Pay for performance is a payment model where a client only pays the agency once certain milestones are hit. You will never have to worry about paying for poor results. Sounds too good to be true? While it may seem like a win-win situation for both the marketing agency and the client, the model itself has some risky repercussions.
At Miromind we believe good SEO takes time. And this usually means months of constant optimization. Of course, you can get satisfying results with the performance-based model of payment in one or two months but will you enjoy good ranking long-term? You probably won’t. So are you really ready to run this risk?
Pay-for-performance and how not to “SEO”
A lot of people get confused about “regular” optimization and performance-based SEO. To clear things out, the latter does bring results – there’s no doubt here. The problem with this model, however, lies in the length of time you will actually enjoy them. You will see that the ranking of your website has improved – maybe even hit that first page you’ve always dreamed about and… that’s it. From now on your website is going to be dying a lingering death.
Unfortunately, this rather dramatic scenario is not that uncommon with the pay-for-performance model. Agencies focus on hitting the result as quickly as possible because, naturally, they want to get paid. But once you wave goodbye, your website is not being taken care of, thus its ranking is going to gradually drop.
Keyword stuffing
A big issue with the performance-based model is shady SEO practices that usually focus on overdoing things to hit those milestones quickly. The most common practice includes stuffing content with keywords that are usually extremely long-tailed and have zero search volume. If Google algorithms discover such a technique, you will be penalized.
Low quality and excessive links
Link building takes time but what if you don’t have much? Marketing agencies that offer pay-for-performance have a solution to this problem. Expired websites that can be purchased for pennies. How do they use them? It’s no rocket science actually. All they need to do is to stuff those domains with links directing to their client’s page. It’s a shortcut to getting a high number of backlinks. There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?
This is a quite controversial issue. There’s not much effort involved, the websites don’t exist anymore but they had been accrued authority. It might be a shortcut to getting “quality” links but it’s also a great way to get penalized. Google sees it as a black hat tactic and it’s only a matter of time when your domain will be made an example of it.
Content spinning
Spinning is a process of writing a text and then rewriting it several or even hundreds of times in order to publish it on numerous websites. The idea is to avoid plagiarism which is penalized by Google. The more versions of the same article, however, the more difficult it will be to read it and understand.
But that’s not the biggest issue with this black hat tactic. The main reason marketing agencies use spun articles is to have similar content across the web stuffed with links directing to the page of interest. It is indeed cheating and it is against the Google policy so sooner or later, such a website will get a penalty.
Comment spam
We’ve all seen this. Comment spam is widely spread across the internet. The purpose of this tactic is to get more clicks from unaware visitors and therefore improve ranking. Content spamming can be done by real people or bots which makes it even tougher to combat. Fortunately, a growing number of websites utilize special software that spots spammy comments.
Why we don’t offer pay-for-performance payment
SEO is not solely about improving your website’s ranking. Focusing on high-quality content is key. This is what drives visitors to your domain. A high position in SERP is the result of compelling content and other optimization tactics combined.
At Miromind we don’t take shortcuts when it comes to optimizing our clients’ websites. Effective SEO takes time and needs to be approached with patience. Only then can you enjoy long-term results and this is undoubtfully what you and your business needed in the first place.