airabongco|March 24, 2009|27

“Cheap” SEO Technique

A lot of people used to believe that the use of negative terms such as “cheap” will have a negative impact on a company’s products and services. However, with the post by Tom Crandall in iMedia Connection showed how this term is actually beneficial to SEO.

There are lots of instances. In an article in the same website published last year by Craig Macdonald cited how the phrase “cheap airfare” is worth around $8 in comScore. Another phrase is “cheap insurance” which gets around 673,000 queries per month according to Google Adwords. The phrase “cheap car” will also not lag behind with 1 million queries per month.

The good thing with incorporating the word “cheap” into your website is that it gets almost instant returns when integrated wisely with products and services. Tom Crandall provided an example.

As with hotels, competition for the keyword set “cheap rental car” is thick. As you can see on the below screenshot, the first ad displayed for this term, by aggregator CarRentals.com, offers daily rentals for seven major car rental brands as low as $8.98 a day. When I searched the company’s database for the cheapest advertised rates on its homepage, the touted deal turned out to be a sham.

For example, the company’s homepage boasts a daily rate of $7.43 at LAX from Feb. 28 to March 14. When I searched for the cheapest rate within the dates advertised, the lowest rate offered was $26 per day on a weekly rental through Deluxe Rent A Car. The same held true for every special offer I searched. Regardless, this bait-and-switch tactic may convert a fair amount of business for CarRentals.com because the customer is already on its website and just wants to book a reservation without further delay or frustration.

One brand that has no qualms about positioning itself for the “cheap car rental” niche is Fox Car Rental. Fox Car Rental uses its title tags, description tags, keyword tags, and homepage marketing copy to optimize for “cheap car rental,” “cheap car rentals,” and “cheap car rental rates.”

Here’s the Google search results page for “cheap car rental.”

carrental

Adjectives such as “affordable” and “low-cost” may be good for sales copies but nothing really beats “cheap”. Think about it. Will you go out of your way and use words such as “inexpensive” in your search for products and services. Definitely not. You will use the ordinary word “cheap”. Just take note of this user search behavior in mind and you will never go wrong.

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  • Guest

    I would agree that when marketing a product the word cheap should be used because everyone is looking for a good deal. However it should be used only to attract people and not to promote the product. There are other ways to make a product or service more convenient without making it look well….. cheap. Cheers

  • http://ajn1.com Adam

    very interesting stuff. thanks for the tip.. Although I think quite a few people will be trying this now!

  • http://www.tvstelevisionsonline.com Guest

    I agree with your information. Using terms that people are commonly using as determined by search phrase volume just makes sense.

  • http://www.seosapien.com Guest

    It highly depends on the service offered. I wouldn’t search for CHEAP apartments but I’d rather look for AFFORDABLE apartments.

    Depending on the niche ranking for cheap at the place of affordable (for example) devaluates the quality of the service/product.

  • http://www.top-suchmaschinenranking.de JohnBi

    I will publish my site soon in english and i will use CHEAP as one of my main Keywords in Title-Tag, thanks for the tip.

    JohnBi

  • qodari

    Can you help me improve PageRank?

  • http://atul-kumar-kashyap.blogspot.com/ atul kumar

    Thanks to sharing it.i need it,i will use this technique.it will be cheap and good for me.

  • http://www.seolight-blogger.com Guest

    It’s a good tip, but I think the competition for the term must be sky-high, even in various sensible combinations.

    Also, I do not quite agree with you that it has no sense to use synonyms like affordable, inexpensive, low-rate etc. Optimising for a single term may easily trip google overoptimisationm filter, whereas varying the anchor text by using synonyms will help you to aviod the filter and still rank high for the main term, as google DOES appreciate and takes into account synonyms when working out SERPs.

    Regards,
    Andrew

  • http://softwaredowntown.blogspot.com/ Guest

    Nice post and thanks for very beneficial tips and tricks.

  • http://www.the-directory-link.com Guest

    It should be used if the product you sell is really competitive, good quality and competitive price. Not only saying cheap, but then in the reality it is not true (I see this several times). So, honesty is important too to keep your credibility.

  • http://flowers-serv.co.cc/ Guest

    Good tips, but its must have good quality, if not it’s liar

  • http://www.razorlightmedia.com John

    If it’s just a directory I’m sure they can get away with this, but if it’s a business where you need to build a relationship with your customers, like B2B, you’re going to lose a ton of credibility doing something like this. Plus, depending on what you offer, the prospects searching for “cheap” + keyword are sometimes prospects you don’t want anyway.

  • http://whatsacoder.blogspot.com JD

    I’m not using keyword analysis tool instead I use google trends. It’s much reliable!, I just come up with a list of words, combine it and type it in. If a graph shows then it’s most likely searched and as I see it the word “cheap” really hits Google

  • Bob Whitehurst

    I saw a statement by a Google employee that they DO calculate in keywords that are used in their formulas. That said, the problem with using a keyword like “cheap” is that everyone is using that keyword. So there are two sides to the coin.

    Bob Whitehurst

  • Guest

    Search engine optimization also know as SEO is now a days most important factors for getting more visitors for any body’s site. More visitors means more sales. There are plenty of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Firms who achieve your desired results. But most important factor : are you getting that result within your budget ? Most of the people say NO. Then every body feels the importance of Indian Search Engine Optimization Companies. From Indian SEO Companies you can get it done with 25% of the cost what you had thought to spend on for your search engine rankings.
    Our SEO Plans starts from $170/month only. We always follow ethical search engine techniques. There are few Cheap SEO companies which can give you really quick result by using some bad technique but as you know there’s no short cut to success.

  • iman

    nice tricks.. many people like cheap and free things..hahaha..
    nice share!

  • AarifKelly

    I guess this is going to become less actual because of the world financial depression, what do you think?

  • Jeremy

    Using google keyword can work out to be costly. That’s why I use alot of free ways to get traffic.

  • http://www.auto-europe.co.uk/ Maria Marquez

    Totally agree! It is very impotant to use the keyword ” cheap”. Have a look at Auto Europe car hire . The title tag includes the word “cheap” and it is used across all landing pages as well!

    It is one of top keywords for the travel industry!

    We all want to save money so ” cheap” is always included in our Key phrases!

  • http://wowquesthelperhq.com/BrianKoppsLevelingGuide.html Amanda

    Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

  • http://www.pasicx.org/ Maria

    Thank you for this. It is interesting.

  • http://wowquesthelperhq.com/BrianKoppsLevelingGuide.html Brian Kopp

    This will help me out a lot because I am really working hard on my website so I am glad that I read this.

  • Steph

    I see both sides of this. To use such words as “cheap” is ok for people looking to get something in a pinch. But I still think that words tha sounds better like inexpensive, or affordable, paint a better picture in peoples minds. Thanks for the article.

  • Paul

    Cheap seo? Didn’t know that there was a thing that existed lol. Thanks for the helpful article.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NHHPIIBKWQHYFOSQ7LM3BU3BTQ Paul Simon

    than

  • Anonymous

    Hey this is very new technique for me.This is a very unique post.This is very interesting to know that cheap technique can also proove beneficial for SEO.Great to know.I am looking forward to its new technique in future.

  • Tina Pierce

    Thanks for this.