Let me start this off by saying not all SEO packages are bad. In fact, sometimes they can help push up a website quickly for low competition keywords, allowing the owner to make a nice sum of money before they drop. For rank and bank style online marketing, SEO packages can do the trick. But, if you have a website that you value and you want to stay out of harms way and create a long term money maker, an SEO package can be dangerous.
Instead of just saying, “You need custom SEO,” like many providers, I wanted to take a minute and highlight a few reasons
This is why custom SEO is a good idea if you are trying to rank a website that you plan on keeping for a long time.
1. Niche Links Only
The biggest problem with SEO packages is that most are limited with their link inventory. This means that a local doctor is getting links placed on the same website that also has links for YouTube views providers and e-commerce websites. It’s just a random mess of links and that just doesn’t cut it these days.
You have to build niche related links if you really want to win at SEO. These link farms and PBN’s (public blog networks) have links for every niche imaginable. Sites like that don’t give any value aside from the link. If a doctor gets a link on a medical directory they are getting a niche related link and also a placement that can produce referral traffic. SEO packages can’t offer this type of personalization, which is required for long term safe rankings. A custom SEO plan is going to cost more than a $299/month package, but it’s going to deliver a much higher quality service.
2. The Less Automation the Better
If an SEO package is $200 per month how much actual manual work do you think you will receive? It’s funny that some people will order these SEO packages and then complain about the quality. You aren’t going to get hand written content at that price. You are going to get scraped and spun crap. You aren’t going to get manually built links for that price. You are going to get whatever links can be created quickly with software.
The companies offering $200 SEO packages have costs and they still need to make a profit. How much money is left over to actually go into the work production? Almost nothing, so you get exactly what you pay for.
Custom SEO will involve an almost 100% manual plan, giving you higher quality and a well thought out strategy for your specific website. More money for manual work = a higher quality end product. This applies to any service industry, not just SEO.
3. Packages Create Huge Footprints
When you do the same thing, month after month, it leaves a huge footprint for Google. It quickly becomes obvious that nothing is natural and you become a target for a penalty slap. You see it in every SEO package: a specific number of blog comment links, a certain number of forum links, etc. A site isn’t going to naturally receive the same number of each type of link month after month.
SEO is all about looking as natural as possible. Websites are linked to every single day naturally. You need to make sure any paid links appear this way in the case of any Google employee ever assigned to manually review your website. Creating real links requires a strategy and manual work, two things that you don’t receive when you order an SEO package. Some SEO packages can be beneficial for diversification, but even then, you need to be careful about the quality.
4. Plan Needs to Constantly Change
Juts as mentioned above, shooting the same links at a website every single month isn’t going to help you. It’s actually going to hurt you. A good SEO plan is one that is constantly changing. This is why most reputable SEO firms will quote a monthly retainer fee. This allows them to constantly adjust the strategy in a way that it benefits the website while still staying within a specified monthly budget.
You want to work with an SEO provider that is going to constantly be thinking ahead. You can’t start each month scratching your head. When I personally map out an SEO plan I am thinking several months in advance. Content creation, outreach, etc. all takes time and planning. A custom SEO plan takes all of this into account and the plan is always changing to adapt for algorithm changes and updates as well as competition strategy.
5. Have to Factor Website Age
Firing mass links at a brand new website is a big mistake but not many people know this and a lot of SEO sellers won’t even bother looking into the domain age. They just take the order and fire the links. A brand new website isn’t going to naturally attract thousands of links. It’s a big time red flag. Link velocity needs to look very natural, especially when the website is brand new.
A custom SEO plan will take the website age into consideration when laying out the plan. If a brand new business launches a new website they will first get some local directory links and then slowly evolve form there. A brand new website isn’t going to have hundreds of blogs talking about them and linking. A brand new website acquiring 1,000 new links in a day is not realistic. A site like Tech Crunch could get 1,000 new links in an hour and it wouldn’t look suspect at all.
6. Diversified Content
The average SEO package has a certain number of articles every month, and they are usually 500 words. I’m not even talking about the quality of the content, because when you get an SEO package you are getting low quality content. It’s either scraped and spun or written by people that can barely understand English. Quality aside, what I am talking about here is the type of content.
You can’t just post articles these days. In order to diversify your content you should post things like videos and infographics. Both of these cost more to produce than a poorly written $2 article. Custom SEO plans cost more money because they provide more substance to work with. Things like videos and infographics give you pieces of content that you can use over and over for link bait and to attract quality visitors. So, month after month, you are building the number of content assets that will keep attracting traffic and links. This is long term SEO at its best.
7. Link Farms & Bot Social Signals = Easy Penalty
There are two components of most low priced SEO packages that make it clear as day that a website has engaged the service of a spammy SEO service. When you run a quick Ahrefs report and find a bunch of links that are built over a short period of time to fake websites that exist just to house links you know that site is about to get slapped out of the SERPs.
The links you will get from most low priced SEO packages are on par with what you can get for a $5 Fiverr gig. The buyers are unsuspecting and think they are getting quality SEO but it’s usually just a few Fiverr gigs thrown together.
There is also a big push for social signals. Yes, they help, but not when they include retweets and shares from bot accounts that are retweeting and sharing thousands of random websites and links. They are very easy to see and it makes locating spam sites very easy for Google.
8. No Two Websites Have Identical Requirements
This is the biggest reason why you should consider a custom SEO plan, and it’s because your website doesn’t have the same SEO needs as the next person. If you are a local plumber in Detroit, you are going to need a different SEO strategy than a dentist in Mexico.
A custom SEO plan will account for your location, your competition, the keywords that you are trying to rank for, and multiple other factors. Low quality can’t give your website and your strategy the proper time because it wouldn’t be cost effective.
A lot of people think that once they sign up for SEO service links should start showing up right away. That isn’t the case at all. The first step is to do research on the niche, the keywords, the competition, etc. If you don’t develop a plan and start by being prepared it will be very difficult to gain any traction and results.
If you would like to learn more about the custom SEO plans I put together for my clients, click here to get in touch. I’m able to put together a custom search engine optimization plan for any niche imaginable, with monthly rates starting at just $1,000. If you are looking to create a long term relationship I’d love to hear from you.
