What Cheap SEO Looks Like
Cheap SEO hides behind many masks. Normally it shows itself as cheaply bought backlinks. Recently we had an ecommerce client decide to go with another local “SEO” company that offered cheap packages and what they were offering was a little different.
I put SEO in quotation marks above as I feel that what they offer isn’t SEO and only makes the SEO industry look bad. Think of it more as ranking and renting pages. At the end of the day when it doesn’t work the client will feel that SEO is a scam and doesn’t work.
Here is what they are offering; a $1000 set up fee for content writing and pictures and then $300 per month for key phrases to rank on page one. If the results aren’t on the first page of Google, you don’t have to pay.
Where do we begin?
The first thing I asked the client was if the “SEO” company needed access to the backend of the site to do their content and pictures. They didn’t need access to the site at all. That was the first red flag.
Our next question was what keywords and phrases were they going to rank for? They were going to focus on very specific name and location phrases. Next red flag.
They had decided on keywords and phrases on the spot in the shop. A big red flag.
They promised first page rankings in a matter of days. The biggest red flag.
The Cheap SEO Autopsy
The cheap “SEO” didn’t need access to the website as everything they do is on their own domain and sub domains. They create pages on their own website about the client. The URLs are generic for the industry and location. Once the client stops paying them for their services they can rent the same page out to someone else in that industry.
The new written content was very generic and didn’t make any sort of connection with the client or their business. Again, it would be easy to just replace the clients name with someone else’s name and rent it out to someone else.
The targeted keywords and phrases were chosen with no research. Some of the targeted phrases were literally phrases that no one had ever used to search for the client. How do I know this?
Data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Trends to start with.
Trying to rank for odd phrases and keywords will get you good results. No one else is targeting them so you will rank for them. Ranking for those terms gives the client no benefit.
That is how they could rank first page for those terms in a matter of days. Anyone can do that, it’s not hard. The hard part is doing proper keyword research, working out what the client’s potential customers will be searching for on Google and then trying to rank for those terms.
Bigger problem for the client is that the terms are ranking and now they will have to pay.
The pages that had the clients name on them already had 200 plus backlinks pointing to them, so they are either old pages that now have the clients name on them or backlinks had been paid for.
Cheap SEO Will Cost You More
What this company offer is not measurable and doesn’t give any benefit to the client. It does nothing to build the clients SEO, website or appearance online. As soon as the client stops paying them their name will disappear from the pages and they will be rented out to someone else.
Money invested in this type of “SEO” will give you no long term benefits.
Proper keyword research needs tools, data and analysis. Proper SEO needs a plan and goals. Ranking on page 1 is just part of a much larger goal. Trying to build good quality backlinks takes time and can’t be done overnight.
I love the challenge of SEO and trying to rank a page for a competitive term. We can’t guarantee a page one ranking result to a client because we can’t. We don’t have any control over what Google does. We do provide services that follow the world’s best SEO practices and current up to date SEO strategies that are proven to provide results.
Any money that you put into SEO through DNA will directly improve your website and search rankings and provide you with long term results.
Do you need help with your SEO? Contact DNA to see how we can help.
Written by David Stansfield - 8 August 2017