How much does SEO services cost? Well, there is no set amount that you can spend on SEO services, as the money that you spend depends on the services that you need, as well as the SEO Company offering these services. However, you need to note that it’s possible to get professional SEO services with or less than $100 a month.
This price sounds OK for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with limited budgets. However, you need to note that the price isn’t as good as it sounds. Cheap SEO services can cause lots of trouble for you, as well as your company. If you need to know what cheap SEO services can do to your business, then you need this guide. The post will give you an in-depth and honest analysis of the negative effects of cheap SEO services.
But first, what do we mean by cheap SEO services?
There is no exact definition of cheap SEO services. The definition mostly depends on your business’ revenue and budget, which is related to the size of your company. While a large business might look at $4000 each month as a piece of pie, small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford this. However, low-cost SEO services have become a synonymous thing with cheap SEO.
One thing you need to know about cheap SEO is that it goes past the cost of the services that you receive. It also stretches to the quality of the services that you get, as well as the strategy results—and that’s the reason why cheap SEO services will definitely harm your company.
When searching for SEO services, you will definitely need reputable and high-quality services. However, when you search for “low-cost” or “cheap” SEO services, you get to work with untrustworthy and spammy SEO agencies that will cause real harm to the revenue, reputation, as well as the online presence of your business.
Why is this a bad thing?
With so many SEO companies promoting low-cost or cheap SEO, it’s very common for businesses to ask, “Why is cheap SEO not good for any business?” When you search for cheap SEO services, for instance, you will get several agencies that offer cheap SEO services.
While it’s possible for your business to select a company that will provide cheap SEO services from a company, you will get the same SEO experience, as well as low prices. If you are thinking of engaging the services of such companies, you really need to understand the severe effects of cheap SEO services.
Here are 5 reasons why you need to avoid cheap SEO services at all cost
Cheap SEO services don’t have unique strategies
Cheap SEO services usually treat all businesses the same. That means there is nothing unique for your business, industry, products or services, or competitors. And this is the reason why your business will end up getting a cookie-cutter SEO strategy.
If you’ve familiarized yourself with SEO, then you understand that copy-and-paste SEO strategies don’t, and will never work for your company. Like any other digital marketing strategy, SEO needs to be customized to suit your business. Whatever is effective for an eCommerce business will not deliver any meaningful results for manufacturing or any other company.
Agencies that offer cheap SEO services don’t care about what works and what doesn’t work for your company. They usually focus on getting their monthly payments, following their laid down scripts, and then moving to their next client. Since SEO can take a number of months to start showing results, these agencies cannot afford to deal with your dissatisfaction for any moment.
That’s the reason why these agencies can afford to offer these services for prices as low as less than $100 each month, as they usually follow the same strategy for each client. The “expert” handling your business doesn’t need to bother about researching more about your business—they will skip this important part, and then launch a one-size-fits-all plan—which might not be effective for your business.
When you compare this with the SEO agencies that offer their prices for reasonable prices, you will realize that they offer an entirely different experience. These agencies don’t have service templates, rather they usually design your SEO strategy from the bottom, taking time to learn about your industry, products, competitors, and most importantly, your business. When you engage the services of such agencies, you will get a tailored SEO strategy, which is meant for your business. Everything about your business is unique—from your team to your brand to your advantages—these agencies put all that into consideration when designing this strategy.
What do we get from this?
Customized SEO services are not in the budget for cheap SEO. If you engage the services of a cheap SEO agency, don’t be surprised if you get a copy-and-paste SEO strategy. This strategy will not perform well or bring the results that you want.
Cheap SEO services have bad customer service
No one lives horrible customer service—and yet this is something common with low-cost SEO services. Whether you are making an inquiry, or you need to get a performance report or discuss an SEO strategy, you will have a challenge in getting anything significant from those who manage your account. And, the sad thing is, you are paying this agency each month just to get ignored. Each month, you pay the agency, and yet it fails to deliver meaningful results.
Another thing about investing in cheap SEO services is the problem of challenge barriers, as well as time zone differences. Most of these agencies outsource their work from different places outside the US in an attempt to cut costs—and such kind of an arrangement can make things challenging.
Low-cost SEO services don’t make things easier for you or your business. But, things will become complicated, which can lead to tension and frustration building among your employees and business’ policymakers. What you need to understand is, the cost savings associated with low-cost SEO services aren’t worth the struggle.
What do we get from this?
A low-cost SEO company will see your company as a number—not a name. Also, the time zone and location of their staff can lead to miscommunications, delayed responses, as well as more frustrating cases that build up each day.
Cheap SEO agencies have unqualified and inexperienced account managers
Since cheap SEO services follow the same script, they don’t need to hire experienced account managers. They usually bring in new hires very fast, just giving them the basic script that they need to use whenever they are optimizing a business’s website. There is no valid reason for these agencies to hire SEO experts. Since they are not designing any custom SEO strategies or targeting competitive keywords, they usually give your business the bare minimum SEO services. Moreover, it will be costly for low-cost SEO companies to hire an experienced SEO expert.
