Technical SEO
Speed, structure, crawlability and schema. We clear every obstacle between your pages and the top of the results.
SEO New Zealand
Outrank the names with ten times your budget.
Big incumbents rank because they got there first and have coasted since. Their SEO is old, generic and slow to move. That is the opening. We build the technical foundation, the content and the local presence that quietly takes their positions, one search at a time.
The best business in the market is invisible if nobody can find it.
Buyers do not scroll to page two. If the incumbent owns the top of the results and you are nowhere, you are not competing. You are hoping. Search is the one channel where a sharp challenger can quietly outwork a bigger name and take the traffic that was theirs by default.
- Nowhere on page one
- Beaten by weaker rivals
- Slow site, sinking rank
- Thin, generic content
- Missing from AI answers
They rank on habit. You will rank on merit.
Incumbents inherited their rankings and stopped working for them. That comfort is exactly what a hungry challenger converts into position. Search rewards the site that is faster, clearer and more useful, not the one that is simply older.
The incumbent
- Ranks on age, not effort
- Stale content, rarely updated
- Slow site dragging rankings down
- Absent from AI Overviews
You, with Igloo
- Rankings earned and defended
- Content that answers real searches
- Fast, clean, technically sound
- Built to be cited in AI answers
Foundations, content and authority, working together.
Rankings are not one lever. We line up the technical foundation, the content and the local signals so they compound, instead of pulling against each other.
Content that ranks
Pages that answer what your buyers actually search, written to be useful first and to rank because of it.
Local SEO
Google Business Profile, map pack, citations and reviews, tuned to own the searches in your patch.
Digital PR & links
Authority earned the honest way, through coverage and content worth linking to. No spammy shortcuts that Google punishes.
Reporting that is honest
Rankings, traffic and enquiries as real numbers, not a dashboard of vanity metrics. You always know what is working.
AI search visibility
Structured, citable content built for Google’s AI Overviews and the answers people now ask ChatGPT for.
One line on the invoice. Five disciplines in the work.
SEO gets sold as a single service. In practice it is several crafts that have to agree with each other. Here is what each one does, and when it matters to you.
Technical SEO
The plumbing: crawlability, indexation, site structure, canonicals, schema markup and Core Web Vitals. Google cannot rank what it cannot read, and it quietly demotes what loads badly. Because we build sites ourselves, the technical layer is engineered in from the start, not patched on afterwards. Every engagement begins here, because everything else stands on it.
Local SEO
If your customers are in a place, this is the discipline that pays back first: Google Business Profile, reviews, citations and location pages that earn their spot. It is a deep enough craft that we run it as its own service. See local SEO for the map pack work in full.
SEO content
Rankings are earned by pages, and pages are made of words. We map the queries your buyers actually type, then build pages that answer them properly, on a publishing rhythm you can sustain. The full system lives under SEO content writing: keyword maps, page templates and a refresh cadence, not four random blog posts a month.
Ecommerce SEO
Stores have their own problems: category structure, duplicated product copy, faceted navigation and the speed tax of theme bloat. Get those right and organic search becomes your cheapest sales channel. We handle it alongside our ecommerce website builds, so the store and its SEO are one job, not two vendors.
AI search optimisation
Buyers now ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews before they ever see page one. Earning citations there is a new discipline with old foundations: structure, speed and clarity. How we approach it, honestly, is below.
SEO for AI search: AEO and GEO.
Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation are the industry’s new labels for an old idea: make your site the easiest source to cite. AI assistants and Google’s AI Overviews pull from pages they can parse quickly and trust. Nobody controls those citations, and anyone guaranteeing them is guessing at your expense.
What demonstrably helps is unglamorous. Structured data that spells out who you are and what you do. Pages that render fast without a wall of JavaScript. A clean entity footprint, where your name, location and services match everywhere they appear. Content written as direct answers instead of marketing fog. That happens to be exactly how we build sites anyway, so you are not paying for a bolt-on. You are already built for the engines that are coming, not just the one that is here.
Why did my rankings drop?
Usually one of four things. A Google core update shifted what the algorithm rewards. A redesign or migration broke URLs and nobody mapped the redirects. Your content went stale while a competitor kept publishing. Or your site slowly got heavier until it started failing Core Web Vitals. We audit in that order, because it is the order of likelihood, and we tell you which one it was.
Speed is the drop nobody notices happening. Every plugin, tracking script and page builder update adds weight, and Google measures the result on real phones, not your office wifi. It is why website speed optimisation is a standalone service here, and why our SEO work starts with how fast your pages actually load. And when the platform itself is the ceiling, the honest fix is a WordPress to Astro migration, with every redirect mapped so the rankings you still have come with you.
