Frequently asked questions, all in one place.

No. We believe in earning your business month-to-month. You can add on programs, remove programs, or cancel at any time with a 30-day notice.

Yes — this is genuinely the most common starting point. Most business owners know something isn't working but aren't sure whether it's the website, the lack of visibility, or something else entirely. A quick, free growth health check is usually the fastest way to find out.

Wollongong and the surrounding Illawarra is our core focus and where most of our clients are based, but we do work with businesses further afield where it makes sense. If you're outside the immediate area, get in touch and we'll be upfront about whether we're the right fit.

Trades, construction, and home-service businesses make up a large part of who we work with, and our services are tailored specifically to help them thriiv. But our lead capture, automation, website, and advertising strategies work just as well for professional services, retail, hospitality, and health practices — the principles behind what we do (fast, trustworthy, built to convert) apply regardless of industry.

Yes! You'll be dealing with the same people rather than being handed off between account managers who don't know your business. We think that continuity is one of the biggest differences between working with a small, local agency and a larger firm where you're just another line on a spreadsheet — and it's a big part of why so many of our clients end up sending us referrals without us ever having to ask.

Our main office is located right in North Wollongong. We are a local team focused on local businesses — we don't outsource your support or account management to overseas call centres.

Genuinely, yes. If you're located in Wollongong, Shellharbour, or across the broader Illawarra, you don't have to settle for endless video calls. We are happy to sit down over a coffee or meet you at your office to talk through your strategy.

Transparency is one of our core values. There are no hidden fees.

Yes. If you prefer to handle your marketing budget in a single annual payment rather than a monthly subscription, let us know and we can arrange a streamlined billing cycle for your business.

More than a few of our clients have. You own your website and your domain from day one, full stop — nothing is held hostage, and if you ever decide to leave, you take everything with you. We'd rather earn your business every month than trap you into staying.

We built thriiv explicitly for busy business owners who hate messing with tech. We handle all the setup, coding, tracking, and troubleshooting. You just answer the phone and look at your simplified monthly report.

It depends on the scope — a straightforward brochure-style site for a trade business is a very different job to a multi-service site for a growing professional practice. Rather than guess, we'd rather have a quick conversation about what you actually need and give you a clear, itemised quote with no hidden extras.

Every website is quoted individually because the scope varies so much. Rather than publish a generic price list that doesn't actually apply to your situation, we'd rather have a quick conversation and give you a clear, itemised quote with no hidden extras and no surprise invoices later.

A premium, custom website build typically takes between 1 and 4 weeks from onboarding to launch. That timeline lets our local team carefully craft your content, build the design, and technically optimise every single page for speed and conversion performance.

Completely fine — plenty of the businesses we work with are building their first website, not replacing one. If anything, it's simpler: there's no legacy content to untangle and no rankings to protect during a migration, just a clean build from the ground up.

It depends entirely on what you offer and how you're found, but most Wollongong trade and service businesses land somewhere between 5 and 10 pages — home, about, individual service pages, a results or gallery page, and contact. More pages isn't automatically better; every extra page needs to earn its place.

A landing page is a single, highly focused webpage designed with one goal: getting a visitor to call you or fill out a form. Standard websites often have too many distractions (About Us, galleries, blogs). When running paid ads, sending traffic to a streamlined landing page significantly increases the number of leads you capture per dollar spent.

The vast majority of local trade and service searches happen on smartphones, often by someone who wants an issue fixed fast. If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load, or looks clunky on a mobile screen, prospects will tap out and call your competitor. We engineer every site to load instantly and function flawlessly on mobile.

Yes, completely. Secure, lightning-fast Australian hosting is built directly into our active web development plans so you never have to worry about surprise tech bills (though you're welcome to stay with your current provider too). Through thriiv Care & Maintenance, we also handle ongoing content changes, new photos, and security patches so your site always stays sharp and up to date — see the Care & Maintenance section below for the full detail.

