Risks of Cheap SEO Services

Search engine optimization is a complicated, ongoing process that requires diligence, research, and know-how to launch and maintain a truly effective campaign. As a business owner, it is perfectly understandable that you don’t have the time in your busy schedule to build, maintain, and continuously update a never-ending content calendar, nor should you need to do this. There are plenty of firms offering SEO services across the world, full of experts who have done the work to develop a strong understanding of how to build and run a successful SEO campaign who can take on this work for you so that you can focus on continuing to serve your customers.

The problem that you may or may not realize fairly quickly in your search is that not all SEO companies are created equal. If you get an email back from a representative that is full of typos, formatting errors, or confusing writing, this should be all of the red flags that you need before you turn back and find someone who can really get the job done. 

Why Hire Cheap SEO Services?

The answer to this question is obvious, even to our team of highly skilled SEO specialists: because saving money is an important focus for any business, no matter how big or small! However, we also like to point out the old adage of getting what you pay for. When someone lists their SEO services for cheap, you can be sure that you are getting cheap writing in return. The problem arises when a business owner does not take the return on investment into consideration, and only considers the investment itself. 

If you are looking for the lowest bidder, you can count on them taking some shortcuts. Even large SEO companies that offer cheap services find all sorts of cost-cutting measures for themselves, such as outsourcing work, doing inadequate research, or simply misrepresenting their own abilities. When you work with a reputable company like On The Map Marketing, you aren’t getting cheap work, you are getting high-quality work that produces results. 

Common Shortcuts For Cheap SEO Services

The following are just a few of the most common shortcuts that cheap SEO companies take. We’ve seen them all because once someone has wasted their time and money on low-cost SEO services it is likely that they need to turn to someone who can come in and clean up the mess. If it were up to us we’d much rather build your campaign from scratch, but sometimes people fall prey to the siren song of dirt-cheap support and then need some help getting back on track. Either way, we’re here to help.

Here are some things that On The Map Marketing will NEVER do, that cheap SEO companies love to use:

Outsourcing

The backbone of a successful SEO strategy is the content itself, which requires knowledgeable and experienced writers to provide high-quality information that your visitors will find useful and engaging. In addition to pleasing your visitors, your content needs to get past Google’s bots, who will dock your page ranking for grammar errors and typos. Our writing staff is in-house, so you can be confident that you are getting work from a hand-picked team.

Keyword Stuffing

SEO relies on keywords in order to help your potential audience find your website on the Google results page, so it makes sense that you need to include relevant keywords in the content being published to your site. However, there is a difference between writing a well-researched, informative, and grammatically correct article on “SEO Services” and simply cramming that keyword into every sentence on the page. Not only are readers more discerning than that, but Google will also penalize you for improper keyword usage. 

Ineffective Keywords

Identifying the right keywords to focus on may seem fairly straightforward, but the reality is that the most obvious keywords are the most saturated, as well, meaning that you will be competing with a wide range of sites who are using the exact same tactic as you. At On The Map Marketing, we have a team of researchers who focus on your target audience, their online habits, and how they want to find you — by doing so, we can identify high-value, specific keywords that will drive the right traffic to your site.

Duplicated Content

Repeat content is a major strike against your site, whether you are outright stealing content from another site, or if you are reusing original content on multiple pages of your own site. Either way, Google sees this as manipulative and unhelpful and will lead to a serious reduction in your page rankings. Remember that Google is a service, and its main goal is to provide their users with the best experience possible. Sending their users to useless websites makes them look bad, and Google does not like to look bad.

“Gaming the System”

This is a bit of a catch-all for a variety of shady techniques that cheap SEO companies love to engage in. There are many different tricks that someone can use that will lead to a quick boost in performance before Google can catch up to them, by which point they will have taken your check and disappeared. These techniques include some of the ones mentioned above, but go further to include things like using “link farms” to artificially increase a website’s connectivity, hidden links and text, and “cloaking” pages by hiding walls of text under an image, meaning that a user will see the image but Google will see the text.

Hire Reputable SEO Services, Get It Right the First Time

We understand our clients’ needs for a budget-friendly marketing campaign, and we are happy to work with you in order to find an SEO package that makes the most sense for you. However, it is important to remember that good work is not cheap, and then when you partner with On The Map Marketing, you can be confident that you will get measurable results for your investment. We pride ourselves on our history of success stories (which we will be happy to share with you), and you will be able to see where your money goes from the moment we start our work together.

Contact us now to request a free quote and to speak directly with a representative about how we can help you bring your web traffic to the next level. When you have a team like On The Map Marketing who has been in the SEO industry for over a decade, you can be confident that you have made the right choice. Your new and improved web traffic will be the proof you need for why it is so important to hire a solid SEO company for your needs.