A keyword is worth ranking for when three things are true at once: the people searching it want to buy, your business can realistically reach the first page, and ranking for it would bring you real enquiries. Miss any one of the three and a top spot changes nothing. This guide, from CJ Digital, a web design and digital marketing agency in Hawthorn, Melbourne, walks you through the same three checks in plain language. You can use them to pressure-test a term like the SEO services Melbourne businesses compete for before you commit any budget to it.
You’ve decided you want to be number one for a particular search. Maybe a competitor turns up for it and you don’t. Maybe someone mentioned it to you over coffee. Either way, you’ve arrived already fixed on the term, and you want your agency to make it happen.
That instinct is fair, and it’s common. But before anyone spends a dollar, the term itself needs a quick check. Plenty of keywords that feel important turn out not to be worth chasing, and some that look small are exactly where the work pays off. Here’s how to tell them apart.
Start by asking who is on the other end of the search. This is called search intent: the reason behind the words someone types. Two people can type very different things, and only one of them is ready to hire.
Take a broad term like “web design”. It pulls in a crowd, and most of them are not buyers:
Now take “web designer near me”, or a suburb-plus-service search like “web designer Hawthorn”. That searcher is usually a local business owner with a job in mind. Far fewer people, but a much higher share of them are potential customers.
The lesson is simple. A big number next to a keyword tells you how many people search it, not how many of them want to buy. Always ask what the searcher is trying to do, not just how many there are.
Next, look at how hard the keyword is to win. Search engines rank pages roughly by how trusted and relevant they are, and some searches are crowded with huge national sites and directories. A single local business will not push past them quickly, no matter how good its website is.
There’s a rough measure for this called keyword difficulty: a score out of 100 that estimates how hard it is to reach the first page for a term. Higher means harder. You don’t need to obsess over the exact figure, but it tells you whether a keyword is a short job or a long campaign.
Here’s an honest example from our own patch. “SEO services Melbourne” gets about 3,600 searches a month, and “SEO Melbourne” about 6,600. Both are worth targeting. But they sit at mid difficulty, around 59 out of 100, and we don’t yet rank for them ourselves. Terms like these are a real target, not a quick win, and any agency that promises page one in a few weeks for them is guessing.
This is also where being honest about budget matters. We don’t lock clients into contracts, partly because the right keyword target should earn its place month to month, not trap you while a hard term slowly moves.
The last check is the one that matters most, and the one owners skip. If you ranked number one tomorrow, would your phone ring more? A top spot on a term nobody searches, or a term buyers don’t use when they’re ready to hire, changes nothing on your bottom line.
This is where a small keyword can beat a big one. “Web designer near me” gets around 880 searches a month, and we rank third for it. Smaller again is “llm seo agency melbourne”, at roughly 70 searches a month, where we sit nineteenth. Seventy searches sounds tiny. But every person typing it is a business shopping for that exact service. Win that term and the enquiries are warm.
So a ranking is only worth the effort if the people it puts you in front of are ready to buy what you sell. Volume on its own is a vanity number. Enquiries are the real score.
Put the two kinds of keyword side by side and the difference is clear.
| Broad keyword (e.g. “web design”) | Buyer-intent keyword (e.g. “web designer Hawthorn”) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who searches it | Students, agencies, job seekers, people comparing free tools, the odd buyer | Local business owners with a job in mind |
| How hard to rank | Often crowded with national sites and directories | Usually winnable for a focused local business |
| How hard to rank | High traffic, few enquiries | Lower traffic, warmer enquiries |
None of this means ambition is bad. Sometimes the term you walked in fixed on passes all three checks, and then it’s exactly the right thing to chase.
A keyword you want is worth the work when:
If a term clears all three, the size of the number matters less. A mid-difficulty target like the SEO services Melbourne keyword can still be the right call when the searchers are real buyers and the payoff is steady work down the track. The point of the three checks is not to talk you out of big targets. It’s to make sure the target you pick is one worth paying for.
One more thing worth knowing. AI search is changing which keywords pay off. Tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers tend to pull from specific, question-shaped searches and match them to the business that fits best. That pushes even more value toward the smaller, sharper buyer-intent terms, and away from the broad ones. The big keyword you came in chasing may matter less next year than the precise one you’ve never thought about.
So before you commit a budget to any term, bring it to us. We’ll run the keyword you’re curious about through these three checks with you, in one conversation, before anyone spends a dollar on it. You’ll leave knowing whether it’s worth the chase, or whether a smaller term will do more for your phone.
SEO is getting wider. AI search tools now answer questions by pulling from clear, well-structured pages, and they cite some sites and skip others. The pages that earn those mentions are the same clean, answerable pages good SEO already builds. So the work that wins AI citations is becoming part of what good SEO includes. It should start showing up in your monthly conversation. If your account manager has not raised how your pages perform in AI answers yet, add it to your list of questions.
If you are not sure your current SEO is doing what you pay for, ask us for a second opinion. We will look at what is being done, what is moving, and what your site needs next, then tell you straight. It costs you nothing but the time of a conversation, and you will come away knowing whether to stay where you are, switch, or change the plan.
Search intent is the reason behind a search: what the person typing it is trying to do. It tells you whether a searcher wants to buy, learn, or just browse, which matters more than how many people search the term.
You can read intent from the wording and from the results already ranking. Words like “near me”, “cost”, “quote” or a suburb name signal a buyer, while “what is” or “how to” signal someone reading. Search the term yourself and see whether page one is full of products and services or guides and definitions.
Several smaller, specific keywords usually beat one big one for a local business. Specific terms are easier to win and bring warmer enquiries, while one broad term is harder to reach and often pulls in people who never buy.
A competitive Melbourne term often takes several months to a year of steady work, not weeks. Mid-difficulty terms like “SEO Melbourne” sit in that range. Anyone promising page one in a few weeks for a competitive keyword is guessing.
Not on its own. A competitor ranking for a term doesn’t prove it brings them work, and their business may sell something a little different to yours. Run the term through the three checks first, rather than assuming their target is the right one for you.
