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The Dangers of Hiring Low Quality Agencies

Oliver Wood
|26th May 2016

As with any investment you get what you pay for. This is the case for most things. The price you pay for a product or service generally reflects its quality and what you can expect to receive in return. Paying less may save you money in the beginning but it can also cost you dearly in the long term.

Choose The Right Agency That’ll Deliver Results

As with any investment you get what you pay for.

This is the case for most things. The price you pay for a product or service generally reflects its quality and what you can expect to receive in return. Paying less may save you money in the beginning but it can also cost you dearly in the long term.

SEO is the process of optimising a site to improve its rankings in the search results. It requires a long term approach as cutting corners (e.g. spamming your site with links, keyword stuffing, etc.) will only end up getting your site penalised. Your website is a valuable asset so hiring a reputable company is well worth the investment.

Here we look at why working with a cheap SEO agency is not in your best interest.

They Focus Entirely on Search Engines

Search engines are powered by algorithms.

But behind each click is a real person.

Companies that offer cheap marketing packages typically focus only on rankings. Everything else is secondary which means that your content would be lacking in quality. Your rankings may see a boost in the search results but it won’t make a difference if visitors are leaving the moment they arrive.

Quality content that provides value is one of the most important aspects of an SEO campaign. But you cannot expect to receive well-written content for cheap packages. These types of agencies need to make a return so they will often turn to low-cost writing services.

Remember, search engines want to provide the best results for each search query. If your site is loaded with low-quality content it stands little chance of ranking in the search results.

They Resort to Questionable Tactics

Cheap SEO companies are cheap for a reason.

They make promises of top rankings for competitive keywords in a matter of weeks. But what they don’t tell you are the strategies they employ to achieve those results. More often than not they rely on questionable tactics such as:

Keyword stuffing: This involves stuffing your content with as many keywords as possible with the hope of increasing rankings. Keyword stuffing was once a highly effective tactic but the Panda update made the practice largely obsolete.

Low-quality content: Content is king. At least to some SEO agencies that offer cheap packages that look like a steal. But what many ends up doing is hiring low-cost writers to churn out low-quality content for your site. This is the kind of content that Google penalises.

Mass link building: Another shortcut that is commonly used is building links in the thousands using automated tools. Just like with keyword stuffing, these strategies may initially boost rankings but they are much more likely to result in a ranking penalty.

Sites that employ any of the tactics as outlined above will eventually get hit with a penalty or worse, removed entirely from the search results. This is why hiring a cheap SEO agency is definitely not in your best interest as most rely on these strategies to boost rankings.