Matt Belcher

01 / ROSTER

What do these brands have in common? Me.

// Worked on directly or through agency partners since 1999.

// The full 25-year roster

Enterprise · Media · Finance

ING Bank
BHP
Fairfax — MyCareer, Domain, Drive
Virgin Mobile
Optus
Wizard Home Loans
AIA Insurance
A.Q.I.S
OurBrisbane
CFO-ONE
Finance Advocates
Debit Success (AU/NZ)

Retail · E-commerce · Lifestyle

Priceline Pharmacy
EMI / Virgin Music
Cadbury
Roses Only
RedBalloon
Sussan
Ansell
Lavalife
RSVP
Bulk Powders AU
Apaiser
Hello Chookie
Big Al Bikes
Coffex Coffee
Discount Trader
Done Dirt Cheap DVD

Industrial · Trades · Emergency

Onga Pumps
Rinnai / Brivis
B&R Storage Systems
Imperial Cartons
CMC Steel Solutions
Coldstream Timber
Robot Building
Pack & Move Boxes
ELR Plumbing
Same Day Hot Water
Locksmiths (Emergency)
Touchwood Kitchens
Rosemount Kitchens
Melbourne Landscaping & Projects
Melbourne Adv Paint
NB Custom Builds
Taskforce
Renovator Store

Professional · Health · Services

SkyBus
Infiniti Telco
Simply Headsets
Network Video
Savi Communications
SMCT
CMUE
Lauriston Girls School
Swinburne University
Kinetic Super
Business Mediation Australia
Family Mediators Australia
Wise Advisory
Light Mind Counselling
Piccolo PR
Social Exposure
Merhi Group

02 / TRACK RECORD

Firsts the rest of the industry is still catching up to.

1,000,000 keywords

Lavalife · taken off Google Canada — their #1 account

The biggest keyword campaign Google had ever seen — one million terms across the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand. The standing record was eBay at 300,000. I won Lavalife away from Google Canada as their single largest account, brought percentage-based media pricing to the market for the first time, and ran it at a $5M spend. Overnight, the rebuild doubled traffic and halved cost per conversion.

$5M SPEND · 5 COUNTRIES · BEAT EBAY'S 300K RECORD · TRAFFIC ×2 · COST/CONV ÷2

8 countries

AQIS · “Quarantine Matters” · 2003

The first paid-search campaign ever run for the Australian Government — the Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service — warning inbound travellers about Australia's strict quarantine laws across 8 countries and 5 languages, at a $500K spend. Before most of the industry had a login.

RedBalloon

keyword-level feedback

Built keyword-level conversion feedback for RedBalloon — performance read and optimised down to the individual keyword, years before the platform made it standard.

03 / DIAGNOSIS

The unvarnished truth about your account.

Most commercial Google Ads accounts are bleeding money through structural decay — quietly, every single day. Here's what I find when I open the hood. Every flag below is read from the raw value in the account, not inferred from a dashboard.

AUDIT_READOUT · SAMPLE FINDINGS ● ISSUES DETECTED

CRITICAL

A micro-conversion set as the Primary goal

A page view or a 3-second call counted as a conversion. Smart Bidding optimises to that signal — so the algorithm chases noise and starves your real leads.

CRITICAL

Performance Max cannibalising brand search and hiding spend

PMax claims credit for branded traffic that would have converted anyway, bleeds budget into Display and video dressed up as conversions, and gives you almost no search-term control. Google's favourite black box.

FLAGGED

Auto-Applied Recommendations adding broad match keywords you never picked

Left on by default, AAR quietly injects its own broad match terms — widening a controlled, exact/phrase account into open-auction spend. Most managers never check the toggle.

FLAGGED

Spend leaking outside the serviceable area

Location settings set to “presence or interest” — paying for clicks from people who will never buy, in suburbs you don't service.

If your CPCs are climbing, your agency keeps saying "trust the algorithm," or your conversion data doesn't match your bottom line — that's the signature of an account running on Google's defaults. I'll show you exactly where, in writing.

04 / THE STANCE

I'm not Google's partner.
I'm yours.

Google's automations were never built for your return. They're built for Google's. Every default, every “recommendation,” every nudge toward broad match and AI-powered everything points the same direction — more of your budget into the auction.

The AI features they keep pushing don't owe you ROI. They owe Google margin. I treat every one as guilty until your data proves otherwise.

