Most business owners who are attempting to expand their brand online have a vague idea of what SEO is, but don’t necessarily know how to go about utilizing SEO to help their own business grow. Unfortunately, a lot of major corporations have preyed on business owners’ ignorance about online marketing and have created paid SEO services that are wholly ineffective. Don’t waste your money on these pointless services that won’t give your company the personalized attention that it deserves. Here are three SEO services that you shouldn’t waste your money on, in addition to what you should do instead if you want your business to thrive.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers its customers an SEO service for only $2.69 a month. For those who don’t understand SEO or are new to the world of online marketing, this deal sounds like an absolute dream. Who wouldn’t want to get their website on Google and receive a list of these “keywords” we’ve been hearing so much about?

Unfortunately, GoDaddy is pretty much counting on the fact that most website owners are uninformed about SEO. To put it in very basic terms, GoDaddy will submit your website to search engines and give you a list of keywords, i.e., phrases that are popularly searched on Google and Yahoo that pertain to your business that you should include on your website to generate traffic.

Even the most technological greenhorn could master what GoDaddy does for its SEO customers in an afternoon. Furthermore, GoDaddy is offering SEO services the same way that McDonalds is providing nutrition. What GoDaddy is offering isn’t really SEO, it’s an incredibly basic plan that is unlikely to do anything significant for your business. Despite its low cost, this is an extremely pointless SEO option and highly inadvisable for business owners.

Yelp

Yelp is a company that has gained popularity for all the wrong reasons. The concept of Yelp is noble enough: give customers a platform through which to honestly review their experiences with different businesses.

Unfortunately, Yelp saw an opportunity to make an unscrupulous buck and jumped on it. Yelp offers monthly services that purport to offer SEO and increased visibility to businesses that sign up. However, Yelp’s program will do very little to increase your business’ search engine ranking. It won’t even improve your visibility amongst Yelp search results. All Yelp’s program really does is to raise the good reviews of your business and conceal the bad ones. Essentially, this company is blackmailing small businesses into paying to only display the good reviews and censor the bad. Even if your company has received negative attention on Yelp, don’t give in. Instead, work with a reputable SEO agency to improve your company’s presence online.

Yellow Pages

Unfortunately, the familiarity of the Yellow Pages brand causes a lot of customers to erroneously sign up for their SEO service, which costs a whopping near $300 a month. While Yellow Pages offers slightly more than GoDaddy, it ultimately falls incredibly short. It mostly promotes your business on its own website. While Yellow Pages does have widespread recognition as a brand, it is not nearly as popular as Google or Yahoo. Thus, this investment is not even a bit worth the cost.

Conclusion

Ultimately, there is one big thing to remember. Massive corporations like GoDaddy, Yelp and Yellow Pages couldn’t possibly give all of their SEO clients one-on-one attention. Don’t pay for a generic SEO service from one of these giant corporations. Instead, work with an SEO agency that will assign actual people to work with you and help your business to grow and thrive.