Disadvantages of SEO
25/04/2009
Does SEO have any disadvantages?
Yes, there are disadvantages or risks associated with SEO on a website, and they are not often considered. SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of making a website achieve top listings in the natural (unpaid) search results).
What are the disadvantages with getting someone to do SEO work on your website?
Extra costs. There are disadvantages and costs which come from having a highly visible website that appears near the top of the search results for many different searches. Cornish WebServices have had highly ranked website since 2003, and have firsthand experience of some of the disadvantages of having a website consistently near the top of the search engines.
Risks. There are risks associated with short term SEO or poor SEO work (or over-optimisation of your website causing it to be blacklisted and fall in search engine positions. There is a great risk to any website when poor SEO work is undertaken, and this increase when responding to unsolicited email marketing or phone calls suggesting optimisation of your website.
Disadvantages of SEO on a website
The following are all extra costs to your business as a result of having a website that appears high in the search engines.
1. SEO can increase website hosting costs
Highly ranked websites receive significantly more visitors than those which are invisible to the search engines. In our experience, increases in visitor numbers from 200% to several orders of magnitude are normal. Large websites with lots of images / Flash / downloads may find their hosting provision needs increasing. This is normally only a problem with websites on very old host servers.
In reality cost implications are minimal and this is not a real disadvantage of SEO.
1. SEO can increase spam
Highly visible websites receive significantly more visitors, both welcome and unwelcome. This will result in a large increase in unwanted contacts such as spam and sales calls.
This adds an admin cost to the business and is a real disadvantage of SEO.
2. SEO can generate too many website leads / sales
This can be a major problem. Leads and Sales are needed, but too many can add an extra cost.
There is a cost involved in handling unwanted leads - and Cornish WebServices think this is the major disadvantage of a highly search engine optimised website.
With PPC (pay per click) advertising, if a business receives too may leads it is easy to pause the advertising and there will be an immediate drop in leads or sales. But it is not possible to quickly remove a highly ranked website from the search engines without causing long term damage to SEO work.
SEO advantages
Despite the disadvantages of SEO outlined above, search engine optimisation (SEO) is very beneficial and will usually give the highest long term return on investment. Cornish WebServices have never advertised their SEO work through paid Internet advertising - we believe that a good SEO company should not have to! Instead we successfully rely on the high rankings of our website and recommendations from existing clients for all such work.
Looking for help with SEO?
Cornish WebServices have been successfully marketing websites on the Internet since 2002 (before SEO became popular). Contact us for a realistic quotation to naturally optimise your website for increased visibility in the search engines.
