Many people believe that if you stop paying monthly fees to an SEO firm, your positioning on Google will drop. If you understand what is involved in an SEO project, you would understand why this is an expensive myth many SEO firms would like you to believe in.
In a nutshell, SEO involves three things:
- Content of your website (pages and articles containing unique content devoted to the area of expertise that your desired keywords cover)
- Frequency of repetitions of your desired keywords across various elements of your website (URL, Page title, header tags, link anchor text, copy)
- Number of links from other websites pointing at your website (preferably, from reputable websites highly specialized in the area of your keywords).
Here is a more detailed overview of these SEO basics
If you paid an SEO firm to create unique content for you, pepper it with your desired keywords and create back links from other websites, and all this has already been done, then how can they take it away after you stop paying your monthly fees?
Ask yourself:
- Can they remove your content from your own website?
- Can they un-create all the back links that have been created over the course of several months or even years?
- If the answer to these questions is "No", then they can't do anything to adversely affect your SEO
Once your website has achieved a certain SEO level, there is not much that an SEO firm can do to take it away - except for doing a lot of SEO work for your immediate competitors, perhaps.
In fact, the only real thing that would affect your SEO in the long run is your competition. If they undertake an aggressive SEO campaign by doing a lot of the three things I listed above, then your SEO can get lowered, i.e. your link might drop a few lines down. But an SEO firm cannot lower your positioning on Google. Only Google can.
If is therefore foolish to engage in a forever-monthly-fee contract with any SEO firm.
Yes, SEO takes work and it takes time, but there is a limit to it, and after you've reached a certain level, it does not require a lot of maintenance.
A savvy business owner would be advised to do the following:
- Take an SEO seminar or research SEO independently to learn what is involved in SEO. This is not rocket science. SEO is not difficult. It requires leg work and time, but it is not difficult, and anyone who knows how to type and use email can learn how to do SEO quite well - and within a few hours.
- If you are too scared or too busy, hire an SEO firm do to the bulk of the required work for you for a limited fixed fee.
- Maintain the achieved SEO results on your own by creating new content every so often and acquiring back links (or by something social media marketing)
On average, this SEO strategy will result in savings of several thousand dollars (anywhere between $5,000 and $7,000 or more, depending on how many keywords you would want to cover) in the course of two years. And in many thousands more - in the long run.
If you need an SEO advice or a new website with SEO implemented from the grounds up, check out this website design Ottawa firm (which is my firm).
