Project Overview
Wollongong Tax Services is a local tax and accounting firm serving clients in Wollongong, Australia, through wollongongtaxservices.com.au. The site was handed over to Techesprit in October 2025 with almost no organic search presence to build on, a small, genuinely local business competing for visibility against every other accountant and tax preparer in the same area, without any of the groundwork in place actually to be found by nearby searchers.
The Challenge
For a local service business like a tax firm, visibility isn’t just about ranking; it’s about ranking for the right searches in the right physical area, at the moment someone nearby is actually looking for a tax preparer. When the project started in October 2025, the site had almost no foundation for that kind of visibility:
- Organic traffic (Semrush): 8
- Organic keywords: 36
- AI visibility: 0
- Search Console clicks: 44
- Search Console impressions: 1,290
A local business this early in its SEO journey typically has two compounding problems at once: the site isn’t optimized for the specific local and service-intent searches its actual customers use, and there’s no established presence on the platforms, like Google Business Profile, that local search results lean on heavily. Both needed to be addressed, not just one.
The Development Work
The site was built entirely from scratch, not adapted from an existing theme or migrated from a prior platform. For a local service business like a tax firm, where a prospective client’s first impression often decides whether they call or keep searching, the build focused on the fundamentals that actually affect both trust and search performance.
- Custom website built from the ground up, structured around the firm’s actual services rather than a generic business template.
- A range of technical issues identified and resolved during the build.
- Mobile optimization treated as a core requirement, not an afterthought, since a large share of local “tax services near me” searches happen on mobile devices in the moment someone needs help.
- Google PageSpeed Insights performance work, addressing load speed and Core Web Vitals so the site doesn’t lose a prospective client to a slow page before they even see what the firm offers.
The SEO Work
Local SEO Strategy
Local SEO for a business like a tax firm works differently than SEO for a national or ecommerce brand. Rankings are influenced heavily by proximity, relevance to “near me” and location-qualified searches, and signals like Google Business Profile activity, not just on-site content and backlinks. The strategy here was built around that reality from the start, treating local pack visibility and location-based organic rankings as the primary goal, not a secondary consideration.
Local Keyword Research
Rather than targeting generic terms like “tax services,” which are dominated by national platforms and directories with far more authority, keyword research focused on the specific, locally qualified terms an actual Wollongong resident or nearby business owner would search, combinations of service type and location, and the more specific service language a tax client actually uses versus how an accountant might describe the same service internally. This kind of research is what determines whether a local business shows up for searches with real buying intent, versus broad terms it has no realistic chance of ranking for.
Google Business Profile (GMB) Listing
Google Business Profile is one of the highest-leverage assets for a local service business; it’s frequently what determines whether a business appears in the local map pack, which is often the first thing a nearby searcher sees before any organic result. Work here covered building out and optimizing the listing properly, ensuring business categories, service descriptions, and profile completeness matched what Google needs to confidently surface the listing for relevant local searches.
Competitor Analysis
Understanding what other tax and accounting firms in the Wollongong area were already ranking for, and how, was necessary to prioritize the work correctly. Competitor analysis identified where local competitors had visibility gaps that could realistically be won, rather than spending early effort competing head-on for terms already dominated by more established local competitors.
On-Page Topic Research
Beyond keywords alone, topic research looked at the actual questions and concerns a prospective tax client searches around, tax deadlines, specific service types, documentation requirements, and similar local, intent-driven topics. This informs on-page content that answers real questions a searcher has, rather than content written primarily to contain a keyword.
Technical Issue Resolution
Several technical and on-page issues were identified and resolved as part of the engagement. Spammy and low-quality backlinks pointing to the domain were identified and disavowed, protecting the site’s trust signals before they could drag down rankings. Heading structure across the site was optimized, correcting inconsistent H1, H2, and H3 usage that was hurting both readability and on-page SEO. A keyword gap analysis was also carried out against the existing content, identifying relevant local and service-intent topics the site wasn’t covering yet, which directly informed the on-page topic research described above.
The Results
Search Console Stats
October-March Search Console stats
AI Search Visibility
Wollongong Tax Services had zero presence in AI-generated search results at the start of the engagement: no visibility, no mentions, and no cited pages across ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, or Gemini. By March 2026, that had changed substantially:
- AI Visibility score: 0 to 24.
- Brand mentions across AI platforms: 0 to 3.
- Total cited pages: 0 to 33, broken down by platform as ChatGPT (2 mentions, 20 cited pages), Google AI Overview (0 mentions, 4 cited pages), Google AI Mode (1 mention, 17 cited pages), and Gemini (0 mentions, 11 cited pages).
Semrush’s March 2026 snapshot also shows an Authority Score of 8 (Semrush’s own scale, labeled “Low authority”) and a 10% traffic share for the domain, both worth tracking as the engagement continues, since a genuinely local, low-competition market like this one can move authority and traffic share meaningfully with sustained work.
Client Testimonial
