Are SEO services affordable? The short answer is YES! This is an important question and the great news is that there are affordable SEO services available in the industry. In this article, we’ll help to explain:
- What SEO is and isn’t,
- How your business can benefit from it, and
- The importance of choosing an affordable instead of a cheap SEO agency.
What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
Before you decide to invest in SEO services, you will want to have an understanding of what it is. Because there are so many myths and bad practices surrounding SEO, it’s important to know what to look for so that you don’t partner with a “cheap” agency.
1.) SEO involves multiple search marketing strategies
Search Engine Optimization consists of various marketing strategies including:
- Content writing
- Web design
- Landing page design
- Link building
- Blogging
A trusted SEO company is going to create or improve your site’s current web design, research and target your most important keywords, write valuable content with proper keyword optimization, provide good link building optimization, and more. One way that SEO can be affordable for your business is that all these different strategies can be broken down and customized for your specific needs. For example, if you are a small business paying your monthly cost to your SEO agency, your marketing specialists can work on writing a couple blogposts or optimizing your meta data. The good news is that these services are affordable for even the tightest budgets.
Related: Top 10 Signs You Need SEO Help.
2.) SEO is not keyword stuffing
At one point, SEO consisted of jam-packing your content with an excessive amount of the same keyword. However, Google started penalizing websites for including unnatural or irrelevant keywords in the content. The term “keyword stuffing” refers to using many unnatural instances of your keyword in your content. For example, let’s take a look at the example of a fictitious chocolate shop in the Madison, WI area:
Keyword Stuffing Example:
“We are a renowned chocolate shop in the Madison, WI area, dedicated to serving chocolate to all our chocolate shop customers. Since 1927 when we first opened our chocolate shop’s doors, our vintage chocolate shop has proudly served chocolate shop customers of all ages. Our chocolate shop has a rich history (pun intended!) of serving chocolate to generations of Madison chocolate-enthusiasts. Here at our chocolate shop, our artisan chocolate is hand-made by our experienced chocolatiers and our chocolate shop has also won over a dozen “Seal of Excellence” awards for our renowned chocolate. Please come visit our chocolate shop today for chocolate and hard candies. Whether you are visiting our chocolate shop in-person at our chocolate shop, or shopping online for chocolate, we are glad you have stopped by our chocolate shop!”
Not only does keyword stuffing sound unnatural, but it has little use and will seem obnoxious to your users. Still, many SEO Black-Hats have utilized keyword stuffing to manipulate a page’s ranking in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages). In the early years of SEO, this was a common tactic to get pages to rank in Google, but now Google will in fact, drop your rankings if they find Black-Hat keyword usage.
So the solution is understanding what responsible keyword usage is.
A trusted SEO company is going to:
- research your most important keywords,
- test and implement synonyms for those keywords,
- and properly mix in and optimize your site with those keywords.
Good SEO experts utilize White-Hat SEO tactics only and do not try to trick search engines into ranking your site. In addition, Google cares about relevancy and they want to rank those sites with the best relevant content.
How Can Affordable SEO Services Benefit My Business?
Quality SEO services are affordable and even on a tight budget, the good news is that a reliable SEO company will be willing to work with you on a customized plan. Please note: SEO takes a while to implement and see results. SEO does not happen overnight. If you are investing in affordable SEO services, you will need to ensure you hire a professional team who will track your results over time. Whether it’s ahrefs, Ubersuggest, WebCEO, Google Analytics, or SEMrush, there are plenty of effective marketing and analytics platforms to choose from.
SEO professionals with extensive industry experience will first talk with you about your business plans and SEO goals. From that, they will provide a custom plan by reviewing your products, services, competitors, target audience, most important keywords, site optimization, and social media. From there, the management team will also inform you of how they will update you on their progress via weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly updates and reporting.
Benefits of SEO
1. Search engine optimization makes use of inbound methods (SEO, blogging, social media), and drives quality traffic to your website. Unlike outbound methods (such as cold calling, cold emails, or interruptive ads), which are often perceived as annoying or manipulative tactics, SEO (done right!) is customer-centric. Search engine optimization provides helpful content, such as landing pages, blogs, call-to-actions, etc., that are not spammy or annoying, but rather answer real questions for real users.
2. With SEO, you don’t need to pay for ads! Unlike PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, SEO means optimizing your site so that Google’s algorithm can begin organically ranking your site. While SEO takes time to develop, it is well worth the investment, as over 50% of users find sites organically with a simple Google search. In this case, you’ll want to ensure that you end up on the first page of Google. Whether you plan to write the content yourself, or choose an SEO company to handle your SEO for you, note that it can take days, weeks, or even months to see the hard work pay off.
3. SEO gets more clicks than PPC. Yes, PPC advertising does provide immediate results, however, users are much more likely to click on an organic result than an ad. The reason is that as a whole, users tend to trust a search engine’s first page of results more than an ad.
4. SEO Helps You Get Ahead of the Competition. When you hire a professional SEO company, the experts on the team can perform a competitor analysis to see what they’re doing to rank. This also provides insight into what you can do for your own SEO strategy. Having this knowledge can help you get ahead of the competition!
Related: Top 10 Ecommerce Lead Generation Strategies for 2023.
Affordable SEO vs Cheap SEO Services
Signing up for cheap SEO services is a bad business move for your company. While initially the cost is appealing, many “cheap” SEO services follow cookie-cutter templates not customized to your business’s competition, target audience, product, or service. Additionally, you risk Black-Hat SEO tactics being implemented on your site. Cheap SEO services may hurt your rankings in the long run because Google will penalize your site if they detect bad SEO tactics implemented throughout your pages and linking structure. Furthermore, you may experience poor customer service or have staff working on your site that have little actual SEO experience.
Often, affordability is determined by the size of your company. For a smaller business, you may pay anywhere from $350-$2,000 per month. (Larger businesses may be able to invest more monthly). Be wary of SEO agencies that offer prices that are much lower than this range or that seem to good to be true.
Interested in learning some advanced ecommerce SEO tips? Click on the link to learn more!