Today we will talk about the world of SEO and how it revolves around it. You may have already heard something about SEO scammers from the open source of the Internet or from your friends, colleagues and business partners, but now we will go back to all the key points because knowing a tool well is the first way not to be scammed.
First of all, let's find out what the acronym SEO stands for and what it is …
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it indicates those tricks and marketing strategies aimed at increasing the visibility of a website, improving its position in search engine rankings, considering the actual results or those that are not paid. Clearly, more aspects are taken into consideration, ranging from the optimization of the site structure, of the HTML code and of the textual content to the management of the links that mention your site or those that from your site direct you to others. Since Google is the most used search engine in the world, it is clear that most of the efforts will be directed to obtain the maximum results possible from the search engine giant.
Doing SEO and doing it well is not something you learn overnight and unfortunately, there are so many charlatans who pretend to be professionals. Let's look in detail at those factors that can help us understand if the person we are dealing with is not the professional that is right for us in the SEO field.
Be wary of whom?
They offer you amazing results at too low price
Doing SEO in a professional way implies skills and hard work, so it is impossible to offer quality services for just a few dollars a day. A good job (of simple SEO!) can’t cost less than 500-600 dollars per month. Typical SEO costs for an average SEO project can range from 750 to 5,000 dollars per month, a one-time project can be ranged between 5,000-30,000+ dollars per month, and average hourly rates for SEO consultants are between 100-250+ dollars per hour. It's digital marketing industry standard. Figures such as 5 dollars per day or 100 dollars per year are only mirrors for larks. Quality is priced.
They do not offer you concrete results and does not allow you to access reports constantly
It does not matter whether they only increase visits or that the positioning improves if this is not followed by CONVERSIONS. Anything that does not turn into a sale or a connection with a potential new customer is not useful to your business. It is also essential that you be able to monitor the situation and check the results of the intervention at any time to be aware of the positive effects it has caused. If the SEO agency or consultant does not talk to you about conversions and does not allow you to constantly view the reports they are not the people you are looking for.
They do not ask you for information on the activity you perform
A good SEO activity must take into consideration what you do because it must target your targeted customers and get you qualified leads. Nothing can be generic or left to chance. What does not become conversion is not useful to your business.
They guarantee you the first position on Google on the front page or, otherwise, to appear in the first 10 ten of the search engine
Two very different things, but both wrong. No one can ever guarantee you the first position because it is an algorithm that determines it and there is no one who has privileged channels to know it. It is not a promise that can be kept. The second one is a useless statement. The vast majority of users do not go beyond the first page so what's the point of guaranteeing to be mentioned in the top 20 if most won't go beyond the top 10? The visibility gained is almost zero.
They suggest you do PPC (pay per click) to move up a position
Investing in Google Ads has absolutely no influence on organic positioning. Don't listen to those who quote you the PPC and suggest you pay to move up a position. They are not related factors and paying will not get your purpose. It is good to do PPC Marketing, and it is useful in some projects to preside over the top positions for certain keywords in an INITIAL phase of an SEO project or until the site rises organically in a natural way. Remember that to see results in SEO activities, the timeframe is a variable it is estimated that only about 20% of users click on Google ads. Have you ever wondered why some ads are marked by nice colors? The answer is to make the ads more attractive to psychologically connect with the visitors in order to increase the conversion rate.
They do not guide you in creating valuable content
It may seem trivial, but it is not obvious: the content is the basis from which to start “the Content is the King“. The text should be useful, pleasant to read and repeat the keywords with a natural frequency. A good text for SEO purposes is not a collage of keywords and platitudes, and readers want more … the more captivating your text is, the more it will be read and linked, with a consequent increase in visibility.
They do not get you results and has no references
Be wary of those who do not show you examples of successful placements that you have made and to your questions about their previous successful projects. There is no better yardstick than seeing concrete results and hearing the opinions of those who have dealt with the consultant or agency you would like to rely on. Also do not wait too long for results that do not arrive: if within 6-12 months from the beginning of the activities you have not had any feedback it is difficult for them to arrive later. The results must be touched. Without increasing contacts from the web, it is useless to continue. You must change course or, better, consultant.
Cheap SEO does not work
There is no way to sweeten it if you are looking to invest in web positioning, be clear: cheap SEO does not work, and it will never work!
We all want to get good and cheap services, right? It is in our nature, but, although the Internet is full of offers of this type, a serious and professional SEO strategy can't cost the month $50, $100 or $200, at least not if you are looking for real results.
The search engine optimization requires constant work based on a medium-term strategy if we want to enjoy its benefits, so we must be careful when offered cheap SEO quick results because it can cost your website! Professional services, constant communication, consulting and quality work have basic costs that do not correspond to an offer of $100, and in the following lines, we will explain, in detail; with examples.
Cheap SEO is not good SEO
Any service has implicit costs, and this is no exception. It takes time and strategy for your company to appear on the search engines, something that is not possible with cheap service. The Internet is full of competitors who invest resources in SEO and, to fight against them, you must do the same.
And you will ask yourself, but how much can it cost to upload my keyword to the first positions, because here we will explain it to you?
You need (at least) a professional
To develop an SEO positioning strategy you need, first of all, a strategist or professional in the field. Not a fellow or someone who has done a weekend course in positioning, but a person with training and experience who has the ability to analyze your website in depth, someone who has invested in their training, who has worked with different clients, that has effective method and capacity.
