Does SEO cost money?

SocialManager said:

Time is not equal to money. What you are talking about is called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is variable between people, while money is constant between different people. $5 is $5 to me, to Bill Gates, to Elon Musk, and to a homeless person. It has a value of $5. However, Bill Gates and Elon Musk would not even stop to pick up $5 on the street, where as someone in Bangladesh might work 5 hours for $5. If you are hiring someone for SEO services, they charge the same amount regardless of what country you are from. The amount someone might charge you to do something to optimize your website might be $100, and that might be equal to 50 hours of work for you, where as the actual work only takes someone 1 hour to do.

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Time is not equal to money?
Ok Dear

If not money then you gonna pay with TIME

SEO cost both time and money.

Time to understand the concepts and money to execute your campaign.

I started out doing SEO all by myself.

I built every single backlink by hand, did my own guest post outreach, created all my web 20s, wrote articles ranging from 300-4000 words.

Was it a pain in the ass, yes.

Did I regret DIY, no.

Because it taught me quality control and how to check for quality when I outsource my SEO.

cocococo said:

The more you talk the more you making yourself look like a fool. Without me pulling out tools to check it's so obvious that the keyword above is super longtail keyword with no exact value whatsoever. Now keyprhase like "seo cost" has more keyword value and where is blackhatworld with authority? no where to be found in top 100.

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First, it was mostly sarcasm to troll you, and you fell for it easily. Obviously I don't think this keyword has high competition, and obviously I don't think people will think it's photoshopped. Great job exposing how gullible you are.

Second, the part that was serious is just proof that content ranks without spending any money. Whether it has competition or not is irrelevant. We are not targeting the key phrase "does blackhat seo cost money." Just as the other websites are not targeting that specific keyphrase. We rank because of the content, the title, and the fact that this website is an authority on "blackhat seo." We aren't ranking above other websites who also have the same keywords in their content because we built any backlinks to this page, or did any keyword optimization for the phrase, or did any competition research.

We really do have some low IQ people on this site. The fact that 3 people actually THANKED you for your post, showing they too are just as gullible, and still lack a complete understanding of what SEO is. The value of a keyword is IRRELEVANT to the process of SEO. Again, do you guys even understand what OPTIMIZATION means? It's a PROCESS. It's not the RESULT.

SocialManager said:

The value of a keyword is IRRELEVANT to the process of SEO.

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"Payday Loans"

SocialManager said:

First, it was mostly sarcasm to troll you, and you fell for it easily. Obviously I don't think this keyword has high competition, and obviously I don't think people will think it's photoshopped. Great job exposing how gullible you are.

Second, the part that was serious is just proof that content ranks without spending any money. Whether it has competition or not is irrelevant. We are not targeting the key phrase "does blackhat seo cost money." Just as the other websites are not targeting that specific keyphrase. We rank because of the content, the title, and the fact that this website is an authority on "blackhat seo." We aren't ranking above other websites who also have the same keywords in their content because we built any backlinks to this page, or did any keyword optimization for the phrase, or did any competition research.

We really do have some low IQ people on this site. The fact that 3 people actually THANKED you for your post, showing they too are just as gullible, and still lack a complete understanding of what SEO is. The value of a keyword is IRRELEVANT to the process of SEO. Again, do you guys even understand what OPTIMIZATION means? It's a PROCESS. It's not the RESULT.

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This guy you are clearly on another planet here is the phrase you quote below boosting like a little kid in a sweet shop and no one falls for your shit

"My dude, get ready for everyone to call photoshop. I just solved SEO. #1 and #2 results. Niel Patel down in #5 position despite spending thousands of dollars a month on SEO services."

Again the phrase "does seo cost money" rank because its a useless keyphrase any site with solid content will rank for any gabbage keyphrases

Whats the point of ranking a gabbage keyword if the said keyword wonćt bring me any traffic.

Gullible? have you seen the mirror lately? everyone one on this forum who does SEO will tell you any optimisation done on a site the primary/end goal is to achieve that top position..

Another one of your asinine quote "The value of a keyword is IRRELEVANT to the process of SEO"... Oh my you just lost it, get yourself some milk..

And you are so naive if you think all these big authority site dont have SEO manager overseeing everything that goes on their site.

My last post here peace out. Let me go cripple my mrs.

