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SEO services in Christchurch.
Canterbury has more businesses searching for search help than anywhere else I work, and a lot of very good companies with websites that have not been touched since the rebuild.
Built on referrals
Canterbury's construction, engineering and trade sector grew through a decade where work arrived without anyone having to go looking for it. Referrals, repeat clients, insurers and main contractors kept the diary full.
That works fine until the referrals slow down. A lot of good Christchurch businesses now have a fifteen year trading history, a solid reputation in a circle of people who already know them, and almost no way for somebody new to find them. The website was built in 2013, the Google listing has the old address, and nobody has ever checked what customers actually type.
Fixing that is usually not complicated. Fix the listing, work out the real search terms, build pages that answer them, and let a fifteen year reputation finally show up in the results.
Christchurch is really four search markets
The city is flat, spread out and car dependent, and the districts around it have grown faster than almost anywhere in New Zealand. Rolleston has roughly tripled in twenty years.
A business in Hornby competing for a customer in Rangiora is not really in the same market, and Google treats it that way. Searches from Selwyn return Selwyn businesses. If you serve the wider region, "Christchurch" on its own will never reach most of your customers.
- Christchurch city, from Riccarton and Addington through Sydenham, Merivale and Papanui
- Selwyn, where Rolleston, Lincoln and Prebbleton are still growing quickly
- Waimakariri, meaning Rangiora and Kaiapoi, which search as their own towns
- Rural Canterbury, where the customer is often on a slow connection and a heavy site simply loses them
Which of those you need depends entirely on where you will actually drive. Paying to rank in a district you will not service is the most common waste of money in local SEO. Two pages that work beat six that don't.
Working with you from Wellington
I'm not in Christchurch, and I won't pretend to be. There is no Seafog office on Victoria Street and no Canterbury phone number that rings a desk here.
So we probably won't meet in person, and you're not paying for an office either. For SEO that's no real loss, because the work happens in your Google Business Profile, your site and your listings. We talk over video, you get the same monthly report in plain English, and your listing is your own real Christchurch address rather than a rented one.
Common questions
Do I need to rank in Rolleston and Rangiora separately?
If you service them, yes. Selwyn and Waimakariri return their own local results, so a page that only says Christchurch will not reach a searcher in Rolleston. If you do not drive out there, ignore them, because ranking in a district you will not service is wasted money.
My website is from the rebuild era. Fix it or replace it?
Usually replace it, and usually for less than you expect. A site that old is generally slow on a phone, hard for you to edit and structured in a way search engines struggle with. Patching it costs nearly as much as a $2,400 rebuild that you can then run yourself.
Are you actually based in Christchurch?
No. I am in Wellington and work with Canterbury clients over video call. I will not set up a virtual office to fake a local listing, because that breaches Google's guidelines and the suspension lands on your business, not mine.
What does SEO cost in Christchurch?
$1,500 to set up, then from $600 a month, with no lock-in and a month's notice to leave. The same prices I charge everywhere. If your trade has almost no local search demand I will tell you that before you sign anything, and we will not do it.