Not at all. If you already have a reliable, fast hosting provider that you're happy with, we can build or optimise your website right where it is. We offer secure, high-speed hosting as a convenience to keep everything under one roof, but the choice of where your digital assets live is entirely up to you.

Yes, and it's one of the most important parts of any redesign. Before we touch anything, we audit what's currently ranking and where your traffic is coming from, then carefully map redirects from your old pages to the new ones during launch. Skipping this step is the most common way businesses lose their Google rankings overnight during a redesign — we don't let that happen.

Not necessarily. If you've already got branding and content, great — we'll work with what you have. If you don't, we can guide you through what's needed, help with copy, and source photography so you're not stuck trying to write your own website from scratch.

Your website is built to rank — clean structure, fast load times, local SEO signals from day one — but "built to rank" and "actively climbing the rankings every month" are two different things. The website gives you the foundation; ongoing local SEO is what pushes you from page two to the map pack over time. Plenty of clients start with just the website and add SEO later.

Not at all — we treat launch as the start, not the finish. Every site we build comes with a care plan option so it stays fast, secure, and up to date, and we're on hand for content changes whenever you need something updated. Plenty of clients also come back later for SEO, ads, or lead automation once the site's live and doing its job.

You do. Any website or landing page we build specifically for your business belongs entirely to you. If you choose to leave thriiv, you take your digital assets with you.

Traditional SEO focuses on optimising your website to rank as high as possible in standard search engine results pages for specific keywords. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) focuses on structuring your information so AI systems like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Apple Intelligence can easily find, synthesise, and display your business as the direct answer to conversational questions.

Because the way people look for local services is fragmenting. While plenty of people still use standard Google search, a growing number ask conversational questions directly to voice assistants or AI apps. Running a combined strategy captures both demographics properly.

Think of search performance like physical fitness — you wouldn't expect to hit the gym once and instantly transform. It takes consistent, structured effort over time. Technical fixes and Google Business Profile optimisation can yield early Maps movement within the first 60 to 90 days, while a comprehensive campaign typically needs 6 to 12 months of sustained work to hit peak velocity and deliver a compounding return.

Yes — in fact, that's one of our core strengths. Combining local SEO with targeted local Google Ads creates a dominant search footprint, capturing searchers who click on ads and those who click on organic Maps results.

Absolutely. Speed is a primary Google ranking factor. Our hosting infrastructure hosts your site locally in Australia, delivering lightning-fast load times for local searchers, which significantly boosts your organic rankings.

Yes, but only if they're strategic. We look at local search volume and find out exactly what questions your customers in Wollongong are asking — such as "How much does a house extension cost in the Illawarra?" or "What are the council approval steps for a renovation in Shellharbour?" Answering these specific questions captures high-value traffic your competitors are completely ignoring.

We keep onboarding simple. Once we agree on a strategy, we'll just need temporary access to your website backend, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. If you don't have analytics set up yet, our team will handle the full configuration for you.

We focus on metrics that impact your bottom line — organic traffic growth, keyword rankings (both traditional and AI search citations), phone calls, and lead form submissions. You'll receive clear monthly reports and direct communication, so you always know what we're working on and how your investment is performing.

Our packages are customised based on your industry's competitiveness, your geographic target area, and your growth goals. We offer flexible monthly retainers designed specifically for local service businesses and growing brands — with no hidden fees or long lock-in contracts.

No agency can ethically guarantee a #1 spot because Google constantly updates its algorithms and no one owns the search engine. What we do guarantee is a data-driven, white-hat SEO strategy built on best practices that consistently drives higher search visibility, increased traffic, and genuine local leads to your business.

We structure your website's content so AI language models can easily read, understand, and quote your business. This involves implementing advanced schema markup (structured data), organising content in direct Q&A formats, building conversational keyword strategies, and ensuring your business entity is verified across key authoritative web directories.

Yes. Google's AI Overviews pull directly from sites that provide clear, authoritative, and structured answers to complex queries. By optimising your site for Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), we increase the likelihood that Google's AI selects your business as a primary source in its generated search summaries.

