SEO PACKAGES: 5 COMMON MYTHS
For generations of business owners, packaged deals have been an enticing offer. In these offers, everything is laid out, costs are usually fixed, and expenses are capped so clients can secure the products or results they need controllably. This works well in many industries: particularly for products and services that can be controlled by the provider. But when the control is outside of the hands of the agency you’re buying from, the safety and quality of the package go out the window.
SEO is one of these services, as results can’t be controlled by anyone except the search engine itself. Search engine optimisation works with the ranking algorithm, which means while specialists can control their approach, they can’t control how their methods are prioritised by these formulas. In turn, this lack of control means that guaranteeing fast results is a misleading claim. Some SEO packages will make promises for results that aren’t really valuable: often while using improper techniques.
Unethical tactics go against the regulations set by Google and other search engines. When sites are inevitably caught operating outside the terms of service, they are penalised quite harshly, and unfortunately, penalties of this calibre put your entire business at risk—often negating the original cost of these SEO services.
While SEO packages may seem appealing, they’ve naturally developed many myths around their effectiveness and function. This can make it even harder to predict whether they’ll pay off for you. Below, we debunk the top five myths about SEO packages in Sydney.
What Are SEO Packages?
An SEO package is a type of pre-developed service that includes various tasks within a template strategy. Agencies that offer this service often have a few methods included in their strategy, so when they work with new clients, they apply this methodology to the new client’s site. Methods can include black hat tactics like keyword stuffing, content automation and duplication, cloaking and link hiding. These often work to manipulate search engine’s algorithms, with the goal of placing a website higher in rankings.
SEO packages come in different shapes and sizes. Some SEO packages in Australia will offer guaranteed results, while others will promise to have you ranking for particular keywords. Some SEO packages base their offer on being the cheapest, or offer fixed price points with different levels of service.
When prices are fixed, you can usually assume it comes from an agency that will use improper techniques that can damage your business and website. Unfortunately, SEO is not effective when it tries to manipulate algorithms. Google inevitably discovers this and any short-lived results are reversed. Reputable SEO agencies will instead work with algorithms to naturally develop a strong network of SEO procedures that organically increase your ranking over time.
While it’s always tempting to opt for the cheapest deal you can find, SEO packages can make it difficult to track meaningful results—offering very little, if any, return. Some agencies will take advantage and mislead their clients. The goals and promises that SEO packages claim to deliver are typically unfounded, or bring in irrelevant traffic to your website, and therefore don’t deliver much revenue growth.
Top Myths About SEO Packages
Template SEO Packages are Best
SEO packages often claim that template approaches are the best way to deliver results. Templates refer to a cut and paste type of SEO strategy, where your business name is inputted into a predetermined set of techniques and timelines.
Search engine optimisation shouldn’t be applied via a one-size-fits-all approach for a few reasons. For one, success is dependent on so many variables which all need to be considered for effective, personalised implementation. SEO has a general overall goal, which is to increase the traffic to a website by helping it place high in SERP rankings. But this overall goal has to be broken down into achievable KPIs: ones that are relevant to your business’ objectives in the long term.
Customised SEO services consider the existing context of the website, creating a strategy to meet its goals from this position. An SEO agency that delivers custom SEO plans will take time to understand your current position within your market: conducting competitor analysis and user research, for example. From here, the service provider will determine the different facets of SEO needed and how much weight should be placed on each; to optimise the implementation phase, securing better results in the long-run.
Template approaches don’t consider the unique technical needs of your site: how could they? If your website doesn’t meet Google’s technical requirements, these agencies generally won’t be aware of this: nor will they have the skill set to bring it up to scratch. Instead, SEO packages entail keyword stuffing and dodgy link building; these practices are like cosmetic changes to hide a broken foundation underneath. Search engine crawlers see straight through this, and will ignore your site at best—or worse, punish it with low rankings.
SEO Packages Produce Long-Term Results
By definition, SEO package service providers don’t plan on hanging around and supporting you long-term. That’s why they market their offers as a bundle with fixed prices – because once they hit an arbitrary target, they free themselves of accountability. SEO agencies that offer cheap SEO packages or guaranteed SEO results promise quick results for low prices, which are designed to draw business owners in because, on paper, it is a great deal.
In practice though, SEO packages use improper techniques that cut the corners of search engine optimisation. Because search engines create their own algorithm, they know when shortcuts have been taken. When black hat SEO tactics are applied for example, they produce minimal or short-term results because they implement procedures that help sites climb the ranks unethically.
SEO packages may provide short-lived visibility and rankings, but the results fade as quickly as they come. Your position is likely to dip below your initial placement when Google catches on to these black hat tactics.
There really is no way around it – sustainable and powerful SEO takes effort and time. But that can be viewed as a positive: when you invest in a proper strategy from a reputable SEO agency, it provides a pathway to competing strongly against your competition. On average, articles take eight months to reach their peak in search results: with a variety of factors influencing the time it takes for an SEO campaign to “work”. SEO packages can’t offer sustained results and high calibre services, but there are many affordable SEO services that can.
Fixed Costs Mean You Won’t Be Taken Advantage Of
SEO packages are designed to entice businesses with a low price and promised results. Because they generally come with a fixed cost, this offer feels valuable. It can help clients plainly see what they’re paying for and understand the results they’ll receive from the given cost. But while SEO agencies that offer these bundles can assign an attractive one-off price to the deal, they take advantage of their clients through the lack of tangible results.
