Many business owners and executives have a tight marketing budget to stick to. They often feel challenged when trying to put an SEO plan into place, given the fact that there aren’t a lot of funds to work with. It can be tempting in a scenario like this to turn to cheap SEO in hopes of scoring an easy win in the search results. But, low prices often come with low rankings and worse.

SEO agencies typically charge anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, per month. If you’re not sure what exactly goes into an effective SEO campaign, it’s easy to understand why you might opt for the lower number. Companies that don’t know what their SEO goals even are might also settle for the cheap SEO.

While might be hard to justify higher-priced SEO, consider that sometimes you need to make a big investment to win big. The dangers of cheap SEO are greater than any amount of money you’d pay to get your search optimization done the right way. Investing too little in an important marketing strategy like this can mean your competitors beat you to customers and your business fails.

What is Cheap SEO?

Getting a good deal on SEO doesn’t always mean you’ve settled for cheap SEO. Cheap certainly does refer to price, but it also points to other aspects of search optimization. Sometimes, the more work you allocate to your SEO company, the bigger discount you’ll receive as appreciation for your partnership. That kind of cheap is not the dangerous “cheap.”

A cheap SEO company that spells DANGER for your business is one offering low rates because it’s inexperienced, not focused on the client or stuck using old tactics that don’t work anymore. Charging you less for poor practices is not in your best interest, and your “deal” may come with a small price tag lead to huge problems for you later on. Interestingly, companies that offer rock-bottom SEO prices often tout promises that feel like being hit by a rock when they don’t come true.

There are a few things to look for when you embark on your mission to identify cheap SEO and then avoid it:

  • Bad Content. Content is a crucial part of an SEO campaign and it plays many roles in an overall marketing strategy. Good content will tell your business’ story, engage potential customers and current customers, provide value for the reader and meet online users exactly where they are in their purchasing journey. It takes time to craft content that properly portrays a business’ vision, gives readers what they’re looking for, converts and stays in Google’s good graces. If you pay for cheap content, it’ll probably be obvious the moment you read it. And, it’ll likely turn customers away if you publish it, plus get you penalized with the search engines.
  • Black Hat SEO Techniques. Cheap SEO companies often turn to black hat techniques to gain quick wins in the SERPs. These strategies may have earned a business top placement years ago, but they come with a huge penalty in today’s SEO landscape. Keyword stuffing, bogus linking and spamming in comments sections are just a few of the SEO methods that go directly against what Google is implying it wants from websites. Don’t let a cheap SEO company use these “tricks” to get you short-term gain, because they won’t give that anymore and they’ll surely have you crashing and burning in the long run.
  • Missing Analysis. Sometimes, an SEO campaign that seemed to have had plenty of forward motion can appear to stall. Plateaus are normal, and it takes an experienced SEO provider to know how to constantly run proper analysis to predict the next move. It’s likely that a cheap SEO company won’t even begin to know how to analyze a website’s performance. Seasoned experts understand that there are a number of tweaks available to boost traffic and raise conversions.

These are only some of the dangers of cheap SEO. One mistake choosing the wrong search optimization company can bring you more headaches and losses than you might have imagined.

Galileo Tech Media offers Managed SEO Services for many businesses on many budgets. We run multi-national campaigns for large corporations and we offer local SEO for mom-and-pop operations. While Travel SEO is our specialty, we improve SEO visibility for companies of all sizes. Contact us to learn how we can create an effective, multi-layered SEO strategy for you so you can realize the greatest return on your investment.