Affordable SEO packages explained: Are cheap SEO packages worth it? [2021]

There are plenty of businesses out there advertising affordable SEO packages, but how do you know if these services will have a noticeable impact on your results? Is SEO something that can be taken care of on a shoestring budget? Moreover, how do you decide what level of service is right for your business?

We’ll be tackling all of these questions and more! Don’t go anywhere…

What results can you expect from cheap SEO packages?

There’s no question that results can be achieved with fewer hours if they’re spent on your website’s biggest shortfalls. However there are plenty of factors that will affect the impact SEO work has on your business and these will vary from case to case.

So in short, it depends…

However, these factors are the main ones to consider:

The condition of your website from an SEO perspective

If you’re starting with a blank slate, there’s a considerable amount of ground work that needs to be done to drive organic traffic to your website. A cheap SEO package may be enough to service a small, one page website. However, with a medium sized or large website it would take a number of months before you would begin seeing significant results.

If you already have a solid organic presence and you’re looking to take results to the next level, it’s unlikely that minimal SEO work will help. This is because building on good organic performance is more time-consuming because all of the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked.

The number of hours you’re paying for

Unsurprisingly, the time spent on improving your website is crucial. The more SEO website improvements made, the better the organic performance. 

The quality of work completed

Not all SEO agencies are created equally. Ideally, your work will be completed by an experienced SEO professional rather than a junior employee. Furthermore, they should be using up-to-date strategies. SEO changes quickly and the closer you are to the cutting edge of the industry, the better the results.

The order in which SEO tasks are completed

Usually it makes sense to frontload the SEO tasks that will have the biggest impact and lead to a website achieving results faster. A pitfall of some SEO projects is spending vast amounts of time on certain tasks and delaying the completion of smaller tasks that could actually have a huge impact on results (most notably technical SEO fixes).

How much freedom you’ll give your agency

Some SEO changes can be at odds with branding, culture or simply “the way things are done around here”. If you’re targeting particular keywords it’s crucial that these terms feature in specific areas of a webpage. There’s very little middle ground here. If a client believes that a page title should include certain text (e.g. a slogan) vs the actual target term (the product/service), this will hold the page and website back.

While this situation may seem unlikely, it’s actually not uncommon for SEO specialists and clients to take slightly different approaches. If you’re looking for SEO success, it’s best to support the SEO specialist’s recommendations unless there’s a serious issue with branding/culture.

How much competition you have for your target terms

Unsurprisingly, the more competition there is for your target terms, the harder it is to gain organic traffic for them. Are there several businesses ranking above you in search results? How much do your competitors invest in their websites and content? If you’re in a highly competitive market, you’re going to need more than a budget SEO package to be able to compete. This is because your competitors are likely to be investing in SEO as well. Can you expect to outrank a competitor that has 20 – 40 SEO hours spent on their website every month with just 5 – 10 hours of your own?

What’s right for me? Should you pay more for an SEO package? 

Whilst we offer SEO services, we’re not recommending that every business needs an SEO agency or needs to pay for many SEO hours. If you’re just starting out and are running on a shoestring budget, an ‘affordable’ or budget SEO package might be right for you. 

However, if you’re in a relatively competitive market and you think your competitors are also investing in SEO, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to compete with minimal hours and low to average quality of work. You’ll need to at least match your competitors’ efforts if you hope to outperform them and gain organic market share. 

We hope that we’ve shed some light on the subject. Feel free to contact us for a free, no-strings-attached consultation if you’d like to find out more about our SEO services.