SEO For Private Investigators
SEO for private investigators (or private detectives) is when a private investigation firm applies search engine optimization to their businesses website, with the goal of improving their online position for relevant keywords to their industry, such as ‘’private investigator Sydney’’, ‘’corporate private investigator Sydney’’ and so on.
What is SEO For Private Investigators?
One of the main things a private investigator can do to improve their SEO is upgrading the content on their website to give their clients a better understanding of what their agency does, the services they provide and so on. Upgrading the content also helps search engines understand in more detail what the agency does, and help improve their position in the SERP accordingly.
Also important for the SEO is having good backlinks done so the private detective agency increases their level of online authority. When doing backlinks, it’s imperative that only high quality, relevant and legitimate backlinks to their website are done.
As a private investigation agency, some of the first links that you could have done would include local business directories, under the private investigator section. These do not provide that much ‘’link juice’’, but it does help Google and other search engines show that the firm is linked into the business community well.
Other great backlink opportunities for a private investigation agency would be ones from law firms and other professional service providers that use their services. By having existing corporate customers link to the private investigators website, it shows Google that the agency is trusted amongst many businesses for their services, so it’s a good idea to place the private investigator high up in the SERP for relevant keywords.
Why is SEO important for Private Investigators?
It is a well known fact that The best source of new customers for private investigation agencies is by far referrals from happy customers. The existing happy customer that is referring their friends and family (or business associates) to your agency is literally doing all of the work when in comes to selling your services. Now, what is the next best source of customers? That’s an easy one, SEO.
SEO places your private detective agency in front of potential clients who are actively seeking your services. With advertising on the other hand, people are being bombarded with adverts for your agency, when they are busy searching online for other things. This is one of the reasons that SEO for private investigators is extremely important if they want to maintain a healthy client base.
Private investigation work is also an extremely competitive industry in Australia. With an agency having both individuals and businesses as clients, the industry can be quite lucrative. For example, if a private investigator helps an individual conduct surveillance on their spouse to help find out if they are cheating in the relationship or not, and the agency does a good job, there is a good chance that the individual will refer the private investigator to friends who require a similar service. Furthermore, if that individual happens to own or be part of a law firm or other business that requires corporate investigations conducted, then that could also become quite lucrative for the agency.
The Stages of SEO Done For Private Investigation Agencies
Doing SEO for a private detective can be quite complex, however we have broken it down into 4 main steps. They are as follows:
Website Audit
Before any SEO work can be done, an audit of the agency’s website needs to be done. This audit consists of:
Technical audit: The technical audit will consist of having the website put through a tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush, and having technical factors analysed such as H tags, redirects, indexability, link profile and so on to see if there are any technical issues that need to be fixed that will hinder SEO efforts.
On Page Audit: The on page audit consists of analysing the actual content of the website to see if there is enough content to satisfy readers and search engines, analysing the meta descriptions to see if they are attracting potential private investigator clients, title tags, images and more. Basically, the on page audit relates to the parts of the website that potential clients can see.
Determining whether as a private investigation agency you are targeting a local or national demographic
Before keywords can be selected for the SEO plan for the private detective agency, it first needs to be determined who it is that will be targeted by agencies SEO. For example, if the private investigator is in a small town like Ipswich QLD, and only services customers in that area, then this is called local SEO. However if the agency services the entire country, then the following step is a lot more complex, as there could be many hundreds of keywords used to reach the target demographic.
Choosing appropriate keywords for your private investigator website’s SEO plan
Knowing the target demographic, it’s extremely important that the correct keywords are selected for the private investigation website’s SEO plan. As mentioned before, if the agency is servicing a local town such as Ipswich, then the keyword selection can be quite simple.
However if there are multiple service areas, such as cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and so on, then multiple landing pages would need to be created, and relevant keywords would be grouped together to be on the same page. This is done so that each landing page can target a certain area, along with smaller suburbs within that area.
For a private investigator that services multiple capital cities, this is very important as they would want to capture as much organic search traffic as possible, to bring in as many new customers as they can. Below is an example of keywords that would be grouped together on a landing page. For this example, the private investigator has an office in Sydney, and therefore a landing page has been made for the Sydney office:
Main Keywords: These are the short tail keywords that are the most broad and relate to the term private investigator and the main city, Sydney.
Secondary Keywords: These keywords relate to the main city Sydney, private investigator, and also sub services that the firm provides.
“Cheating Partner Investigations Sydney”
“Surveillance Investigations Sydney”
“Corporate Investigator Sydney”
Auxiliary Keywords: These keywords relate to smaller suburbs within the main city Sydney that people also search for, that the agency services, possibly using contractors in these areas.
“Private Investigator North Sydney”
“Private Investigator Barangaroo”
“Private Investigator Surry Hills”
“Private Investigator Darlinghurst”
By incorporating all of the relevant keywords into the content of the landing page, the private investigator is essentially telling Google that when people search for a private investigator in all of the areas listed, that it is a good idea to serve the agencies website in the search results.
Listing your detective agency on Google My Business
It is crucial that all businesses, especially private detective agencies, list their business on Google My Business. This essentially means that when a person searched for a private investigator in any given city, the agency will be displayed on the map section of the search results. This section of the search results is the first thing people see when searching on Google for a private detective, so if a agency can be listen here, they can get a very large amount of traffic.
Being listed correctly in GMB, an agency can also be found on Google Maps when searching an area for a private investigator. Also, the agencies reviews are displayed underneath the business name, so potential clients can see instantly if they have good reviews or not.
What other industries does Extension Group help businesses in Australia with?
Extension Group provide SEO for Australian businesses in virtually all industries. If you have a website and your competitors are ranking higher than you in the SERP, then we can help. Some of the industries that we commonly work with though include (but are not limited to):
Child Care Centres
Restaurants
Ready to take the next step?
Contact Extension Group to have an obligation free analysis of your website, and start the journey to more customers and more sales!
How To Get Started on SEO with Extension Group
We have a simple 4 step process which we go through with our customers to get set up to help with their SEO. First, we will have a quick 5 to 10 minute chat about your business and what you are looking to achieve with SEO. Then, we will work out a strategy to be able to achieve these results for your business. From there, depending on the product that you have chosen with us, we will assist with the following steps whether it be build you a new website or update your existing one, and then finally once you are making money from your SEO, you can decide whether or not you want to stay with us.
For more information, click here to view how our process works.
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