Cheap SEO Services: 6 Things You Should Know

For small firms, it's easy to get sticker shock when you first look at the prices of hiring an outside agency to handle your search engine optimization. Studies show that nearly one in five companies is spending more than $4,000 every month on their SEO service. However, many companies have also started using cheap SEO services. Is a cheap SEO service worth paying for? Why do they charge so much, anyway? And does SEO matter on today's web? Keep reading to find out.

#1: There Are Some Things It's Fine to Do Yourself

Some parts of your marketing budget obviously don't need to be big. When you're buying cheap SEO services, you may want to do some things yourself so that you can save your budget for the services that an outside agency can do best. Let's take a quick look at some of the things that it's fine for you to do on your own—and that a cheap SEO service probably won't be able to do as well as you do.

Writing takes time, and you're a bigger subject matter expert than anyone working for cheap SEO services as a content writer. That means that you're uniquely qualified to write your own content for a blog. You may want to use some tutorials online to help you learn the basics of keywords, or your cheap SEO service can consult with you about how to make your blog shine.

Cheap SEO services often hire their content writers from overseas. While some of these content writers are indistinguishable from native English speakers, that's not always the case, so you should be wary of asking a cheap SEO service for content. You may also want to consider writing your own tweets and Facebook posts to help generate inbound links, so that you aren't looking for cheap SEO services that also offer social media marketing.

#2: ...But There Are Other Things Worth Full Price

Writing your own content is a good fit for lawyers with a DIY streak, because attorneys are used to writing clearly in their day to day business. Interesting writing, if your firm has good attorneys, is something that shouldn't be in short supply. On the other hand, unless your firm has some staffers with extremely polished quantitative or computer programming backgrounds (we're looking at you, Silicon Valley firms), there are some things you may want to ask a cheap SEO service to do.

Where you see a baffling array of data, even cheap SEO services can see patterns that tell you how, when, and where to advertise your firm. Your cheap SEO service can more than pay for itself by doing analysis of your web traffic and helping you to target your new marketing efforts with that data in mind.

It can also be worth it to have cheap SEO services help you to migrate your website to a new hosting provider. New hosting can give your website a speed boost, which makes it easier for a cheap SEO service to get your results to the top of searches.

#3: Why It's Hard to Find Cheap SEO Services

The biggest reason that a great, cheap SEO service can be so difficult to find is that great search engine optimization takes a lot of man hours. Effectively optimizing your website is very likely to be at least a half-time job for someone who works at the cheap SEO service you're hiring.

What this means is that the vast majority of cheap SEO services that are advertising sub-$1000 per month pricing plans are either located overseas or are dedicating an abnormally low amount of time to each website they're working on.

If you only have the budget for a cheap SEO service, you may want to consider calling a not-so-cheap service and asking for a consultation. Even a single project-based payment might be better than paying for monthly work from some cheap SEO services.

#4: Getting Cheap SEO Service Through Packages

One good way to have cheap SEO services without sacrificing quality is to bundle your search engine optimization with other services from a marketing agency. If you are already paying for someone to handle your social media or print advertising, for instance, they may also offer a cheap SEO service to help you optimize your web presence. When cheap SEO services are an add-on to a package, you may get a much better deal than if you had bought the service a la carte.

#5: Why You Still Need SEO On Today's Web

If you've heard a lot about mobile advertising and a lot of other new internet marketing techniques, you may have heard some skeptical things said about SEO. While it's true that for some types of products and services, SEO is no longer as effective as it used to be, attorneys are a special case.

Why? Because while people usually know exactly where to go shopping for a particular item, they probably don't know who the best, say, divorce attorney in Charlotte is. When people want to find out about something online they don't know much about, they use search. That's why cheap SEO services are a good fit for attorneys, and will continue to be for some time in the future.

#6: Getting the Best Return on Investment from Cheap SEO Services

It's important to remember that your cheap SEO service won't have an immediate effect on your web traffic. Best practices for search engine optimization typically create a slow rise to the top of search engine results pages. However, if you're not satisfied with your results after six months or so, you need different cheap SEO services than the ones you've been using.

Before you hire any cheap SEO service, ask for case studies that show how their service has been able to impact law firms or other similar businesses. This will help you to manage your expectations and understand whether the results you've been seeing are typical or atypical.