How To Get Affordable SEO Without Sacrificing Effective SEO

Affordable SEO comes in two very different flavors. There’s the kind SEO where someone thinks they know what they’re doing, and so they hire a bunch of freelancers from overseas to do menial SEO tasks, and the kind where they DO know what they’re doing, and so they hire a professional SEO company that happens to not cost all that much. Guess what? One works, and the other doesn’t.

When you’re a web-based business owner, it’s natural to learn a little bit about Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, along the path to success. But many business owners hear about a tactic or two that a peer has used (and credits with his success), and they decide to imitate it without actually understanding what they’re doing. The classic example is that webmaster who goes onto ELance or ODesk and hires a smooth-typing Filipino or Indian man to make blog comments or forum posts for him.

Make no mistake — there are thousands of very talented Filipinos and Indians out there who can do SEO like nobody’s business, and kick a lot of butt at it. But there are HUNDREDS of thousands of hacks that will pretend to be those talented people, and they’ll take your money, and they’ll even do the work according to whatever technical specifications you spell out — but they won’t understand WHY they’re doing what they’re doing, and in SEO, that can make all of the difference.

For example, let’s say you hire a guy to write articles for you and turn them in to some article directories. If he’s good, he’ll understand that articles have a dual purpose — to provided a custom-anchored backlink from a respectable site, and to drive traffic to your page by offering interesting content and a strong call-to-action. But if he’s of the caliber typically hired by an expert SEO company, he’ll also know that his article writing and distribution service needs to include little details like a strongly-keyworded synopsis that will generate a summary page that will, all on it’s own, rank decently for the keywords in question, collecting and driving traffic all it’s own.

Sure, the expert SEO company might cost noticeably more than hiring freelancers, but in the end, you’ll always be happy you did — freelancers are a horrible gamble. All too often, what you think will be some affordable SEO turns out to be a horrible waste of time and money.