Buyer Beware! How Cheap SEO Can Be Killing Your Website

June 25, 2019 | By Jeff | In Tips & Advice

Cheap and “bargain price” search engine optimization services are everywhere lately.  You see them all over and they are tempting, but buyer beware; even though you think you might be getting a great bargain for these services, they are cheap for a reason.  You’re probably not getting much of anything for these services and at the very worst, the practices of these “bargain” services may be hurting your website and may even get you banned from Google search results.

The most common thing that happens in these instances is you purchase a bargain SEO plan from Fiverr or from some overseas provider.  “Wow, this is only $200, a month?  Winner!”  you think to yourself.  Then after a few months you see no results at all and you cancel.  You think to yourself “well….SEO is a gimmick that just isn’t worth the money.”  You’ve just fell into the same trap that hundreds of business owners out there have fallen for.  The saturation of low quality and bargain SEO providers out there has ruined your opinion of the industry.

As a person that runs his own SEO company in NJ, I’m only going to tell you this once, and I hope it resonates with you….

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!!!!

Think of your website as if it was a human body.  If you go out and stuff it with cheap fast food at every meal, you’re going to come down with many health problems and it might even lead to an early death.  Do you remember that movie Super Size Me, where Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but fast food for a whole month?  His body fell apart.  The same rings true for your site’s reputation online if you buy cheap crappy SEO services.  Your site’s reputation will be tarnished by the shady “black hat” practices that many bargain SEOs out there practice.  You’re essentially killing your website with cheap “fast food” SEO.

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t buy cheap SEO services.  Here are just a few reasons why cheap SEO is ineffective and can even kill your website:

Bargain Companies Don’t Have The Resources To Deliver

The two most important things that factor in for you to rank in Google are “Quality Written On Site Content” and “BackLinks From Quality Websites”.  99% of the time, cheap SEO packages do not deliver this.  They are either phoning in the article writing with poor grammar and bad English, or the links come from spammy websites with little to no authority.  Usually both….  That means they are cutting corners to get the job done, which leads to the next big issue:

Sub-Par Link Building Can Hurt Your Website Long-term

Many bargain SEOs out there will end up cutting corners to make their services cheap.  One of the main problems is the websites they get to link back to yours.  Since their resources are sparse, you are not going to get links from reputable or even real websites.  Most of them will be spammy, thrown-together garbage sites that exist only to place links on.  Getting links from sites like this “might” get you a quick boost in results, but in the long run, they will do nothing.  Even worse, Google is on to these tricks, and if their algorithms catch your site pulling these tricks, you could get severely penalized in search results and possibly even de-listed.  You’re basically gambling on your website’s reputation and cleaning up that can of worms once it’s opened, is a major headache.  Just don’t do it!

The Poorly Written Content Makes You Look Unprofessional

Your visitors are going to notice when they see poorly written articles and content stuffed on your site and elsewhere on the web.  It’s going to make you look like an unprofessional hack.  Most of the time, these agencies scrape the bottom of the barrel for writers from other countries where English is not their first language, and it shows.  Unprofessional writing with bad spelling and poor grammar does not make you look good to people visiting your site and comes across as scammy.

There’s No Accountability, And They Don’t Care

The fly by night, “assembly line” companies have a very high turnaround rate with customers leaving one door and new ones entering another.  If you’re having a problem with your site’s reputation because of bad links or you’re not seeing any results, they will NOT help you.  They really don’t care.  The high rate of cheap paying customers coming and going allows this to not be a problem for them.  They’re more likely to just cut all ties with you than do anything.

So How Much SHOULD You Be Paying For SEO?!?!

Let’s get one thing straight.  SEO is not a quick task.  If you’re not ranking, it can take months to start seeing results.  In fact, doing things too quickly, spamming links, and posting articles all at once can actually “Hurt” your results.  Google is on to these tricks.  Everything has to appear natural and gradual for Google to rank a website properly.  That being said, if you want to hire an SEO service provider that has access to a quality writing team and has relationships with quality websites for links, you’re looking at roughly $1000 a month if you want to actually see results.  And don’t expect to see results overnight.  Don’t fall for the “cheap SEO trap” like many others out there have.  It could kill your website.

Deimos Designs is a Monmouth County NJ SEO & web design company. If you'd like a free consultation, click here.