Cheap SEO fails miserably in any competitive environment. Why? Because your competitors are using the same cheap technique that you are, albeit as a small component of a more aggressive campaign. Whether or not your competition is using an SEO expert or has spent enough time to become advanced in optimization, your inexpensive approach is going to get limited traction. Even worse, if you invest in spammy techniques (like multiple submissions or buying links on sites that already have multiple other links to questionable companies) you may find yourself in a worse position than if you did nothing at all.

Low-budget optimization usually gets poor results because it can’t build an internet presence that is worth a search engine’s time. Cheap backlinks are only enough to tell a search engine that you exist, but trusted links (which cost more) are going to be an endorsement of your product or service. While SEO outsourcing is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, a 100% offshore optimization program may not get be the best match for semantic rules designed for US English results. Some of the better optimization programs incorporate content editing with title and description creation, and all of these should be matched up by native speakers whenever possible. Likewise, if you are doing search engine marketing for European sites, you should get foreign language speakers who know how to match up the site with the most relevant idioms and phrases for the language.

Cheap SEO techniques also don’t get a lot of credibility in search engines. Giants like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have a vested interest in keeping up their market share and stock price, so they want to provide highly relevant results to users, who in turn keep coming back, and will click on sponsored ads as well as the natural search results. Low quality links to poorly optimized sites are a sign that the website may not be a good value for the search engine’s audience. Part of a premium SEO package will include advice on making your site a better resource for its subject matter, while acquiring top level links to show the search engines that you are worth indexing in the top 10. Very few cheap or DIY SEO packages will even include human support, let alone advanced optimization advice.

Good SEO is worth the investment. This is not to say that you shouldn’t shop around, compare pricing, and see what you’re getting for the money. You might be overpaying for cheap SEO without even knowing it. Any SEO program worth its salt will have reporting, account management, and link building features that are consistent with search engine best practices. You should also get realistic advice about what you can expect for your budget, and scalable campaigns that can get you local results or an international search engine presence, depending on what your goals are. For a few thousand dollars, you can get traffic to your website every month that is worth many times that amount, and you can make quite a bit of money online. However, if you are looking at an SEO program that costs less than $100 per month, you should not expect measurable results, and may want to re-think your business strategy.