Furthermore, experienced SEO professionals don’t have any urge to work for these agencies. Years and years of experience in the SEO industry have made them learn how low-cost agencies operate, and they understand why and how they can be harmful to your business. Low-cost SEO agencies lack vital experience in the industry, and this has a large impact on the performance of your SEO strategy. For instance, your account manager can use some black-hat SEO strategies in a bid to boost the rank of your website—and this can make your site to be severely punished by search engines.
And the painful thing is, you’re spending your money on a person with minimal or no experience in specialized SEO services. This is one of the reasons why businesses that can only afford cheap SEO services usually educate their in-house team so that the team can manage and lead the business’ strategy.
What do we get from this?
Low-cost SEO agencies usually maintain their low rates by hiring inexperienced staff. You can even realize that an account manager who isn’t as experienced as your team is responsible for managing your strategy, and this prevents your business from achieving any meaningful results with SEO.
Cheap SEO agencies mostly employ black-hat SEO strategies
Since low-cost SEO companies usually use copy-and-paste SEO strategies, it’s usually a challenge for these companies to drive any meaningful results. As a result, these agencies end up using black-at SEO techniques, which involves the use of deceptive or manipulative tactics to trick search engines into improving the ranking of a website in their search results.
Black-hat SEO tactics are very common within the SEO community. As a matter of fact, they are very notorious to the extent that Google has updated their algorithm to punish these tactics rather than reward them severely. However, most of the low-cost SEO agencies still try to employ black-hat SEO techniques.
However, you need to note that this is something common with cheap SEO companies. They don’t update themselves with the industry standards, something reputable SEO companies do. Furthermore, they don’t even care about the penalty your site can get from Google. Such kind of penalties can have either short-term or long-term impacts on your website. The worst thing is, Google can even de-index your website, which means your site won’t be receiving traffic from Google anymore—and this will have a direct impact on your business.
So, at the end of the day, you will be spending your money on cheap SEO services, yet the agency is decreasing your visibility in SERPs as well as your revenue. However, a reputable SEO agency does the exact opposite of this.
What do we get from this?
Cheap SEO agencies don’t have the capability to keep up with the set of SEO industry standards. These agencies don’t see the need for investing their time to update their service delivery, which results in black-hat tactics that will have a direct negative impact on your business.
Low-cost SEO services have zero SEO assets
As search engines continue to evolve, their algorithms continue to change. This is one of the main reasons why a good SEO strategy concentrates on assets that have long-term value, like link building, as well as creating original SEO content. Reputable SEO strategies work to build original and high-quality content for the sites they manage. Such kind of material doesn’t have a challenge in earning links for a website because of its quality and ability to assist users. Businesses with a good backlink profile have an easier time in having their content rank better in SERPs.
However, cheap SEO agencies cannot assist your business in this part of SEO. These agencies lack the experience or staff to launch and manage such kind of strategies. And, as we highlighted earlier, such kind of content requires a customized approach, and low-cost SEO services lack such an approach. This is something that has made a lot of businesses to question the effectiveness of cheap SEO.
There is no need to spend your money on cookie-cutter SEO strategies, black-hat techniques, as well as nonexistent SEO results. This is a total waste of money that you can spend on training your in-house SEO team.
What do we get from this?
Cheap SEO agencies provide zero assets. Thus they don’t have a long-term value. A good backlink profile can have a positive impact on the current and future rank of your content. However, low-cost SEO agencies, on the other hand, lack the resources or skills to promote a business.
So, why do cheap SEO agencies still exist?
With these drawbacks of cheap SEO services and companies, it’s still a surprise that these agencies continue to exist. Even though these agencies have a high-client churn rate, they usually adopt very aggressive techniques to acquire new clients.
For instance, they can use cold-calling techniques to get new clients. In other cases, they can even poach customers from reputable SEO agencies by applying fear tactics just to acquire these clients. Also, they usually promote low prices as bait to SMBs.
What you need to note is that low-cost SEO agencies normally focus more on client acquisition rather than retention. Since SEO is an ongoing process, this decision is a good demonstration of the lack of industry experience among these agencies. The agencies don’t mind about customer retention. Once they sign you up, and you have a contract, they start searching for their next client. Reputable SEO agencies, on the other hand, focus on building long-term relationships with a business by learning more about the businesses, as well as the objectives and goals of the business.
What’s the realistic price for search engine optimization services?
Today, most businesses spend an average of $350 to $2,000 each month on SEO services. Even though an enterprise-level organization can surpass this amount, this range is ideal for SMBs. In addition, you can use it as a reference when searching for an SEO agency. When you realize that an agency offers its services for a price below this range or even indicated the affordability of their services, this is an indication of a cheap SEO agency.
What you need to note is—if the price for reliable and trusted SEO surpasses your set budget, you will always have another alternative, which is equally effective.
Bottom Line
Cheap SEO agencies cheat business for their money. Yes, you can say that it’s harsh, but it’s the truth. Here is a good example—you cannot buy a brand new iPhone for just $15. It’s not practical at all!
It’s important to note that there’s a lot that SEO agencies need to cover if they have to give your website good and consistent rankings. In addition to hiring a reputable SEO company, a good SEO strategy will cost you money, and you will not go anywhere if you are not willing to spend money on your SEO campaigns.
Please note: the investment you make in SEO will pay-off if you put it in the right hands. Therefore you need to stop thinking about the price when choosing an SEO agency, and you shouldn’t let cheap SEO services ruin your business.