The Internet is a haven of scam artists and predators, and some gurus would have you believe that the plethora of SEO companies out there are nearing the top of the list. They’ll assure you that you can do it all yourself, and that these ‘experts’ are only there to rip you off and keep you from reaching your full potential.
Unfortunately, they are either lying, or they are just plain wrong. It is in their interest to lie, after all — by preventing you from getting a good start in your online business, they keep the competition to a dull roar. The truth is that hiring a group to do your SEO services has several powerful advantages, and your chances of getting scammed are very minimal.
That’s not to say that every job will end up perfect — there are always disasters, misunderstandings, and so forth — but by and large, the SEO industry is just about as honest as they come. Provided, of course, you’re working with an established company that has a reputation to maintain and not some fly-by-night fresh startup that could fold tomorrow — or, God forbid, a bunch of freelancers you pulled off of ODesk.
You see, SEO companies today are like the people who went to sell shovels to Gold Rush miners. They didn’t ever hit it big, but they gave other people the tools to succeed, and in doing so, they got by. What they did have, however, was a product that was dependable, functional, and useful. That’s the definition of modern-day SEO services.
They’re dependable because you can count on a good SEO company to get you ranking for keywords. Maybe not the highest-competition, maybe not the longest tail, but you can depend on them to get organic traffic flowing to your site.
They’re functional because they allow you to function, by taking the workload of SEO off of your hands. Without SEO companies, every webmaster in the world would be working 80 hour weeks just to tread water in terms of rankings.
They’re useful because without them, you won’t attain a reasonable level of organic traffic, and that means you have to get your traffic from someplace that will cost money for a long time to come.
