Source to Brisbane Business News magazine, Nov 2010.
When you type ‘SEO’ (Search Engine Optimisation) into Google.com.au, Brisbane-based Dejan SEO is close to the top, but founder Dan Petrovic says there is a lot more to his strategy than getting top rankings for clients.
“We can tell them how much traffic they will receive in a certain position and we chisel it one bit at a time, continuously bringing traffic to them from day one, so it’s a much smarter use of their money,” he says.
“You can pick the low hanging fruit first and that’s been a big hit for clients. Of course we have enormous technical knowledge and lots of clever tactics to achieve results, but our main strength is our strategy.”
Petrovic came to Brisbane from Croatia aged 17, speaking English ‘as well as any tourist’, but now he owns an international business with a mix of clients, ranging from local SMEs to Fuji Xerox.
In 2008 he left his position as regional manager for a local internet marketing company, going full time with a consultancy he had built up in his spare time since 2000.
“It got to the stage where I had to move on with my business, and in 08-09 we acquired a number of clients including Fuji Xerox, product development company NetBrands, as well as partnerships in the US and Europe,” he says.
“That expanded to Real Insurance, Aussie Home Loans’ insurance section and Guardian Insurance, so obviously having bigger clients means you need to supply more than just one person to deal with them.”
The company has several clients in the US, UK and Germany, with two European office in Croatia and Serbia. Closer to home, Petrovic says customers are ‘begging’ him to open more offices.
“Our customers are begging us to move to Sydney and Melbourne so we will be setting up new offices, within three to six months to Sydney and in the next year or so to Melbourne,” he says.
“This quarter we had $250, 000 turnover so this financial year we will be a $1 million company, which feels good.”
In a competitive industry Petrovic is content to share his not-so-secret tips to success, pitching himself as an industry expert.
“We’ve spoken recently at presentations and our style is to share the knowledge we have by telling people how SEO works, rather than keeping everything to ourselves. Keeping ourselves open is what separates us from everyone else,” he says.
“On a weekly basis we’ll roll out an SEO TV program addressing the pressing issues in the space and it’ll help us to establish ourselves as a thought leader in the industry.”
Dan Petrovic, the managing director of DEJAN, is Australia’s best-known name in the field of search engine optimisation. Dan is a web author, innovator and a highly regarded search industry event speaker.
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6886-3211