Why Cheap SEO Is Never Cheap?

If there’s one truism in the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), it’s that good SEO isn’t cheap, and cheap SEO doesn’t come for cheap. Why is that? Let’s dive in and decode.

Short-term gains vs. long-term losses

As a business owner, you’re probably looking out for ways to save resources. While there’s nothing wrong with that, you need to understand where it’s okay to skimp on and where quality is non-negotiable. 

Strategies that are critical to the growth of your business, its reputation, and its long-term value should never make it to the cutting board. Doing so might let you save some money upfront, but its consequences can hit your bottom line hard in the long run.  

Here are some hidden costs you’ll sign up for when you choose cheap SEO services.

Cost of bad reputation

Cheap SEO services are cheap for a reason. They don’t invest time and effort into gaining industry expertise. Their main sales pitch is almost always along the lines of “low cost and fast results”. As lucrative as it sounds, their services are based on ‘black-hat’ SEO tactics that violate Google’s policies. These shortcuts might offer a temporary lift in your site’s ranking but puts it at risk of being flagged by Google. When that happens, it’s going to put a dent in your ranking and reputation.

And, you might be surprised to know that the cost of a bad business reputation can be enormous — more than $500 billion in the US alone, according to some estimates.

Cost of ineffectiveness

Oftentimes, investing in cheap SEO services turns out to be a sunk cost because no one bothers to track the effectiveness of their strategies. They lack the financial and human capital required to get the job done to the highest standards.

The cost of ineffective efforts add up and soon you might find yourself spending more to undo the damage than what you’d have spent on reputed SEO services. After all, it’s not about ticking SEO off your checklist. It’s about doing SEO in a way that fetches you positive results.  

Cost of poor performance

When you’re spending your marketing dollars in SEO, one of your main goals is to get a steady stream of quality leads through your website, which you can, then, turn into paying customers. That’s SEO lead generation, a nutshell. To do it right, it takes time, resource, and expertise — all things that cheap SEO providers don’t have. Therefore, partnering with them hurts the revenue generating potential of your business.

A good SEO company will also throw in conversion tactics into the mix to ensure that their SEO efforts translate to real world sales for their clients.   

Low-cost SEO services, on the other hand, use quick fix methods, which include building poor links, keywords spamming, and other shady practices to “show” results that actually don’t do any favours to your business. They don’t grow your presence or your brand, don’t give you a leg up over your competition, and offer no practical benefits.

No wonder, the cost of cheap SEO is huge. And the only way to avoid is by hiring SEO professionals who know exactly know how to bring value to your business, even if you don’t have a big budget.