What Are The Risks of Cheap SEO Services
Most business owners understand that search engine optimisation is an important aspect of their digital marketing strategy. It helps the materials rank on Google’s first page, where the target audience can find it in organic search results.
Without SEO your digital content and website lack focus and are unable to compete effectively in your niche. You’ll also get little to no organic traffic. However, you may be concerned about how SEO strategies will be integrated into your company’s marketing budget. You may be tempted to save money by choosing “affordable SEO services.”
There is a reason why we put “cheap SEO services” in quote marks. While a small business’ SEO budget differs greatly from that of a huge corporation, and everyone has a different view of what is inexpensive, “affordable” often indicates cheap. Cheap SEO services are a concern.
What Is the Definition of Cheap SEO Services?
Your marketing budget will influence how much money your organisation can afford to spend on search engine optimisation services. Even within your budget, there is a significant difference between expert and cheap SEO services.
“Cheap” has become linked with poor quality in recent years, and this is also true in digital marketing. Cheap search engine optimisation isn’t just about the price. It also relates to the quality of customer service, work, and outcomes you can expect.
When it comes to the best SEO services you may rely on the agency’s high-quality, trustworthy SEO processes to implement plans that succeed. They will have your best interests in mind and create projects that your team will be delighted to display on your various online platforms.
As an alternative, choosing a suspicious company might be very bad for your organisation, particularly if it violates Google’s Terms of Service by using spamming techniques. Not only does this compromise your company’s reputation, but it also wastes money on short-term strategies that will not result in the growth your company needs.
Why is cheap SEO a bad idea?
We often come across business owners who hired a “cheap SEO company” in an attempt to save a few pounds, only to be let down by the outcome. Cheaper agencies usually have less experience. In this case, buying their services entails paying for someone else’s learning curve. Also, an untrained SEO “expert” would never be able to get the same results as an actual professional.
Like any other business, it takes years and many hours to develop the degree of knowledge required to establish an SEO strategy that enhances search engine rankings and helps you reach your company objectives.
What if my company can only afford low-cost SEO agencies?
Even if you want to work with a professional SEO agency, your marketing budget may not cover the cost of skilled services. However, this does not mean you should choose low-cost SEO services. Even if the company is within your budget, they will not be able to provide the SEO plan that your company needs to grow. Instead of wasting money on an economical SEO package that ultimately fails, consider one of the following online marketing options.
Hire an SEO Expert
Consider hiring an SEO expert if you want the highest level of professional services but cannot afford full-time SEO agencies. You will pay an SEO expert on an hourly basis for their services. Finding your pain points and pointing out the weak points in your digital marketing approach are typically part of this consultation. The expert will also help you develop a strategy for success and inform you of the opportunities that are open to you.
Most SEO experts earn between £50 and £100 per hour. At Pixel Juice Digital Marketing Glasgow, however, we are dedicated to our clients’ success, which is why we provide a free consultation. Although we are very certain that we can get you to use our services, you still get insightful information that will help you direct your business in the right path.
You will have a deep understanding of your next course of action after your consultation with an SEO expert. You may carry out his or her advice with your team and begin updating your website or creating a content calendar. However, you will need to accept our following piece of advice for that next step.
Invest in Your Learning
There are various tools available online to assist you in learning more about SEO—even if you decide to engage a professional SEO agency, you should educate yourself on this topic. If hiring an expert is out of your price range, you will have to become the expert!
You might be asking yourself, “If hiring an SEO agency is out of my budget, taking SEO courses is not an option either.” However, there are many free and low-cost online tools available to you and your staff. While a course will undoubtedly provide more insight and maybe hands-on instruction, you could start with the free options to invest in SEO and get the ball rolling. As your business grows, you can consider investing in more learning or perhaps hiring a professional to handle it for you.
Create an in-house content marketing plan
After meeting with an SEO expert for guidance and investing in low-cost and/or free online education for you and your team, you’ll be able to take the next step in avoiding cheap SEO packages that you may later regret: design your content marketing plan in-house. While an effective SEO campaign requires many moving parts, your brick-and-mortar or online business will benefit from having an in-house staff work on your SEO strategy.
Set aside some cash for marketing resources that can help you in researching competitive keywords. You can also hire freelancers to rebuild your website or create content for your company’s blog. Alternatively, you could hire a content writer solely for your team.
The quality and experience that come with working with respectable SEO agencies cannot be replaced, but you can reduce SEO expenses by implementing an in-house content marketing plan that aligns with your SEO pricing strategy. This is only one of the considerations when deciding whether in-house or outsourced SEO is best for your business.
Why You Should Not Hire Cheap SEO Companies
We’ve outlined exactly why it’s far more wise to use expert services if you’re still not sure that hiring a cheap SEO company is a poor decision. Even big businesses with substantial marketing budgets may be tempted to cut back on SEO, particularly if your management isn’t aware of all the advantages it offers.
Continue reading to find out why you need to spend money on a seasoned digital marketing company and the risks of working with a cheap SEO company.
The One-Size-Fits-All Strategy
Compared to reputable SEO providers, cheap agencies have a distinct objective. Building a lasting relationship with your company is not nearly as important to them as acquiring new clients. This mindset has a number of negative consequences. You risk having a generic digital marketing strategy that isn’t intended to provide your business a competitive edge if you choose to work with a company that doesn’t truly care about the specific needs of your business. A cheap SEO company may believe that your businesses, industry, competitors, and products or services are all the same, but this is untrue! A tailored content strategy and SEO plan are essential for your specific company. A hair shop is probably not going to succeed with what works for a plumbing company.