If an SEO or self-employed agency charges $100 for each client and has 10 clients, they will hardly have raised $1,000. With this amount, it is not possible to pay the salary of a professional, much less assume the costs that we will list below. Therefore if the cheap SEO that you’re offered costs that, it is clear that you will not get quality results because there are many of the costs of a good service that are not being paid.
You need quality links that point to your site
The link building service is offered by anyone, the good link building only a few. And this is where the biggest disasters come from who sell cheap SEO.
For a link to be of quality and provide your website with qualified authority and traffic, it must come from a website related to your niche, that has real traffic, that this traffic comes from the country or countries where your main market is located, the anchor is natural and the content is of quality. For your selection, a professional must intervene to choose that link correctly.
But there are many SEO pirates who offer their clients links from links farms, toxic links, spam from countries such as India, China or Russia with anchors in other languages. Come on, and junk links are very punishable by Google. That's what you can get for free or by paying two dollars: risk your project.
You need payment tools for analysis
Both in an SEO agency and in the case of an independent professional, it is necessary to use tools for analysis. These tools are NOT free! Some have a high cost, and therefore the cheap SEO and the use of these services are incompatible.
We can take Ahrefs as an example. Ahrefs, a basic tool for the study of competitors with which we discover the keywords that bring the best traffic to the competition, or the pages that rank best, costs between $99 and $999 per month depending on the plan. Semrush, between $99 and $399, a stock photo base like Shutterstock, because you can't use stolen photos for a client's website and depending on the project a free stock does not have what you need, costs between $125 and $199 monthly.
And these are just some small examples. The analysis and the quality service require many small tools that allow companies to offer an optimal service, and you have to pay for them.
You need quality content
With cheap SEO you can not enjoy creating quality content because, just as with web positioning, you need a professional to achieve it. If you want your website to start positioning for the keywords that interest you, it is better for you to have your content strategy carried out by someone who understands the topic, someone able to find long tail titles, main keywords and derivatives with traffic, with SEO knowledge and above all, with the ability to generate original texts, without plagiarizing.
You need a person who understands who your target audience is, who knows how to analyze your competitors, how to create inbound and transactional content, how to optimize SEO … and long etcetera! And not everyone is worth it, to get good results also requires training and experience.
Sometimes, you will need a developer
Many modifications that affect SEO merit the intervention of a developer: changes, implementations or code improvements, changes in the structure or appearance of the page, changes in the dimension of the images, among others. And, of course, this is one more person, an added knowledge that intervenes in the process and that makes it very clear that cheap SEO does not work, because you can not have any of this and because, if they offer it, the result will be bungler.
You must also analyze and monitor your project
Strategy without analysis does not work. That is why it is not enough to only implement changes or corrections, and it is also necessary to analyze the impact of the same, the progression and the result of each action to make future decisions. All this takes time and, again, knowledge, and that has its price.
Cheap SEO is a DANGER!
Below we have pointed out some actions that are usually done by cheap SEO agencies and could make you lose online authority, waste all the work was done to date, burn your domain and Google end up penalizing the web.
As we have previously stated, it is impossible to achieve results that improve positioning and increase traffic without investing resources in it, and whoever says otherwise is lying. The risk of leaving your website in the hands of a company of this style is very high because they can ruin your entire site. Some of the problems of working with them are:
1. They make SPAM with links from websites with very low authority and automatically create links from pages of dubious origin or websites of prohibited topics, such as sex, viagras, etc.
2. They do not have analysis and monitoring tools, which means that there is no real record of how the project is and, consequently, it is not possible to act on time if there are problems.
3. They do not have the tools to analyze the competition and see what it is doing. Therefore, they will not know if they are doing it better or worse.
4. The SEO within the page is of poor quality since you can devote very little time monthly. If the web has internal errors, they can not detect them, let alone correct them.
5. The content they generate has all the numbers that are of low quality or copied, with the consequent risk of Google's penalty that this implies.
SEO positioning takes time
Before betting on a cheap SEO strategy, first ask yourself, why do I need to do SEO? Surely the answer will be “to get more customers and overcome my competition." Well, but to achieve this, you will have to invest in a quality service if you want good results that do not put your website at risk.
Internet and Google are not a fad, appearing well positioned in the search engines for those keywords important to your business is undoubtedly a great competitive advantage to attract more customers to your website, achieve higher sales and conversions and better brand authority.
But doing it with cheap SEO is not a good decision, because in many cases to reduce costs are carried out black hat techniques and unethical practices that, far from benefiting you, could end up hurting you. You would not leave the construction of your house in the hands of an operator who has no idea of the subject, nor would you ask a graphic designer to develop your website … so why are you going to leave your positioning in the hands of cheap SEO?
Conclusion
Now that we have provided you with the guidelines to extricate yourself from the world of SEO and choose a competent professional capable of helping you to really make your site go up in Google's positions, all you have to do is look for the right person for you. Never forget that SEO is a component of the recipe for a broader and more complex Digital Marketing strategy.
If you have any doubts, don't hesitate to contact us. Team at Media Glance is at your disposal to satisfy your every need and to study with you a plan tailored to your needs and those of your company.
