noosa to fix a leaking tap for example.

If the SEO Company understood however that Beerwah was a booming town with estates going in everywhere, plus Aura around the corner becoming one of the Sunshine Coasts biggest suburbs… and they asked a few more questions about the kind of jobs the plumber was after - they would have realised that targeting the whole of the Sunshine Coast just didn’t make sense for this campaign.

Rather than applying budget to a “Sunshine Coast wide campaign that was never enough to rank for this term, they should have narrowed the focus and increased the power to the plumbers immediate target area.

This is the exact direction we took with this clients campaign.

We narrowed in on his geographical reach.

We focused the clients website & Google Business Profile around Beerwah and within 3 short months, the clients website ranking in the No.1 position for Plumber Beerwah.

Even though the Google Keyword Planner only showcases 70 searches a month, this was the right decision for this plumber. You can learn more about how we help local business owners nail their keywords using our keyword research services.

Within a couple of months his brand new website started generating traffic.

The website started generating phone calls.

And within 6 months the client was able to quit his sub contracting jobs, focus in on his own generated jobs which he was able to choose AND employ his own team to start growing his business.

Here’s how the client put it:

While the campaign was already successful the knock-out punch came when the SEO delivered 2 breakthrough leads for the client.

1. The local “Dominos Pizza” in Beerwah was looking for a plumber for ongoing work.
2. The “Ettamogah Pub” now called “The Banana Bender” also was after a local plumber to service their entire premises.

These companies looked on a hyper local level (this is where our local SEO services come in) and made their buying decision based on finding a provider close by.

Understanding the Sunshine Coasts geographic region and matching this with the businesses objectives allowed us to achieve such outstanding results for this campaign.

This is just one example of understanding the Sunshine Coast’s geographic region and business objectives.

The next level is understanding how to apply this knowledge to different business kinds.

Rather than trying to explain the theory behind this we will simply list 3 different applications and what type of SEO strategy we would recommend for the type of business & situation.

Let’s take a restaurant operation in Caloundra for example.

On average there are 6,600 people looking for restaurants in Caloundra

Just looking at this number, a seasoned SEO should know a few things right off the bat.

a) Unless you’re a destination restaurant like no other on the Sunshine Coast, don’t bother targeting all of the Sunshine Coast, rather just narrow in on Caloundra.

b) That many searches means it’s probably going to be very competitive trying to break into the top 3 on Google for this term. Unless the budget is available for such an undertaking, look at “niching down” further.

c) Explore more niche options. For example:

If your restaurant served sushi, narrow in on “Sushi Caloundra” this gets an average of 590 searches a month.

If you’re a Italian restaurant, compete based on this theme “Italian restaurant Caloundra” still gets 880 searches a month.

If you’re a Chinese restaurant, target this.”Chinese restaurant Caloundra” gets 320 searches a month.

If you run a India restaurant narrow in on “Indian Restaurant Caloundra” which gets 320 searches a month.

If you operate a seafood restaurant, narrow in on the 390 people looking for you every month.

If you operate a takeaway restaurant in Caloundra, there’s 390 people looking for you also.

And even if you operated a restaurant that just opened at lunchtime and nothing else… there’s people looking specifically for this. “Caloundra restaurants lunch” gets 110 searches every month.

Having this kind of understanding of hyperlocal intent and tapping into your specific business type is what will allow you to make your Sunshine Coast based SEO campaign much more profitable. Rather than wasting budget on keywords and target areas that you will never service, or get in front of people that will never travel to your premises, narrow in on the market that's already willing and ready to visit you.

For example a Financial Service Provider (eg. Accountant, Mortgage Broker, Bookkeeper etc) located on the Sunshine Coast.

This one is a little bit trickier.

In an ever increasing digital world customers are happy to do business with people they have never met in person (or ever will)

Based on this a SEO campaign is the perfect opportunity for a local Sunshine Coast based financial service company to break into new geographical markets outside of the Sunshine Coast.

However before rushing into a national campaign, it’s important again to look at the businesses objectives.

A accountancy firm might be able to service people outside of the Sunshine Coast, however knowing that 80% of their market wants to meet with their accountant face to face, the campaign should focus on the full region of the Sunshine Coast as a priority and then look for hyper local suburb opportunities second.

Having the right industry knowledge helps to identify that business owners are more than happy to travel 30 min even up to 1 hour to see a high quality accountant on this basis.

So on that level it would make sense to target keywords such as “Accountant Sunshine Coast” as a first priority and then build out the campaign to support this theme with local landing pages targeting suburbs within the sunshine coast eg. Accountant Maroochydore or Accountant Noosa etc.

Let’s take a eCommerce company with headquarters on the Sunshine Coast for example.

This is where things can get interesting.

While there might be demand for the eCommerce’s website on a local level, more than likely the demand will be much higher on a national or even global level.

So for this scenario it all comes down to where the business is at in it’s life cycle.

2 key questions that must be answered before making a decision on the focus of the campaign are these:

1. Does the business ever want to expand and service people outside of the Sunshine Coast
2. Is there enough demand on the Sunshine Coast to achieve business objectives in the next 3 years.

Here are the possible routes the SEO campaign could take based on answers to the above.

The important thing to understand is this.

Demand and Business Objectives.

Based on this knowledge a good SEO consultant will be able to make the best possible decision for the right campaign from the outset.