Businesses make some fundamental basic mistakes when they choose an SEO agency and this always results in problems with their Google rankings.
The biggest mistake they make without doubt is choosing an SEO agency purely on price. This is really easy to do and the amount of people I speak to who have been absolutely massacred online because they went with the cheapest option is amazing.
There are far too many domestic and offshore SEO firms all offering bargain basement SEO packages and for the majority of business owners this is often too hard to resists. When they speak to the sales people at the other end of the phone it all seems very legitimate; they are polite, they can offer a few testimonials and above all they are bloody cheap. So why wouldn’t you go with them. It makes perfect business sense.
The issue here is these companies will either do nothing with the monthly budget provided or they will buy a few worthless links that are actually toxic and will do damage to your website. It’s this type of SEO behaviour that gets your website either penalised by Google for non compliance or your rankings simply go no where. What do you really think would happen with the pittance your paying. These guys are going to take your money and run.
If you are going to have anything to do with SEO, you need to have a realistic budget based on the competitive nature of your keywords. Being frugal with your internet marketing is actually going to harm your business. If your not committed to spending money on your SEO, don’t even contemplate starting.
What the issue here is, when businesses decide to move on they still look online for the cheapest option. It’s a never ending cycle until it’s actually broken by someone who realises the value of a page 1 ranking. Until then, it’s hit the repeat button.
The other serious mistake is falling for the insanity of believing SEO companies when they say they will guarantee that they can get a certain percentage of your keywords on page 1 within 90 days. This is a really common sales ploy and in the unregulated SEO market, cowboys, ‘shonksters’ and scam artists use this to sign you up. Yes they do rank some very useless keywords but they will have absolutely no impact on bringing traffic to your website. Once they have proven to you that they have fulfilled their end of the deal (basically an infant could rank those keywords and in 9 times out of 10, they are already ranking), you are locked into their contract. From that point onwards nothing happens. They have you where they want you and there’s really no point spending their time or money on your SEO. Remember you are in a contract with them now.
This type of behaviour is rife and rampant in the SEO space and for the naïve business owner they keep falling for slick sweet sounding sales pitches time after time. Again, a continuous loop of poor rankings based on either the business owners unwillingness to learn from their mistakes as well as their inability to spend money on marketing.
Another mistake that is made is the start/stop approach to SEO. Businesses tell me that they stopped their SEO because they were on page 1 and they were not seeing a return. A very common mistake made as they feel that they have spent all this money to get to page 1 and it’s enough already.
The issue here is that getting to the bottom on page 1 is a lot different to the top of page 1. Position # 10 gets roughly 10% of the inquiries where as position 1, 2 and 3 will receive about 80% of inquiries. To make the leap from 10 to 1 takes a lot of serious effort, back linking and SEO strategy. Stopping once on page 1 is a grave mistake. You need to keep pushing harder and out perform your competition if you are going to get to the top. SEO is continuous. Even if cash flow is tight you should try to work out some type of solution with your SEO agency rather than a complete halt in work.
The last mistake is when businesses expect super fast rankings for competitive keywords on new websites. If you cannot pull a rabbit out of your hat and somehow get them to page 1 within a month for words like: travel insurance, home loans or cosmetic surgeons, they think you are not doing SEO properly and move on. It’s this chopping and changing that starts to have an effect on all your marketing especially the way in which Google values your website. Keep this in mind.
At Hopping Mad Designs we take pride on our SEO performance and on our ability to rank really difficult keywords and sustain these rankings month after month.
If you are serious about your SEO and are tired of hopping from 1 agency to the other please give us a call as once you use our service there will be absolutely no excuse to leave. Modern day SEO is really competitive even more so for SEO in 2016, don’t keep on repeating the same mistakes you’ve been making over the past couple of years.