My job is to hold the line on the controls Google would rather you hand over — match types, negatives, bidding signals, geography — and keep your money pointed at commercial intent instead of platform liquidity.

A “Google Partner” badge certifies an agency is good for Google. My only certification is your ROI.

05 / THE WORK

Two ways to work with me.

Fixed fee · one-time

Performance & Guardrail Audit

Under $15k / month$2,950

$15k – $50k / month$4,950

$50k+ / monthCustom

FLAT FEE, BY AD SPEND · NO RETAINER · 5-DAY TURNAROUND

A forensic, manual review of your live account. Not a generated PDF — the real values, read field by field, with the leaks ranked by severity and the fixes spelled out.

Auto-Applied Recommendations & match-type integrity check
Conversion tracking & primary-goal verification
Negative keyword hygiene & out-of-area spend audit
Bid strategy & signal-quality review
Ranked findings (Critical → Resolved) in a written report

Request the audit

Ongoing · by arrangement

Strategic Advisory

By brief

RETAINER · FOR BRANDS & AGENCY PARTNERS

Hands-on guidance for an in-house team, or white-label firepower for an agency that needs its hardest accounts and tracking architecture handled properly.

Account rebuilds & strict Phrase/Exact architecture
Conversion & tracking setup (GTM, GA4, server-side)
Match-type, bidding & budget isolation strategy
Cross-channel — Meta & LinkedIn acquisition
Direct line to me — no account managers in between

Start a conversation

06 / VALIDATION

What the veterans say.

“I’ve been working with Matt since 2006. We’ve collaborated on major national accounts like Priceline Pharmacy, SkyBus and Swinburne Professional, and he remains the most skilled paid-search practitioner I’ve met. Analytically rigorous, strategically sound, and never too busy to talk through the detail. What sets him apart is his generosity: he brings clients along on the thinking rather than keeping expertise locked away. Rare and valuable.”

Liz Doherty

Founder, The Brand Therapist

“Matt is a practitioner of rare calibre — someone who not only delivers on expectations but routinely exceeds them, with a diligence and precision that is increasingly uncommon. His optimisation efforts have directly contributed to sustained increases in client revenue, and his ability to consistently deliver strong return on investment has been a defining feature of his contribution. His involvement with TopRankings has been instrumental to the growth of both our organisation and our brand presence in the Australian marketplace. I have no hesitation in recommending him.”

Noam Judah

Founder, TopRankings & Digital Rescue · 7-year reference

07 / CREDENTIALS

The technical spec.

Core specialties

Google Ads (SEM / PPC): Strict Phrase/Exact architectures, advanced negative keyword hygiene, location & bidding isolation.
Tracking architecture: GTM, GA4, conversion integrity and server-side setups that report the truth.
Cross-channel acquisition: Meta Ads (Facebook / Instagram) and LinkedIn Ads.
Organic & conversion: Technical SEO since 2002, CRO, usability and site design.

Continuous advanced training

SMX — Search Marketing Expo
Attended 10 times in 12 years
Brad Geddes — Certified Knowledge
Advanced AdWords Training
2013–14
Frederick Vallaeys — Optmyzr
Advanced algorithmic & platform training
2015–18
In Google Ads continuously
Since it launched in Australia
2002

08 / WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH

I've been an online marketer since 1999, and inside Google Ads since the day it launched in Australia in 2002. For most of that time I worked white-label — the operator agencies bring in when an account actually has to perform. I've built for the Australian Government, run $5M global accounts, and rebuilt portfolios across trades, retail, finance and emergency services.

Sixteen of those years were freelance, which bought me the one thing this industry never gives you: time. I spent a good part of it studying esoteric yoga and meditation — and I teach meditation in Chiang Mai, where I work from. The discipline that sits still long enough to read a breath is the same one that reads an account clean: patience, attention, and refusing to be fooled by noise.

I don't manage accounts to keep you on a retainer. I audit them to tell you the truth — where the money's going, what Google's defaults are costing you, and what to do about it. Independent. Direct. No account managers in between.

09 / Request an audit

Stop guessing. Start auditing.

Tell me about the account. I review every enquiry personally and reply within two business days. I work with serious budgets — the form helps us both skip the wrong fit.

AUDIT · $2,950–$4,950 BY SPEND · 5-DAY TURNAROUND