We all love a bargain.
We love knowing that we’ve found a deal that cannot be beaten and we feel a sense of achievement from finding the lowest price available. But there is a big difference between buying an item and engaging a service and there really is no like-for-like quote when it comes to SEO.
Rather like buying a car, you will likely have preferences as to which are the key things that matter and you can’t expect a fast car if you bought based on fuel economy and within a tight budget. The sad fact is that with SEO you may be committing to a service that will see little or no return or worse yet, a penalty that could finish your business if the low price was your key reason for committing.
Save Your Money
Saving a few quid on SEO Management could actually spell disaster for your business. There are plenty of companies out there who offer crazy prices and make wild “guarantees” of what you will get back and the amazing results to expect… It’s not until you sign up and let them run things for a few months that you see the disastrous results of that decision.
Instead of going for the cheap option, save your money entirely or look at using it to pay for Adwords. But for heaven’s sake, don’t waste money on a company then does little to help! (Maybe check reviews or their SEO case studies first!)
Outsourcing Abroad to Cut Costs
One well known “scam” is the “SEO” companies that outsource to “agencies” abroad. If you have even the slightest inclination that this may be occurring then run for the hills and stop paying them. You may be lucky but from what I’ve seen it is VERY doubtful.
The chances are they will be engaging in out-of-date practices like keyword spamming, link building or link buying. These processes will spell the end of your organic listings within the next six months. Plus, you could outsource directly for much less and probably see the same awful results, so why pay a middleman?
You Get What you Pay For
Yep, sadly you get what you pay for generally. In fact, even some of the expensive “big” agencies don’t really give you much for your money so sometimes you get less than you pay for.
If you do engage a budget company, expect budget results.
You can’t expect much for very little and a lot of the companies offering extremely cheap services will be doing so to bring in a lot of jobs with an expected fast client turnover.
No Contracts / No Duration = No Results
SEO takes time. Depending on your industry it can take A VERY LONG time to rank for relevant terms and potentially you will NEVER rank for the terms you’d like to rank for if your competitors have been doing it longer and better.
So watch out for the companies offering no long term contract. On the one hand you’re not tied in, on the other hand, you’ll never make it to the 6 to 12 month mark when you normally start seeing the positive results that a long term strategy can bring.
Penalty Territory
As mentioned before, Search engines and particularly Google have done a great job of updating their algorithms to spot the cheeky methods of gaming the system and inflating rankings.
Ask any potential SEO company that you are going to work with what they actually will be doing and how they plan to do it. If you hear anything that sounds ominous then do some digging and save some issues occurring further down the line.
Do It Right, Or Don’t Do It At All!
The bottom line is you need to do things correctly or you’re better not doing them at all.
If budget is the key part of your decision in picking an SEO Management company then perhaps you’re better holding off for the time being and doing it yourself to the best of your ability. There is a wealth of information out there from reputable sources like Moz, The Google Guidelines and of course, the trusty DPOM Blog.
So get cracking or get choosing but don’t base your decision on who comes out the cheapest as you will end up regretting it!
