Who doesn’t love a good bargain? We sure do, but there are just some things which you can’t cut corners. Search Engine Optimization is one such function.
In a recent mastermind meet-up, several other agency owners were lamenting about their newer clients who would often forward emails they’ve received from firms in India who tout their SEO services for pennies on the dollar.
A sample email reads:
1. Quality over Quantity
1,000,000 links with 400 clients? That averages out to 50,000 links per client. Manual or not. I would question the value of those links. Here’s what’s most likely happening on their end. They’re using something to automate those links. X-Rumer, GSA Ranker or SENuke. These programs do not work in the long run, it may work for 6 months but you’ll get slapped with a penalty so hard that it just doesn’t make sense. They’re most likely sending you links from over spammed blogs where thousands of fake profiles are commenting to get a link back to their page. The links above and below you may very well link to more adult orientated sites or objectional material. Do you REALLY want to be known to associate with such sites?
Always go for quality and bring VALUE to the site visitor. It’s simple really, and we’ve tried to apply the principles of value investing to our Search Engine Optimization Practice. We want to provide whoever is visiting our site with utility and value. The site has to address what the visitor is searching for sufficiently; it has to answer their search. (eg. If I searched for Dog treats and a site on chocolate coated dog shaped treats for kids came up first. It’s pretty easy for Google to infer that the site isn’t relevant or of value, if 90% of the people are leaving immediately.)
2. Low-quality links can do more harm than good, focus on Ethical Link Building
Stay away from any agency which touts a massive number of backlinks. It’s akin to getting convicted for a crime and losing the right to vote. SERP disenfranchisement, except that your site is likely going to be sandboxed by Google, and YOU paid someone $500 to do it. Ethical link building often involves having to reach out to individuals who are authorities in their niches to write about you. Think of the leading blogger in your niche, even if you were to pay them $500 most likely wouldnt post just any article up.
3. Focus on Content
Provide content, most successful businesses that can scale realize that they can’t do everything themselves. Providing content demonstrates your expertise in the subject, and you know what you are talking about. But more often than not, they will want to outsource anything which isn’t a core competency to you. It’s about protecting the Queen Bee Role while demonstrating that you have the chops to do the job while they focus on what brings the most value to their clients. Tip to educators out there, a taste of the coursework you do. The tests you administer and the structure of your lessons. You’ll set yourself apart from the crowd, allow potential students and parents to understand what goes on in your classes/courses.
Did my SEO do a good job?
Stop by ahrefs.com and input your website. Check out the number of links you have. Does it seem unnaturally high? Navigate to “Anchors” and see how many links you have with your exact match keywords if any of your anchors account for more than 10% of your entire link profile. It’s quite likely you’ve been SEO-ed by some old methods and agency.
Good SEO is not cheap. It takes time to see results, and quality work should not be rushed. You need to nurture your backlink profile slowly. Unless you are getting national coverage, any sudden spikes in your backlinks will undoubtedly seem unnatural.