Absolutely. Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the listing that shows up in Google Maps, and for local Wollongong businesses, ranking well there is essential. We fully optimise your profile — categories, service areas, photos, and review strategy — manage local citations, build regional backlinks, and optimise your location pages to help you rank in Google's Local 3-Pack.

Yes. Whether you want to capture leads across the Illawarra, the South Coast, or expand into Greater Sydney and nationwide, we craft tailored multi-location SEO and AEO strategies to reach your target geographic regions.

In most cases, we work directly with your existing website (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Squarespace, etc.). If technical issues or slow speeds are holding your rankings back, we will advise you on the necessary on-site optimisations first to make sure you get results.

It depends entirely on your industry and target market. Google Ads is ideal for "high-intent" searches happening right now (e.g. someone typing "emergency plumber near me"), while Meta Ads works exceptionally well for visual trades, offer-driven promotions, generating demand, and retargeting people who've already visited your site. During our strategy call, we'll review your business and recommend the highest-ROI entry point for your budget.

Your ad spend goes directly to the ad platforms. We typically recommend a starting ad budget of $30 to $50 per day to ensure your campaigns collect enough data to optimise quickly and drive consistent, daily lead volume.

They can be if built lazily, as social ads interrupt a user's feed. However, we counter this entirely by using "higher intent" form layouts, context cards, and injecting strict pre-qualifying questions directly into the form to filter out accidental clicks.

It helps, but you don't need a professional camera crew. Authenticity beats high production value every time — crisp smartphone video of your team on a local job site or clean before-and-after photos usually outperform polished corporate graphics. We'll tell you exactly what quick snaps to send us.

Once your campaigns, landing pages, and lead forms go live, your ads appear instantly. Most of our clients start receiving direct phone calls and inquiries within the first week of launch.

We apply geo-fencing and suburb-level targeting parameters, ensuring your budget is spent exclusively on users physically located within your chosen service boundary — for example, Helensburgh down to Kiama.

You retain 100% ownership of your Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager accounts, and domain data. We build and manage everything transparently under your account so you maintain full access and data control — even if you ever decide to stop working with us.

We set up end-to-end conversion tracking on your landing pages and lead forms, along with dynamic call tracking numbers. This means every time someone submits a form or calls your phone, you'll know exactly which keyword, ad, or platform brought them to you.

Most prospects don't buy on the very first touchpoint. We can build cross-platform retargeting funnels so that people who visit your Google landing page without booking will start seeing your brand, client testimonials, and special offers on Facebook and Instagram until they're ready to convert.

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing up when people type in irrelevant terms (like "DIY", "jobs", "free", or competitor brand names). For example, if you're a commercial plumber, we make sure you don't pay for clicks from people searching for DIY plumbing tips, apprentice jobs, or residential repairs. By constantly updating your negative keyword shield, we make sure every dollar goes toward high-intent local buyers.

We handle all the heavy lifting — writing ad copy, setting up targeting, and building your landing pages or lead forms. All we need from you is access to your ad accounts (or we can set them up with you), basic business details, and a few real photos/videos of your team at work.

We'll give you a quote for our management fee — the work we do to build, monitor, and optimise your ad campaigns. Your "ad spend" is the actual budget that goes directly to Google or Meta to display your ads. You pay this budget directly to the ad platforms, and we help you determine a budget that fits your goals.

You absolutely can, but managing ad platforms efficiently requires constant tracking and technical optimisation. Without proper setup, it is incredibly easy to waste hundreds of dollars on broad keywords or incorrect geographic targeting. We save you time and make sure every dollar of your ad spend works as hard as possible.

Don't worry if you don't have them. If you're starting fresh, our team will handle the entire backend setup, creation, and configuration of your ad accounts from scratch, ensuring they are structured properly right from day one.

We'll audit what you currently have. If your current page loads fast and is built to convert, we can certainly send ad traffic to it. If it has leaks that will waste your ad budget, we will build a high-converting page optimised for your campaigns.

