Down the history of SEO initiatives, there have been a lot of controversies regarding the paradigm and how it is achieved. Performance-based SEO is one such hot topic that has been around us for so long. Quite a many SEO experts reveal that most performance-based SEO initiatives do not take into account the real benefits to the sites, rather they are employed as cheap tricks to maximize the profits of the SEO agencies. Especially during the last decade, SEO concepts and practices have undergone a drastic change. Quite a many SEO companies have not updated themselves to the current practices while sticking on to the redundant and old ways.
The obvious and possible reason why a SEO company resorts to performance-based SEO is that this is a plan that will sell like hot cakes. Since most clients tend to view this as a safe option to enhance the SEO capabilities, SEO companies exploit the situation without detailing the real pros and cons to the clients. Know that every performance-based SEO initiative carries a good amount of risks with it. If the SEO company you are approaching is spam driven, then they might not even keep up the promise forming part of the contract signed with you. Therefore, it is always the best decision to work with those SEO firms that adhere to ethical SEO practices. Performance-based SEO projects rely on some established strategies and it is worth exploring some of them to see how far they are relevant to meet the interests of the site owners.
Most spam driven SEOs bank on long-tail keywords. As these keywords most probably have lower search volumes compared to those that are relevant to the business, the likelihood of increasing the site ranking might not in most cases assure you more business. In fact, this measure can work on the negative side to result in adverse effects on your site in the long run. Thus, making use of fruitless keywords is one of the cheap and harmful strategies that SEO companies resort to as part of their performance-based SEO projects.
It is so strange that a large number of SEO companies charge their clients a maintenance fee from their clients in addition to the set up fee charged in the beginning. Actually, after the SEO initiatives attempted in the beginning, these companies might not do anything at all than grabbing the money of their clients. Thus, beware of the hidden costs like such maintenance fees and nip them in the very beginning of the project or go to a different provider. Some of the black hat practices connected to SEO projects include strategies like content spanning, keyword stuffing, submitting the links to irrelevant directories, establishing numerous back links of inferior quality and spamming the comments. Since these strategies clearly violate the guidelines given by Google, they invariably will work out negatively in site ranking in the long run. Therefore, the site owners must approach the issue with a proper insight and not be misguided by the shot lived enhancements that are forged by the fraudulent SEO companies. Falling prey to these kinds of foul tactics amounts to damaging your site by paying for it.