There are many different ways to bill for search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click and just Internet marketing in general. But with SEO, there are a few things you should be weary of when evaluating the performance based SEO model.
Excessive Links
In most cases these performance based SEO companies will simply point an excessive amount of low quality links at your site and hope for the best. This is often done by using an automated link spam tool to acquire thousands of links (this costs them almost nothing). Eventually you will rank for that keyword and have to pay them. Of course just after that Google will most likely slap a penalty on your website and you’ll be kicked out the index.
If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is. Performance based SEO has many limitations that will leave you unsatisfied.
No Onsite Optimization
Onsite optimization is an important component of SEO. Basically, this relates to how well Google ranks your website without external link building. In most cases, performance based SEO programs will only require very basic onsite optimization and rely entirely on these external links. So the value of your actual website from an onsite optimization perspective does not increase.
Nothing to Lose with Performance Based SEO
Hey you don’t pay until you rank right? Well, it also works the other way around. If you have not paid them they technically don’t have to do anything for you. When testing one of these services we found that after 6 months we were still not ranking for the simple keyword we paid for. No status report, no insight into what is going on. The problem is that they don’t have to do anything and if you magically jump to the top one day you are supposed to pay them. The whole process is a little fishy.
One Keyword at a Time
Sure, in SEO it can be a good idea to focus on a few keywords at once to consolidate resources. But the really good SEO companies can go after tens, hundreds, even thousands of keywords at once. The pay after you rank system is very limited in this way.
Small Time SEO
In most cases, performance based SEO, when it is the only element of an SEO contract, is meant for smaller companies. Now, this point is tricky because there are of course money keywords out there that can drive tons of business to your website. But the really smart online marketers know that you need to rank for more than one keyword otherwise you could be in big trouble if you lose those rankings.
No Longtail Benefit
In today’s SEO climate we are seeing more and more longer keyword searches. We are also seeing new keywords developed everyday. When you are only going after a few keywords and have no onsite optimization you really miss that longtail potential.
Summing it Up
Overall, the pay after you rank (performance based SEO) model may make sense for some online businesses. It can be inexpensive and may work to a degree. While this is the case, when you use a company like this you run the risk of building a blackhat backlink profile. Furthermore, there is often no accountably on their end and no transparency in their work.
Sign up with an honest and hard working online marketing company today by contacting Ignite Visibility.
