Signs You’re Dealing with Bad SEO

There are thousands of SEO agencies and a seemingly endless supply of so-called “SEO professionals” keen to offer their services. As is the case with most industries, SEO has its fair share of scams and poor-quality professionals, but unlike other industries, they seem to be in the majority here.

SEO farms are founded cheaply to offer fast, inexpensive, and automated services; they promise everything, deliver nothing, and could destroy your business in the process. If you want to stay safe, you need to be very careful about who you give your money to and look for the following signs that you’re dealing with a bad SEO agency.

Using Metadata

In the old days of SEO, getting those top-ranking spots was all about abusing the metadata. Webmasters would spam keywords to get high rankings. It took Google a few years before it caught up with these tricks and rendered them useless.

Today, metadata still exists, and many bad SEO agencies rely on it, but it doesn’t work like it used to. It does still serve a purpose and can lure users to click on search results, but metadata keywords are useless, and descriptions/titles are increasingly being ignored by Google updates.

Relying on Backlinks

Backlinks still serve a purpose, but they are becoming less and less important as Google seeks to create an engine that prioritises long, well-written content with actual engagement as opposed to content that has been spammed with low-quality links.

Organic links from genuine authority sites are important, and the methods used in acquiring these involve considered social media marketing and outreach. However, many low-quality SEO agencies will revert to the old-school black hat SEO method of spamming links, going for quantity over quality.

Not only does this not help with a site’s rankings in the long term, but Google penalises sites that only have low-quality links.

Grand Promises

Questionable SEO companies often claim they will get you to the number 1 position on Google without fail and that you will stay there.

Getting the top position isn’t that hard for some sites, but for others, it requires a huge budget and a lot of time. If you have an obscure site targeting local customers, it can be done with relative ease. But what if your main competitors are Forbes and Inc.? What if you have a budget of £1,000 a month and are going up against sites with seven-figure budgets?

Furthermore, no self-respecting SEO agency would guarantee that your site will retain a top ranking based on a short-term contract. There’s no guarantee that the work completed this month will still have an impact in several years because Google is constantly changing its algorithm, and competitors are always fighting for those top spots.

Prices Too Good to Believe

The best SEO professionals charge thousands of dollars a day for the most basic projects, and the biggest agencies are known to charge six-figure sums every month.

Cheap SEO agencies will offer you the world for pennies. If you believe their claims, you can get permanent high rankings for the cost of a couple of Fiverr gigs. It seems too good to be true, and that’s because it is.

Quality content is at the heart of all good SEO. At InkBlimp, we know that better than anyone, as that’s what we specialise in. We cut out the endless middlemen who work for these agencies to ensure we can hire better writers and editors and yet still charge less. But even with those reduced fees, good content costs a lot of money.

No self-respecting SEO agency can get you to the top of Google for less than £100 using honest, lasting methods because doing so would require lots of exceptional content. Instead, these “bad” SEO agencies will simply spam your site in blog comments and forums, accumulating huge amounts of links in a short space of time.

Google sees all of this, gives your site a boost, and in the short term, it may work. You pay the money, the SEO agency walks away, and then a few weeks later, Google updates the rankings and your position plummets.

Summary: Stick with the Best

When it comes to SEO, you get what you pay for. But that doesn’t mean you need to pay through the teeth. At InkBlimp, we pride ourselves on offering exceptional services for affordable prices.

We created this agency to appeal to everyone, from small-time bloggers seeking a little lift to massive retail sites looking for a big launch. We might not be able to provide the same quantity of articles and the same intensity of service for all budgets, but our services are completely scalable, and you’ll always get the very best writers, creators, and SEO experts on your side.

Check our services page today to learn more about InkBlimp and discover what we can do for you and your business.