You Get What You Pay For - The Ugly Truth About Cheap SEO

​SEO Rip-Off Red Flags

As a small business owner, you want to give your company every available advantage to reach your target audience, which is why you're considering search engine optimization. Fitz Designz is an SEO company in Santa Rosa committed to exceeding our clients' every expectation, which means helping them make the most of every penny they spend on optimizing their commercial sites. Find out how to avoid getting ripped off while making the most of digital marketing.

Common Reasons for SEO Rip-Offs

If you aren't familiar with keywords, meta descriptions and title tags, you may not know what makes a great SEO strategy. Unscrupulous SEO companies bank on this lack of knowledge and squeeze clients for everything they have while delivering terrible results. Here are some reasons entrepreneurs get scammed.

Low Prices

Scammers take advantage of business owners, but not so much that clients question prices. For instance, someone may pay $100 to $300 a month, which is enough to see value, but not enough for a person to question how an SEO company spends every dollar. If SEO con artists were to charge, say, $3,000 a month, the client likely wants an in-depth breakdown of the strategy and spending.

Lack of Knowledge

Any SEO company in Santa Rosa worth its salt knows how confusing SEO, long-tail keywords and search engine crawlers can be. Predatory companies bank on this lack of knowledge and intentionally make SEO jargon harder to understand. If a company describes what it does and it's clear as mud, you could be in the presence of a scammer.

Timing

No matter if you do business with a legitimate company or a swindler, it takes time to see results from an optimization strategy. Expect it to take four months to a year before you notice a shift. If you do business with a scummy company, you may check-in after six months if you don't notice results. The company may tell you to hold out a bit longer, remind you that these things take time and keep taking your money. A year passes and you don't see results. Even if you stop doing business with the company, you're already out of your hard-earned money.

Warning Signs of SEO Rip-Offs

How do you better ensure you don't become a statistic while improving your search engine ranking? Here are some warning signs.

Guaranteed Page One Position

Not only do you want to improve your search engine ranking, but you also want to land on the first page of results when consumers search for your products or services. Immoral companies offer a guarantee to land their clients on the first page of results. Search engines control where businesses land, not an SEO company in Santa Rosa. We do everything possible to nudge your site in the right direction, but we cannot make first-page guarantees.

Charging by the Keyword

You should never pay a digital marketing agency by the number of keywords you want to rank for. SEO success hinges on ranking highly for commonly searched words in your business, not the number of words your site ranks for.

Too Cheap

Of course, you want to save money where possible on digital marketing and web design, but you don't want an SEO package that's too cheap. Because SEO offers the digital marketing space's biggest ROI, it makes sense that you should expect to pay a thousand dollars a month for professional services.

You Provide the Keywords

Because you pay so much money, you expect the SEO company to do most of the heavy lifting, such as performing keyword research and supplying you with words. If you're asked to supply the keywords, get your money back and hit the door.

It's common for SEO providers to ask clients what keywords they want to rank for. Beyond that, the optimization agency should research and provide frequently used search phrases. The data makes the final decisions for selecting keywords and phrases, not the client.

A Lot of Jargon

Another red flag for an SEO scam is feeling overwhelmed by industry jargon. SEO companies know how confusing some of the industry's terms are, and we want to make things as easy as possible for our clients to understand. If you feel more confused with every word a consultant or another representative says, that person may know more about scamming and less about SEO.

No Site Access Necessary

An SEO company needs access to your commercial site for URL optimization, meta descriptions and image alt text. If you learn an agency does not need to log into your site, they could be up to no good.

Contact a Reputable SEO Company in Santa Rosa Today

Have you dealt with predatory SEO providers before? Fitz Designz wants to show you what it's like to do business with a dedicated SEO agency. To get started, call us at 707-241-3489 or submit an online form.