Cheap SEO Tools
Lately I’ve had a tough time evangelizing clients who are wise enough to canvass among multiple SEO companies here in the Philippines and even abroad. While the ones abroad are better equipped with their knowledge on SEO and internet marketing, here in the Philippines, it seems that pricing still holds much of the steering wheel. We want to go ahead and try to debunk that.
You see, our SEO service is not really cheap. You’ve probably had a look into our SEO plans and pricing. You also probably told yourself “What a rip-off!” But hey, if you’re open to hearing us out, here’s the reason behind our steeper price amongst all the low-hanging SEO service packages out there.
Note: This is an entry for companies who are asking “Why is SEO Hacker’s package so expensive and why is this ‘other SEO company’ so damn cheap?”
1) We don’t do “Common” SEO
SEO is an ever-changing game and we strongly believe that all SEO strategies that are based on a wash-rinse-repeat strategy will sooner or later get caught in an algorithm change and lose its effectivity, or worse, get the client penalized. SEO strategies that are common will lose taste because it’s easy to replicate. We believe SEO should come from ingenuity, structure and usefulness. Things that are not easily produced – even with our own company website. These things also don’t come in cheap.
2) We work a Combination of Art and Science for your Website
There are so many SEO packages that will offer you something like this (This is a real package sent to me by a Singaporean Company who’s looking to outsource our services for the same price. I don’t even know if it’s funny or sad anymore.):
SEO 5 Keywords Package
5 Keywords
On-site Optimization
Sitemap and Robots.txt Generation
Backlinks Building
Written Articles Submission
Google Analytics Integration
Google Webmaster Tools
Conversion Tracking Integration
Total Price: $379/mth
Let’s compare what we do versus what a normal ‘cheap’ SEO company would do. So here’s the legend:
— SEO Hacker Services (What we do in SEO Hacker)
— Cheap SEO Company (What cheap SEO companies REALLY do for you)
The Comparison
The on-site optimization includes smart, structured internal linking, keyword placement optimization, image optimization, site speed optimization, open graph integration, etc.
That on-site optimization? What they’re really doing is just putting your keywords inside your content whenever they can put it, wherever they can put it. That’s about it. Cheap, ineffective, ugly and stupid.
Sitemap is automatically pinging the right search engines whenever you publish fresh content or you improve an existing one. It should be an XML file that is fixed in such a way that users will still be able to make sense of it. Regardless it should regularly ping all engines to allow their spiders to re-crawl your site. Robots.txt should know what crawlers to block out to reduce process memory consumption and which crawlers should be allowed.
Sitemap is probably an HTML file and nothing else. Robots.txt will probably be default with what your CMS already has. No effort there.
Linkbuilding – I’ll have to define this one by one. What makes our linkbuilding different from cheap, artificial linkbuilding? Well for starters, how we build your backlink profile is by going out of our way to think of content so great that it would kill us if it’s not gonna get any links pointing back to it. Then we promote it to other bloggers and webmasters we have existing relationships with. It all starts with a solid content strategy and an effective content marketing structure.
What ‘Backlinks Building’ probably means is that they are creating articles written by underpaid Indians or spun from an article spinning tool and publishing it on low-quality article hubs that accept tons of crap content everyday and gives out links for free just because. They’re also probably using automated blog commenting tools such as Scrapebox or SEnuke. Easy money. This will probably get your website a good, chunky Google Penalty. See you in the sandbox!
Written articles are supposedly NOT for submission. Articles that are artfully written should be published in the client’s website or blog and then promoted to relevant websites who would care to read or view it. This way, links can come, and if they do come, they’re relevant and helpful to users. The perfect kind of link.
As I’ve said, “Written Articles Submission” are the kind of low-quality articles disseminated to low-quality article hubs. This is extremely cheap and easy to do. So they can afford to charge you peanuts. I’d do it for you but it’s just not my thing to see a client’s website get penalized after a handful of months.
Google Analytics Integration is something we can do in a span of 5 minutes or less. The thing is, we give Google Analytics data meaning and purpose in your life. We explain each data’s significance in your business in our monthly reports to you. We compare your traffic and conversions month-on-month. We show you how your keywords are increasing and which ones provide you the most conversions. We make sense of the technical so you can understand what you’re paying for.
Google Analytics Integration is code so they make it look tough when we can really do it in 5 minutes or less. I don’t even understand why they add it as ‘Integration’ their package.
Google Webmaster Tools is something that is necessary for the client to understand. It helps us work with the client better if there are any unusual activities or unnatural links or uncrawlable pages in their website. We report it back to the client and fix whatever needs fixing. We also make sure to add the client’s sitemap here. It’s a ton of work but we’ll do it all for you.
Google Webmaster Tools will probably never even appear in their reports to you. It just sounds all techy in the proposal so they included it there. Or, as with Google Analytics, they will simply ‘integrate’ it with your website and that’s it.
Conversion Tracking needs to be set-up in Google Analytics. It’s not so hard but you will have to do it right. We analyze your business process, pages and your system in order to create a funnel where we think users will really go through before making the conversion. We tell you our analysis why users drop off the funnel in specific pages and what changes we can make to increase the conversion rate in between funnels. It’s a lot of brainpower but we’ll make sure you get your money’s worth.
Conversion Tracking Integration is probably just putting your destination URL as a goal in Google Analytics and that’s it. They’ll just take a screenshot and send you the conversions you make each month. No funnel. No improvement advice. No brainpower used. Cheap and easy.