Many of these providers can only offer this low price by outsourcing the services to cheaper overseas workers. This avenue allows them to pay contractors a substantially lower amount than they would an in-house, specialist team. This generates a whole world of problems when it comes to SEO. Firstly, the SEO plan begins to stretch over multiple parties, where the intricacies of the strategy become lost in translation.
When outsourcing occurs, the intent of the different parties can become misaligned with the overall goal, and SEO best practices. Outsourced contractors are assigned specific tasks to fulfil, and effort is not guaranteed—with extra editing often required on top of the outsourcing work. These contractors don’t invest the due time to learn about the specifics of your SEO strategy and its objectives.
What’s more, because many of these contractors are non-native English speakers, the content writing is often of low quality. This low standard works against Google’s algorithm, which is designed to promote the best the internet has to offer. These teams cannot deliver the required link building profiles, quality content, keyword targeting and website technicalities required for effective and sustainable SEO. This is why the SEO cost for these bundles is initially cheap but rarely worth the investment.
SEO Packages Employ Best SEO Practices and Quality Work
The guaranteed results that SEO packages claim to offer are a bit of a red herring. If you’re being told your site will achieve its goals, it’s easy to assume they’re using best practices and their work is of a high standard. For these service providers to make a profit from their cheap SEO packages, they have to cut corners and use black hat SEO to create short-term results.
These improper practices can sometimes boost your site’s visibility and rankings, but because of the unethical tactics, Google can quickly push you well below where you began or even remove you from SERPs altogether.
It also makes it hard for your audience to trust you when they read poorly written content. Good SEO agencies charge an adequate but affordable price to fund the resources needed to help you effectively and sustainably rank for relevant keywords. Cheap SEO packages can’t make a profit while providing the amount of effort needed for quality content, so they instead use these cookie-cutter techniques that don’t deliver meaningful results.
SEO Packages Are Cost-Effective
Again, taking SEO packages at face value they appear to be cost-effective because you only need to pay a fixed and often low price for SEO results. But as we’ve discussed, the result of poor quality SEO services is either short-lived results, where your site quickly plummets to below its original position or even more harmful penalties from Google.
In the former instance, clients have to pay the upfront cost of the SEO package, and in the best-case scenario may have generated some more traffic to their site for a short period. Due to the nature of black hat strategies trying to reach a larger audience without ensuring their relevance, this added traffic is often not interested in what your site offers. So these short-lived results rarely translate into increased revenue, but still cost you money for the SEO services.
Beyond this, when your site is penalised for breaking Google’s terms of service, your SERP ranking suffers dramatically. If your site has dropped to a worse position than when you began, you’ll have to invest a lot more money to regain your position and begin to generate more sustainable web traffic.
In other cases, Google may take manual action on your site and banish it from the searches altogether. Here, whatever traffic you initially had coming to your website will be reduced as the primary source of visitors finding you has been eliminated. Repairing this damaged relationship with search engines again requires a lot of long-term SEO work and a significant cost that adds to the initial price of these packages. Instead, investing in a trusted SEO agency can help you increase your SERP position steadily; return on the investment typically lasts a very long time.
Why You Should Avoid SEO Packages
The myths about SEO packages can drive confusion for business owners when searching for the best SEO services. As we’ve debunked most of the top myths, you can begin to see a clearer picture about these SEO packages, which is why we always advise businesses to avoid them. Here’s a little summary of why they’re the least effective option for search engine optimisation:
- They generally use a template approach to your SEO campaign, which means they don’t develop a critical understanding of your business position and its goals. Without this, SEO becomes a diluted process with bare minimum efforts—misaligned with your goals.
- Agencies that offer SEO packages don’t have any accountability once the SEO campaign is over. When results reverse they consider their job finished and leave you to repair your rankings.
- Any results they manage to achieve are usually short-lived because they don’t establish the groundwork required for effective and sustainable SEO services.
- With short-term results and without accountability, clients that use SEO packages in Australia are often in a worse position for particular keywords, so the whole process can be a waste of time and money—and not the cost-effective service is marketed as.
- To afford the tasks that SEO demands with the low price points of these packages, the work is usually outsourced to contractors in different geographical locations. This means the people that are performing the functions of your SEO campaign don’t share the same drive to meet your objectives and the work is likely to be of poor quality and full of black hat tactics.
- Black hat work scattered throughout your site can be highly damaging to your business. Google penalises sites that breach their terms of services through these unethical SEO practices, and beyond this, your site will struggle to gain trust with its audience when it’s executed to a poor standard.
Partnership Approach With Vine Digital
SEO services are not all created the same. While basic, cookie-cutter SEO packages are at one end of the quality spectrum, partnership approaches are on the other side of the coin. This is because it’s only through a long-term and committed partner that your business can build the proper foundations for traffic and revenue growth. Vine Digital is driven to help our clients with affordable SEO services, beginning with a thorough analysis of your market and current standing in search results.
We provide an ideal process for clients to outsource SEO, with a diverse team of experienced SEO specialists. Instead of black hat tactics, we have a network of SEO professionals to: properly build a backlink profile, write high-quality content, and deliver a high return on investment through an ongoing increase in web traffic.
When we gain momentum with your SEO and you rank increasingly higher for relevant keywords, this will increase your brand’s authority online—making it exponentially easier to rank for more competitive and relevant keywords. We stay by your side throughout your SEO campaigns, from briefing through to ongoing optimisations. With our expertise and the insights provided by data, you can whatever heights you desire for your business. Get in touch today to find out more or to get started with your custom SEO strategy.