WIZDAHL said:

"Payday Loans"

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Yes? Payday loans is a valuable keyword. And? It doesn't change the process of SEO. Even if we use your understanding of my statement, you would still be wrong. Explain how the VALUE changes the process of SEO? It's not the VALUE, which you are considering, it's the COMPETITION. Whether the keyword is worth $500 a click or $5 a click wouldn't be relevant to the PROCESS.

cocococo said:

here is the phrase you quote below boosting like a little kid in a sweet shop and no one falls for your shit

"My dude, get ready for everyone to call photoshop. I just solved SEO. #1 and #2 results. Niel Patel down in #5 position despite spending thousands of dollars a month on SEO services."

Again the phrase "does seo cost money" rank because its a useless keyphrase any site with solid content will rank for any gabbage keyphrases

Whats the point of ranking a gabbage keyword if the said keyword wonćt bring me any traffic.

Gullible? have you seen the mirror lately? everyone one on this forum who does SEO will tell you any optimisation done on a site the primary/end goal is to achieve that top position..

Another one of your asinine quote "The value of a keyword is IRRELEVANT to the process of SEO"... Oh my you just lost it, get yourself some milk..

And you are so naive if you think all these big authority site dont have SEO manager overseeing everything that goes on their site.

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So many insults, with very little substance. Yes, I know the words I said. Did you not do a dictionary search for the word "sarcasm?" Notice the unnecessary use of slang? Notice the hyperbole? Those are strong indicators that someone is not being entirely genuine in the statement they are making. You don't have to repeat yourself, I understand exactly what you said, hence my reply explaining why your reply makes you gullible.

So you admin that with solid content, you don't need to spend money to rank #1 for keywords. Thank you. These guys didn't believe you could do SEO without spending money, but you came and told them they are wrong. The point of ranking a gabbage keyword is irrelevent to whether or not we are doing SEO. But sure, I can give you an example. If you have a local brand you want to protect, you may only get 1-2 searches a month, but you want to make sure you control as much of the rankings as possible for that brand. Those 1-2 searches could have a lifetime value of thousands of dollars, maybe more.

If someone writes a negative review of your brand, you don't want that anywhere near the first 2 pages, and you don't want it showing up for any long-tail keywords related to the brand, such as "brand scam," "brand price," "is brand good." While you wont find those key phrases appearing with any volume on your fancy tools, we know for a fact that searches like these take place. Or do you think keywords like "Cityname lawyer divorce" don't get any searches in Google ever?

If your primary/end goal is to have the top position for a specific keyword, you REALLY have no idea what SEO is, and even worse, you are just TERRIBLE at business.

@BassTrackerBoats I request a close to this thread since OP's answer has been answered. This has turned into a post farming and dare I say circle j***ing between OP and the social guy.

mhtro said:

@BassTrackerBoats I request a close to this thread since OP's answer has been answered. This has turned into a post farming and dare I say circle j***ing between OP and the social guy.

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You are going to ask me to go through 6 pages of posts to make a determination?

That will cost you a ham sandwich and a Long Island Iced Tea.

Please send payment to @jazzc@BTB.bananahead.com and I'll handle it.

@SocialManager - please act more social and less manager as this is a community where we all hang out and if we have a block party we sure would like you there to participate and make it a fun filled event.

BassTrackerBoats said:

You are going to ask me to go through 6 pages of posts to make a determination?

That will cost you a ham sandwich and a Long Island Iced Tea.

Please send payment to @jazzc@BTB.bananahead.com and I'll handle it.

@SocialManager - please act more social and less manager as this is a community where we all hang out and if we have a block party we sure would like you there to participate and make it a fun filled event.

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How about a egg and ham sandwich but no Iced tea? I could ship them to you but all the local supermarkets are closed.

You know what; I'll do something even better and get you a pita gyros

mhtro said:

I'll do something even better and get you a pita gyros

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Now you are talking!

SocialManager said:

The fact that 3 people actually THANKED you for your post, showing they too are just as gullible, and still lack a complete understanding of what SEO is

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Ok SEO Guru!
Thanks for enlightening me.

You will get results after 2-3 months so if you cannot wait and can not be patient then SEO is not for you.

to tell you the truth search engine optimization services that costs no money could be of low quality, you could do it for a very small amount of money and with high quality and there are agencies that provide these services

SocialManager said:

What is a "big money arena" and what do you define as "trying to rank?" Do you mean getting #1 for Buy Watches? Because I think porn is one of the biggest money arenas online, and there are thousands of porn tube sites with absolutely minimal link building done which rank very highly for keywords driving thousands of targeted visits a day. If you have great content and provide a great user experience, many of the top porn "authority" sites will link to you for free without you even asking. There are technical tricks that can be done to get your site picked up by porn scrapers/porn search engines. Beyond that, many of the top ranking porn websites are part of networks all working together (link for link) and classic traffic trading systems, where no money is exchanged.

