SEO Hastings, from the right Hastings.
The top result for this search in New Zealand is currently an agency in Hastings, East Sussex, roughly eighteen thousand kilometres away. That is how little is genuinely competing for Hastings. We have run search and ads for Hawke's Bay businesses since 2019, and this is a market we know street by street.
Open · Hastings CBD
Open · Mahora
Opens 8am · Havelock North
Example local results. Not live data.
The number one result is in England.
We are not being cute. When we pulled the New Zealand results for this search in September 2026, the top organic listing was artemis.marketing serving its Sussex office page, for Hastings in East Sussex. Below it sat national agencies with a Hastings page, a couple of genuine Hawke's Bay operators, and a global services directory.
Google is not confused about where you are. It simply had nothing better to show, because almost nobody has built a page for Hastings customers about Hastings work. That is an unusually open door, and it is worth walking through before someone else notices.
Three places Hastings customers find you.
Most SEO only chases the blue links. Local customers pick from the map pack, the organic results and, increasingly, AI answers. We work on all three.
The map pack
The three map results under the search bar take the biggest share of local clicks. Your Google Business Profile, your reviews and how close you are to the person searching decide whether you appear for a search in Hastings at all.
The organic results
The classic blue links. Pages built around the exact jobs you do and the areas you cover across Hawke's Bay, on a site fast enough that Google trusts it. This is the part that compounds.
AI answers
More people now ask Google's AI overview or ChatGPT who to call in Hastings. We structure your site so those answers can read it, quote it and recommend you by name. Almost nobody in these markets has caught up yet.
Hastings is not one market.
One page listing every suburb ranks for none of them. Separate pages for the work you do in the areas you actually travel to is what moves, and it is the step almost every local site skips.
Hastings central and Mahora
The CBD, the civic square and Mahora. Commercial premises, older housing and the maintenance, compliance and fitout work that comes with both. The most searched part of the district and, as above, barely defended.
Havelock North
Twenty minutes and a completely different customer. Higher property values, more planned and discretionary work, and buyers who research before they call. Havelock North gets searched by name far more than its size suggests, and almost nobody has a page for it.
Flaxmere, Camberley and the west
Flaxmere, Camberley and Raureka. Denser residential, steady repair and maintenance work, and effectively zero competing content for any of the suburb names. Cheap rankings attached to real jobs.
The Heretaunga plains and Central Hawke's Bay
Clive, Bridge Pa, Twyford, Whakatu and out to Waipawa and Waipukurau. Rural and lifestyle properties, bigger jobs, longer drives. Worth pages for the runs you genuinely make, and not for the ones you do not.
Need the phone ringing before SEO lands?
SEO takes months. Google Ads takes days. We have been running these auctions for Hawke's Bay businesses for years, so we can tell you what a plumbing or roofing click actually costs in Hastings rather than quoting you a national average.
- Campaigns targeted to Hastings, Havelock North or the plains separately, not one blanket radius
- Negative keywords that stop your budget going on job hunters, pickers and DIYers
- Conversion tracking wired up properly, so you know which clicks became calls
- Monthly reporting on cost per enquiry, not impressions
Enquiries from homeowners and builders at about $6 each for nearly five years, from one tightly managed campaign run month after month. A Hawke's Bay business, not a Hastings one, and every number is theirs to verify in their own account.
Read the case studyStraight answers.
Ryan, one of the two owners, is based in Hawke's Bay and we have run campaigns for businesses here since 2019, so this is home ground. Matt, the other owner, is based in Auckland. Everywhere else in the country, the answer is a plain no.
Yes. When we pulled the New Zealand results in September 2026, the number one organic listing for this search was a UK agency's page for Hastings in East Sussex. You can check it yourself. It says less about them than it does about how little has been built for Hastings in Hawke's Bay.
Barely competitive at all. Below the English result, page one was national agencies running a Hastings page, a couple of genuine Hawke's Bay operators and a global directory. A page written for Hastings customers about Hastings work has very little to beat.
Hastings on its own is a small search market and we would rather say that plainly. The searches that matter are service plus suburb rather than the generic ones, and for a trade business where a won job is worth four figures, a handful a month pays for the work several times over. If your services turn out to be too thin here, we will tell you.
If you work in both, yes. Napier and Hastings are twenty minutes apart and search like different towns, and a single page hedging between the two ranks properly for neither. That is the most common mistake in Hawke's Bay marketing, and several of the businesses ranking above you are making it right now.
Yes. Havelock North punches well above its size in search and almost nobody has a page for it, which makes it one of the cheapest rankings in the region. Waipawa and Waipukurau are worth pages if you genuinely drive down there.
SEO is $497 +GST a month, the same as one ad campaign, and it stands on its own or alongside your website and ads. Ad spend, if you run ads, is separate and goes straight to Google. The free leads audit works out what you need first.
Trades and home services are our specialty and most of our Hawke's Bay case studies, but the same system works for any Hastings local service business that lives on local search. If we do not think we are the right fit, we will tell you on the call.
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We'll show you where you rank in Hastings right now, what's holding you back, and what it would take to own your local searches.
Hastings is wide open. Take it before England does.
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