You may stumbled across this blog post as you’re thinking about leveraging outsourced SEO, or perhaps you’ve been wondering what possible damage a poor quality provider can do to your web properties. Below are just a small handful of reasons why “going cheap” with SEO may end up mean “disappearing from Google” later.
The Cheaper the Service, the More Likely It’s Offshored
We’ll get this out of the way first; if a SEO service provider provides you with a price that seems “too good to be true” it’s most likely offshored to a country where labour is inexpensive. While there are many skilled SEOs in every country around the world, outsourcing to cheaper countries can be fraught with risk – especially if the workers aren’t being led by an experienced digital marketer.
Inexperienced SEOs Generally Use Poor Quality Tactics
This is where most small businesses and professionals who engage with poor quality SEO providers end up getting burned. When an SEO or inbound marketing team purchases inexpensive packages of links, guest blog posts or other SEO services and points them at your web properties, they are essentially starting a timer which will go off whenever the search engine companies decide to eliminate that tactic once and for all. A great example is the whole cohort of inexpensive link networks – websites like BMR, ALN, SAPE and others – which Google has taken action on in the recent past. Having as little as one backlink from any of the websites in these networks could mean months or years in Google’s penalty box, with little chance of them accepting a reconsideration request.
Doing SEO & Inbound Marketing the ‘Right Way’ Has a Cost
Although it likely goes without saying, planning, executing and optimizing SEO campaigns has unavoidable costs attached to it. From content auditing to digesting analytics reports to manually scrubbing through your webpages cleaning up errors, a good SEO team will need to spend many hours on your website(s) before they’re completely up to snuff. Low quality SEO providers will skip this step and head straight to link building, which is a sure sign that they’re going to cause you problems later.
Less Expensive Providers are Less Likely to be Certified
When it comes to inbound marketing and SEO, having a certified professional designing and leading your campaigns is critical. For example, any professional working with top quality marketing automation software like HubSpot must go through a rigorous training program prior to being bestowed with an “Inbound Certified” seal-of-approval. Only through these certifications can SEO professionals gain the knowledge and acumen necessary to run your campaigns properly.
Fly-By-Night SEO Providers Know They Can’t Charge Higher Rates
Poor quality SEOs know that once their clients start to figure out what’s going on – or once Google penalizes them – the jig is up and their retainers will be cancelled. For this reason, they will generally try to lowball pricing or discount the first few months in order to get any amount of cash possible out of a client before the damage is done and they have to move on. Be sure to ask for references or provable examples of reputable websites they’re currently working with.
Todd and the rest of the B2B digital marketing team here at Riverbed Marketing are experienced veterans of the SEO world. We’re not here to sell you spam or other services that will get your web properties penalized or deindexed from search engines like Google. For more information and to discuss your inbound marketing goals, contact us today and we’ll be happy to assist.
