Independent SEO consultant · Sydney
SEO Consultant Sydney
Hi, I’m Blake Smith, an independent SEO consultant with more than 10 years of experience helping businesses improve their visibility in Google, organic traffic and revenue.
If you’re looking for senior SEO help in Sydney without the layers of a traditional agency, I can work directly with you or your team.
I work across:
SEO Consulting Services for Sydney Businesses
Most businesses contact me because something specific needs solving rather than because they simply want “more SEO”.
I can help if:
Your organic traffic or rankings have stalled or dropped.
You need an experienced SEO consultant to audit your website and identify what is holding it back.
You’re planning a website redesign, migration or new development and want SEO considered before launch.
Your marketing, development or content team needs senior SEO direction.
Your WordPress, WooCommerce or Shopify website is generating business from other channels but organic search is underperforming.
Your business relies on Google Maps or local search visibility across Sydney.
You want to improve how your business appears across Google as well as AI search platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI.
You want to change what people see when they search your business name, from negative results and reviews to the pages that rank for your brand.
My SEO services are consulting-led rather than built around a generic package.
The scope depends on the website, the opportunity and what is most likely to produce a commercial result.
Local search in Sydney
What Makes SEO in Sydney Different?
Sydney isn’t one homogeneous search market.
For businesses that rely heavily on Google Maps and the Local Pack, visibility can change considerably depending on where the person searching is located.
Google describes relevance, distance and prominence as the main factors influencing local search results. In practice, that means a business performing strongly around its physical location shouldn’t assume its Google Business Profile will have the same visibility across Greater Sydney.
Google’s local ranking factors
Relevance
How well a business matches what someone is searching for.
Distance
How far the business is from the searcher or the location in the search.
Prominence
How well known the business is, online and offline.
This becomes particularly relevant in a city spread across distinct commercial centres and suburbs.
A business based around Sydney CBD may face a very different local search environment from one in Parramatta, Chatswood, North Sydney, Bondi, Penrith or another part of Greater Sydney.
A common mistake
One mistake I regularly see is assuming that adding more suburbs to a Google Business Profile service area will substantially expand where the business ranks.
It doesn’t work that way.
Service areas help communicate where a business operates, but they don’t remove the importance of the underlying business location and the distance between that location and the person searching.
That means I generally treat Google Maps visibility and organic Sydney visibility as related but separate SEO problems.
Google Maps & Local Pack
A business may struggle to expand Local Pack visibility far beyond its physical location…
Organic Sydney search
…while still being able to compete organically for broader Sydney searches through the right website structure, useful location-specific content, authority and internal linking.
For businesses servicing a wide area, this distinction can materially change the SEO strategy.
The words legendary and hero gets thrown around all too often. Blake is neither of those. But what he is, a gun admired by his peers in the online marketing space for his attitude and approach to online marketing
Why Work With an Independent SEO Consultant?
When you work with me, you work directly with the person analysing the website and making the recommendations.
There isn’t a senior salesperson at the beginning of the process followed by a handover to a junior account manager.
I’ve worked across startups, established Australian businesses, ecommerce websites and larger custom projects. I’m comfortable working independently or alongside internal marketing teams, developers, designers and other agencies where specialist SEO input is required.
The objective is not to produce the longest possible SEO audit or keep you busy with a monthly list of tasks.
It is to understand what is happening, identify the changes most likely to matter and prioritise the work accordingly.
How I Approach SEO
I start by understanding the business, how the website generates revenue and what people are actually searching for.
Then I look at the evidence: existing rankings, Google Search Console data, competitors, website architecture, content, technical issues, links and the search results themselves.
For Sydney businesses with a local component, I’ll also look at whether the opportunity is primarily:
01
Traditional organic search
02
Google Maps and Local Pack visibility
03
Suburb or location-specific organic demand
04
Broader Sydney-wide searches
05
Or a combination of these
Those are not always the same problem and shouldn’t automatically receive the same solution.
From there, I prioritise the opportunities that make commercial sense.
That might mean fixing technical problems, improving existing pages, changing internal linking, creating content, strengthening authority, improving ecommerce architecture, working on local visibility or addressing how the business is represented in AI search.
Sometimes the answer is doing more.
Sometimes it is fixing what is already there.
SEO Consulting in Sydney and Across Australia
I work with businesses throughout Sydney and Greater Sydney, while also consulting with companies elsewhere in Australia and internationally.
I’m based on the NSW Central Coast, just north of Sydney, and work remotely with businesses in every Australian capital city.
For the broader national overview of my work, see my SEO consultant in Australia page.
SEO Success Stories
You’ll be in good company. I’ve worked on SEO campaigns for:
247%
increase in organic traffic for a national flooring brand
Industries include SaaS, national flooring companies, local solar providers and just about everything in between.
Testimonials from People I’ve Worked With
Blake is cool, calm and collected, you can throw anything his way, he’ll handle it like pro
Blake was focused and reliable as a strategic consultant
I would gladly give Blake a referral to anyone ready to progress or make the imperative jump into the online space
Looking for an SEO Consultant in Sydney?
If you want experienced SEO advice without handing your project through multiple layers of an agency, tell me what you’re working on.
I can review where you are now, identify the likely opportunities and recommend the most sensible next step.
Book a Consultation
Tell me about your project. You’ll hear back from me directly.