If an SEO Agency tries to sell you links, run! Run Fast.

My names Matthew, the Director here at Square Media.

I’m sick and tired of client’s and ‘expert’ SEO agencies talking about buying links. It does not work, and does more harm than good. Even more annoying, is that you don’t even need to buy links – It’s a complete scam.

Instead, if your company spends time (which we all know is way more valuable than money) writing good content, that human beings actually want to read and share, then you are letting other people do the work for you (and save a sh*t tonne of money whilst you are doing it!).

‘Proper’ Search Engine Optimisation is one of my company’s core competencies – So I do actually know what I’m talking about. Our emphasis is on purely ‘white-hat’ techniques, and there are white-hat ways of building links to your website. The best ways do not involve buying or leasing links from seemingly high PageRank websites – That is a sure fire way of getting yourself blacklisted in the SERP’s. Don’t believe me?… Read it from ‘the horses (Google) mouth’.

Instead, our approach (and the correct approach) to SEO is based on hard graft; creating high quality, unique and shareable content which in itself drives high quality links to your website. High quality content, underpinned with basic on-site SEO techniques and a focus on user intent are the core values of modern SEO strategies.

SEO is DEFINITELY NOT about link building and keyword stuffing (these days) – It simply does not work and does more harm than good, but sadly there are many agencies which still conduct themselves in this manner – and it’s frankly disgusting.

Let me know if you’d like to discuss how I can help your business further, and I can give you an idea of what we would propose and the potential costs involved.

Just so you know, we can’t conduct any SEO works until a full and detailed technical audit has been conducted on your website, research completed into your target market and we have achieved a solid understanding of your current digital marketing practices. And yes, it is chargeable – and so it should be considering we actually put days worth of hard-graft and expertise into preparing one. We do offer a ‘free one’ if you’re skint.

Armed with this information we can confirm a budget with you, but we do not offer ‘packages’ as there simply isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ option with SEO – Like I said, it comes down to hard graft, and the amount of hard graft needed varies dependent on market, audience, website history and competition. Similarly to the above, if an ‘expert’ SEO Agency starts talking about ‘SEO Packages’ – Run even faster!

No, our pricing is based on monthly hourly budgets (for example; 20 hours per month). Everyone understands time – And you don’t have to deal with decrypting ‘technical blah, blah’.

It’s also important to consider that SEO done properly has to be conducted in the context of a full digital marketing strategy – Not just as a standalone service. For that reason our SEO service actually works, because as a ‘full-service’ MARKETING AGENCY we can not only provide actual expert advice on SEO, but we can provide you with all of the supporting services required to conduct a successful online marketing campaign. Great SEO is only PART of a great Digital Marketing campaign.

Tight on budget? – Avoid SEO altogether. SEO that actually works isn’t cheap. Instead, my advice is to just focus on producing good content internally and save your money. Better yet, look into Google Ads (We can help) – Although, if you aren’t careful. and don’t know what you are doing you can waste just as much money doing that!

P.s. If you like what I’ve said.. Do the honourable thing. Share it.