While we cannot ethically guarantee an exact number of leads (as market conditions, locations, and seasons fluctuate), we do guarantee transparent tracking. You will see every single click, call, and form submission that our campaigns generate.

We guarantee to have your thriiv Lead Automation features — including the missed call text-back and lead routing — fully operational in under 24 business hours from receiving your onboarding information.

Yes. Because we build on robust, pre-architected integration frameworks tailored for service businesses, we can map, build, test, and launch your complete automation setup within a single week without disrupting your daily operations.

When someone calls your business number and you can't answer (whether you're on a roof, driving, or with another client), our system detects the missed call and instantly fires off a customised text message to the caller (e.g., "Hey, sorry we missed your call! How can we help you out today?"). This keeps the prospect engaged before they move down Google to call your competitor.

No special hardware is required. Leads from your website and Facebook forms can be sent straight to your existing smartphone via text or email.

Once you mark a job as complete in our system, it triggers an automated text or email to your customer thanking them and providing a direct link to your Google Business Profile. It makes gathering 5-star reviews effortless.

Our automated workflows include smart feedback filtering. If a client selects a high rating score, they are taken directly to your Google Business Profile page. If they express dissatisfaction, the system routes their feedback directly to an internal form so you can address their issue privately before it ever goes public.

Absolutely. We set you up with proven, high-converting templates out of the box, but you can easily tweak the wording to match your exact business personality and natural tone of voice.

Not at all. We train every AI model and text prompt specifically on your business tone, Australian local terminology, and exact service guidelines. Customers experience a prompt, polite, and natural interaction that reflects your brand standard.

No. Our automations are built to layer seamlessly over what you already use — including Google Calendar, Outlook, ServiceM8, Cliniko, HubSpot, Salesforce, Tradify, Fergus, or standard mobile and landline numbers. You don't need to learn new software, and through our thriiv Custom arrangements we can also trigger automations directly from actions inside your existing job management system.

We build custom fallback logic into every workflow. If an inquiry exceeds the AI's training scope, the system seamlessly takes a message, notifies your mobile immediately via SMS/email with a full transcript, and lets the customer know a team member will reach out shortly.

No confusing charts or digital marketing jargon. Your monthly report breaks down three main numbers:

• How many leads came in.
• How many jobs were won (tracked via our platform).
• How many new reviews you collected.

Websites aren't "set and forget." Software needs regular security patches, backups need to be kept current, and things quietly break — broken links, expiring SSL certificates, plugin conflicts. Without ongoing care, small issues can turn into downtime, lost leads, or a hacked website. A care plan means someone's always watching, so problems get caught and fixed before your customers ever notice.

We'll always check with you first. Extra time is billed at a simple hourly rate, or you can upgrade to the next plan at any time.

Anything that fits within your monthly allowance — content updates, image swaps, text changes, small technical fixes, and general troubleshooting. If a request will take longer than that, we'll give you a quote first before starting.

Yes. Upgrade or downgrade anytime — no lock-in contracts.

Plans are billed monthly, and you can update your payment details or cancel anytime — no lock-in contracts.

Critical issues are anything that takes your site offline, exposes a security vulnerability, or breaks your contact forms or checkout. Everything else — content edits, image swaps, small tweaks — is treated as a standard request.

Our uptime monitoring alerts us the moment it happens — usually before you even notice. We'll investigate and fix it as a priority.

While no host can promise 100% uptime, our monitoring alerts us the moment your site goes down — day or night — so outages are caught and resolved fast, not discovered by an unhappy customer.

Hosting is included in every plan — fast, secure, Australian-based servers, sized for your site. Already happy with your current host? That's fine too — we don't force you to move, we can work with your existing setup.

Yes — once you join a Care plan, we can handle the entire migration for you at no extra cost, with zero downtime for your visitors.

Every plan includes automated malware and vulnerability scanning plus regular security patches, so threats are caught and blocked before they become a problem.

Yes — every plan includes a regular report, except thriiv Anchor, which is hosting and security only. Upgrade anytime to add reporting.