Having genuine material is essential for SEO operations to be effective. Because of its extraordinary intelligence, Google can detect copy-paste methods. It is likely that a cheap company lacks the necessary time, money, or motivation to devote enough effort to perfecting your content so that it stands out from the competition. It will ultimately sound generic instead. Since they aren’t paying you enough to spend time on your material, your company is likely to use templates and scripts that they have already used to save time.
Professional SEO agencies, on the other hand, that charge a reasonable fee for the quality of their service will take a totally different approach. They will start from scratch and finish the initial research that will determine the course of your SEO campaign. They will also spend time learning about you and your industry, learning your business instead of taking it for granted.
Account managers with little to no experience
Having more experience usually comes at a higher price. It is therefore fair to anticipate that the individuals that the company hires will lack experience if you go with a cheap solution. In addition, it is customary for low-cost firms to use scripts, which indicates that they will not recruit specialists such as professional content writers or search engine optimisation specialists. Reputable agencies, on the other hand, create unique ads focused on aiming for competitive keywords.
Furthermore, you’re successfully covering the cost of someone else’s learning curve. The account manager will advance to a higher-paying position at a reputable company after gaining more experience. The cycle then repeats when another novice account manager takes their position.
Hiring a company with staff that are merely inexperienced is completely inefficient, given the highly specialised nature of SEO. It’s very easy for errors to occur that could have disastrous consequences for your business.
Poor customer service
When you work in a field where providing excellent customer service is essential to your business, it may be highly annoying if your SEO consultant does not meet your expectations. When you pay for services, you should expect being given priority treatment by the business. However, you probably won’t receive good customer service if you use cheap SEO services. And why? Because making a quick profit is all they want, you should be cautious about how you spend on SEO. They will take your money and give you poor services that don’t go above and beyond the expected standards of technical SEO. Cheap companies won’t spend more time than is really needed. Therefore, don’t expect a response if you have a query over the weekend.
It’s also common for cheap agencies to lack a specialised account manager who will take the time to get to know you. Therefore, you waste time catching up with the person on the other end of the line, whom you have never spoken to before. Everyone has experienced the growing frustration that comes from a basic task, such as viewing their report, taking far longer than necessary because of poor planning and communication.
The Service will take shortcuts
In addition to using generic scripts to save time when creating your SEO plan, a cheap SEO service probably lacks the resources necessary to devote to off-page SEO, which is one of the most crucial aspects of your campaign.
On-page SEO, which essentially includes everything that is immediately within your control, is probably something you are already familiar with. This involves updating your website to enhance user experience or creating relevant blog entries based on keyword research. However, off-page SEO is far more complex and time-consuming. Usually, backlinking campaigns are in the centre.
Backlinks, typically found in guest post links, are essential to the success of a long-term strategy. In simple terms, they inform Google that your content is valued by other trustworthy websites. Although organic backlinks are possible, there is so much competition that it is unlikely your material would gain enough attention without a campaign. The time and effort required for these initiatives are substantial—qualities that cheap agencies just lack.
A Failure to Take Responsibility
You’ve probably encountered a situation where a service you hired felt no responsibility to you, even if it wasn’t related to SEO or digital marketing. This lack of responsibility is usually common when the service you have hired is cheap. Why? Because a cheap agency doesn’t care about their reputation or whether their customers are happy when they work with them. To make money fast, they like to take advantage of as many short-term contracts and on-off clients as they can before moving on to the next naive business owner. They don’t want to establish a lasting relationship with your company, thus they don’t give a damn about hearing your demands, answering your questions, or adding value to your company in the long run.
Low-quality content
You’ve probably come to the conclusion by now that one common feature of cheap SEO services is that they don’t care about the success of your company. They therefore worked less on your SEO effort. A highly specialised, one-of-a-kind campaign that depends on creating exceptional content turns into a half-baked, cookie-cutter strategy with content that is full of mistakes. Once more, the less money you spend on a service, the less effective your local SEO marketing will be. Poor effort or content produced by inexperienced staff members will result in low-quality copy, which lowers your search engine rankings. In response to a search query, Google seeks out content of higher calibre to display on its first page. Insignificant content will never be added.
Black Hat SEO Strategies
One of the greatest risks of working with a cheap SEO agency is that they can use black hat SEO marketing strategies in addition to having poor content. In short, these strategies are designed to deceive a search engine into giving one’s material a higher rating, even when it is of lower quality or even directly violates Google’s terms and services. Although black hat strategies could appear to be effective in the short term, the Google algorithm will eventually catch on. It will then severely penalise your whole online presence, not just the page where the black hat method was applied. Black hat practices are extremely dangerous and have the potential to irreversibly damage the online reputation of your business. Unfortunately, because it appears that the campaign is successful, cheap SEO services often use them. However, Google will have already taken your hard-earned money by the time it punishes your company, leaving you to clean up the mess you didn’t cause.
Black Hat SEO Tactics Examples:
- Hidden text or links
- Link schemes
- Keyword stuffing
- Doorway pages
- Content automation
- Manipulation of links
- Guest posting networks
Hire a Reputable SEO Marketing Agency
Save time and money by avoiding cheap SEO services that will eventually let you down or, worse, harm your company’s online reputation and business performance beyond repair. Instead, search for an agency that hires skilled content writers and SEO experts, strives to deliver long-term value, and has a track record of satisfied customers.
Pixel Juice Digital Marketing Glasgow is one such agency. We’d love to learn more about you and assist you in establishing an effective SEO plan. Book a call with us to speak with an SEO specialist or schedule a free consultation.