Beyond all of that though, I don't understand this idea that many people seem to be stuck on, where the only way to get external links, is to build them yourself or pay for them. Do you guys genuinely believe that users don't naturally and organically link to good content? The "breaking news" industry is a good industry to research to understand how easy it is to get high-quality organic links from high authority websites. If you are the first to report on a breaking story and you have interviews with eyewitnesses, your story will get picked up by many other news sites who will link to you as the original source of the information.

TMZ is a great example of this. They don't rank highly for keywords because they have some SEO Guru doing keyword research and competition analysis or buying external links. They rank highly because they are linked to as the authority on many different subjects. If we look at their articles, most articles contain multiple links to inner pages, and that is SEO, and that is free to do.



100% proof that you don't need keyword research or competition analysis or paid links to rank highly.

We dominate the rankings because this is an authority site with tons of high quality (mostly by me) original content that answers that matches the users search intent.

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Well, I'll just say that I can't speak for porn or adult content because I've never done that niche. But you are right that in certain niches, especially content-driven niches, it is EXTREMELY helpful to have good quality content that gets an actual user base excited. Outside that, if you're trying to artificially rank a site that isn't in a niche where anybody is going to get excited about it you'll need to brute force your way in with some high quality links. At the very least it gets the ball rolling and allows you to get the eyeballs needed to get your site in front of the right people.

-ThopHayt

TOKA9 said:

to tell you the truth search engine optimization services that costs no money could be of low quality, you could do it for a very small amount of money and with high quality and there are agencies that provide these services

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There are a lot of "agencies" that charge money (lots of money sometimes) and provide low quality backlinks that have an obvious footprint that can be reported to Google or found by Google's algorithms and get your website penalized. Spending money doesn't mean you are getting higher quality than what is possible by yourself.

ThopHayt said:

Well, I'll just say that I can't speak for porn or adult content because I've never done that niche. But you are right that in certain niches, especially content-driven niches, it is EXTREMELY helpful to have good quality content that gets an actual user base excited. Outside that, if you're trying to artificially rank a site that isn't in a niche where anybody is going to get excited about it you'll need to brute force your way in with some high quality links. At the very least it gets the ball rolling and allows you to get the eyeballs needed to get your site in front of the right people.

-ThopHayt

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Well this gets to the root of the problem, and exactly one of my biggest points. People are trying to brute force their way into the top of the search engine rankings with low quality websites and content. That's pretty much the very goal of blackhat SEO. It's trying to take advantages of weaknesses in search engine ranking algorithms to get a site which should NOT be at the top of the rankings, to the top. When your content isn't very exciting, you need to be considered an authority on the subject to get links naturally. When you establish yourself as an authority, with relevant credentials or branding and content that makes people believe you are an authority, it makes it more likely that people will naturally link back to you, or will accept guest posts from you where you can post original articles on the subject with links back to your site. At the end of the day, if you can produce a 1500 word original article at the level of a true authority on a subject, you can find people willing to post it on their websites for free, including some of the biggest authority sites in the world, with no payment required.

Here is an example list, that I am not going to check for complete accuracy, of high quality sites allowing guest posts, and I am sure almost all of them (if not all) allow a link back to the contributors website: https://www.websitehostingrating.com/list-of-200-websites-that-accept-guest-posts/

If we look at the requirements for an SEMrush blog submission, they actually encourage you to include additional outbound links to other authority sites in your submission "Link to credible resources. if you want to ensure the reader understands the basics please link to credible resources."

That's where networking on Social Media and LinkedIn and niche relevant forums can be huge. Even if you aren't well know because of the traffic you receive, you can still brand yourself as an authority and market yourself to other people in your industry in these places, so when it comes time for them to build out a new high quality blog post, they are happy to link to you naturally. Of course, if your content is garbage, you can expect to be ignored.

Still at number one, only a zero result (featured snippet) above... That's using UGC. $0 spent... priceless. Keyword;worthless. Oh well, that was not the question.

Without money, you cannot do seo especially in current times.

Yes, most of the things can be done in free of cost, but for some you have to pay.