Time and again, we have had potential clients choosing offshore SEO and website developers because of costs. Whilst MediaOne charges $3900 for a basic SEO fee, offshore providers have touted $288/month or even free packages – payment only due per keyword ranked up to first page.
Despite our decade-long credibility and client portfolio of large corporations and MNCs to assure clients that we run a credible local SEO service, many SMEs remain cash-strapped and that likely causes them to be short-sighted in thinking. Hard to blame them really because the economic growth in Singapore at this time remains rather patchy. Some sectors like oil and gas, property, and export manufacturing still remain challenging.
These SME bosses choose to save that few hundred dollars per month at the cost of having their website penalised when offshore SEOs flood their websites from low-cost (yes, how do you think they maintain low costs?) links emanating from unrelated forum sites, directory sites (which Google has banned some 70% in 2015), blog comments, free blogging sites (which has been used to death by spammers and hence discounted by search engines – but non-tech-savvy customers don’t know better do they?)
They seldom pause to think. If the SEO or developer does a shoddy job or at worse destroy their website – which village do they have to send their lawyers to, to get something done or compensated? What would clients and partners think when they see porn sites, hate sites and gambling sites linking to their website? I am pretty sure it would drag their million-dollar reputation through the mud, wouldn’t it?
Having an unknown entity touch the very heart of your business face: yes its now your website and no longer your office frontage, play with your hard-earned branding and reputation seems rather scary doesn’t it? Well, thousands of SMEs in Singapore still resort to the cheap and vain-hopeful.
Furthermore many non-local SEOs and developers use cheap links which get archived after half a year thereby ensuring that if your website doesn’t get penalised, your ranks will certainly drop in ranks after half a year thereby holding you hostage to pay again and again forever more.
Anyway what set me on the path to writing this blog is this post: CEO who forged court order to get Google to remove defamation faces prison. It tells a sad story of a USA CEO of a venerable firm who now faces jail term – all because he used an offshore company to manage his company’s greatest asset: his website and found that screwing up was only the smallest thing he had to worry about.
Tom Koh
CEO, MediaOne