Is SEO worth it for small NZ businesses?
When your buyers search for what you sell, yes, and it is usually the best money you will spend, because rankings keep paying after the work stops. Ads stop the moment the card declines. Rankings built properly freeze in place: hard to win, harder to dislodge. If you serve Auckland, start with the searches on your doorstep and expand from there.
When nobody searches for your category, or you need leads this fortnight, we will say so and point you somewhere better. SEO is a compounding asset, not a rescue. The honest test is simple: if one new customer a month does not cover the retainer, take the audit and the plan, and do the work in-house at your own pace.
Carve. Build. Weather.
One method, three moves. SEO is not a stunt. It is compounding work, and it rewards the studio that keeps showing up.
01
Carve the target
We map what your buyers search, where the incumbent is weakest, and the terms worth owning. That shortlist becomes the plan, not a spray of keywords.
02
Build the foundation
We fix the technical base, then ship the content and signals that earn rankings. Fast site, useful pages, real authority.
03
Weather the algorithm
We track, refine and keep publishing. Rankings compound for those who stay in it, and updates stop being a threat.
The machinery behind the quiet climb.
Rankings move when structure, content and performance all pull the same way. These are the systems we use to make that happen.
- 01 Technical SEO Site structure, metadata, headings, canonicals, crawl paths and indexation.
- 02 Local SEO City pages, suburb pages, service-area structure and Google Business Profile support.
- 03 Schema markup Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Article, Breadcrumb and FAQ schema where useful.
- 04 Google Search Console Search queries, indexing, coverage, rankings and search performance.
- 05 Google Analytics Traffic, conversion paths and behaviour tracking.
- 06 Microsoft Clarity Heatmaps, recordings and user behaviour insights.
- 07 Content architecture Service pages, supporting guides, internal links and topical depth.
- 08 Core Web Vitals Speed, layout stability and mobile performance.
- 09 AI Overview readiness Clear structure, direct answers, entity signals and citation-friendly content.
- 10 Programmatic page systems City, service and suburb templates built carefully, not thin duplicated pages.
7 figureswe grew our own brand, Spruce, from zero on $0 ad spend
4.9Spruce’s real Google rating, from 131 reviews
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No surprise invoices.
SEO is ongoing work, so most of it is monthly. Here is roughly where it lands. We agree the exact scope and number with you before anything starts.
Audit & plan
from $900
one-off
A full technical and content audit with a prioritised, do-it-yourself-or-with-us plan. Yours to keep.
Monthly SEO
$1.5k to $4k
per month
Ongoing technical work, content and authority building. The compounding engine that takes and holds rankings.
Local sprint
from $2,500
4 to 6 weeks
A focused push to own the map pack and local searches in your city, then hand you the reins.
Indicative ranges, not a quote, and no lock-in retainers. We scope the exact number with you up front, in writing, before anything begins.
The services that feed your rankings.
Ranking challengers across New Zealand.
Local search is won market by market, on the terms your buyers actually type nearby. Start with yours:
The things people ask first.
How long does SEO take to show results in NZ?
Technical fixes can move things within weeks. Competitive terms usually take three to six months of steady work, and the gains compound from there. Anyone promising page one in a fortnight is selling you something other than SEO.
How much do SEO services cost per month in New Zealand?
Ongoing SEO with us runs from $1,500 to $4,000 a month depending on how competitive your terms are, and a one-off audit starts around $900. We scope the exact number in writing before anything begins, and there are no lock-in contracts.
What is the difference between SEO and local SEO?
SEO earns visibility wherever your buyers search from. Local SEO targets the map pack and the searches with a suburb or city attached, through your Google Business Profile, reviews and location pages. If you serve a physical area, local SEO usually pays back first, which is why we run it as a dedicated service.
Do you guarantee first page rankings?
No, and nobody honest can, because Google decides the order and never signed your contract. What we guarantee is the work: a technically clean site, content that answers real searches, and clear reporting so you can see whether it is paying for itself.
How does AI search like ChatGPT change SEO?
The habits change, the fundamentals do not. AI assistants cite sites that are fast, clearly structured and specific about who they are and what they do. The work that earns Google rankings, done properly, is the same work that earns AI citations. What dies is thin, generic content, which these engines skip entirely.
Let’s get you found.
Tell us the terms you want to own and who currently owns them. Or start smaller: ask for a free SEO teardown of your current site and we will show you exactly what is holding it back. No lock-in, no hot air.
Start a projector email hello@igloostudio.co.nz