If you’re a business owner looking for ways to optimize your website, you have probably stumbled upon ads for SEO services that require you to pay for their services only after you see the results. That certainly seems exciting and appealing, but isn’t it a little suspicious?
This strategy is known as pay-for-performance SEO or performance-based search engine optimization. Nowadays, numerous agencies on the market offer such services, providing businesses with a cheap and fast way of optimizing their web pages. Unfortunately, such services can lead to something completely unintended: you can seriously damage your brand image and lose money.
Let’s talk about why you shouldn’t believe all of this sweet talk about instant results and why you should avoid agencies that offer pay for performance SEO.
Pay-for-performance SEO, also known as pay-for-results SEO and performance-based SEO, is a payment model that requires you to pay for the service only when you see actual results. The agencies promise business owners that the optimization will work extra fast and their web pages will rank first, gaining organic traffic.
At first, it may sound great. Who wouldn’t want to pay for actual results and boost website performance with little to no effort? Unfortunately, it is only exciting in theory. It is absolutely impossible for optimization to work in a week or two. It generally takes from 6 to 24 months for the website to see the results.
If you have used the service of a pay-for-performance SEO agency, you should constantly track your results to see whether your positions are stable. You can use tools like the rank tracker by SE Ranking, that allows you to track your website’s positions in search engines daily and react swiftly to any unnatural spike. You can also connect your account with Google Analytics and monitor the website’s overall performance. Another great idea is to use a CRM to track clients and revenue from website optimization.
Most frequently, pay for performance SEO agencies want to show businesses the results ASAP, so they resort to questionable tactics that offer only short-term results with future negative consequences. Let’s look at why it is a good idea.
First and foremost, the basis of any effective search engine optimization strategy is a complex approach to gaining steady rankings and ensuring that the website’s performance is stable. Performance-based SEO firms do not have time for this. They only focus on boosting separate metrics, such as gaining traffic fast or increasing rankings.
High rankings are a great goal, but they should not be your only focus. Yes, high rankings will bring you traffic, but it won’t be of any value. What you need is qualified website traffic, people who will actually use your services or buy your products and stay with you.
Unfortunately, pay-for-performance SEO tactics cannot offer that. Moreover, they do not consider important metrics like page speed, bounce rate, and click-through rates.
If you want to gain new customers and ensure they are satisfied with the service or products, you need more than just some keywords. Pay-for-performance SEO companies usually promise that a short list of keywords will help you rank high and gain traffic, but the results are only short-term and lead to nothing.
An effective SEO campaign can never promise you overnight results. It could take up to a year for a website to see actual results and benefit from the implemented SEO practices. For a pay-for-performance SEO company, the goal is to get quick results that profit them, not you.
If you decide to use such services, expect to see only short-term results that don’t have any value for your business in the long run. You would have to rush all your processes and use vanity keywords to rank high in the search results. But vanity keywords are not likely to drive qualified traffic or increase conversion rates.
Some of the pay-for-performance SEO tactics used by performance-based agencies are grey-hat and black-hat SEO tactics. They violate the terms of service of search engines because the rankings are not earned naturally.
These black-hat methods include:
The grey-hat methods are:
Google and other search engines are great at determining these tactics, and there may be a penalty against a website that uses them. Instead of increasing traffic and ranking high, as promised by the agencies, the website can disappear from the search results. It is possible to recover from Google penalties, but it can take a lot of time that could have been spent on generating organic traffic. And time is money, so you lose financially while recovering from a penalty.
Most performance-based SEO agencies do not have a pricing policy, or their pay-performance pricing model is vague. You never know how much you will end up paying for the chosen SEO model, and the final price can be an unpleasant surprise. It is a common practice for business owners to pay way more than they thought they would.
If an agency does not have a clearly outlined SEO pricing policy, they can essentially charge you whatever they want, and it would be incredibly difficult for you to dispute it. Moreover, these agencies have their own definitions of “results” and “performance,” which can also influence the final price.
It is important to remember that effective well-planned SEO strategies take time to show results. Achieving your performance goals takes time, patience, and discipline.
When approaching an SEO strategy, always create a plan with the realistic goals you want to achieve, the steps you will take, and the expectations to be managed. There are a few steps you can follow to ensure that your SEO program will be effective.
Following these steps will help you gradually increase traffic, generate more leads, and attract users that will become your customers and not just leave the web page after a few clicks.
Despite the many promises you may hear from SEO performance agencies, there’s no fast, easy way to optimize your website and see long-term results. The best SEO agencies know that great optimization takes time, effort, and persistence, and it cannot be done in a matter of weeks.
With so many agencies on the market offering cheap results, it is essential to know their main grey and black-hat tactics and how to avoid them. When it comes to search engine optimization, quick results simply aren’t possible. It is better to invest in an effective strategy that will work in the long term than to save money and risk being penalized by Google.
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