I have been searching for the best affordable SEO services. Out of many SEO consultants around, my attention has recently been drawn to RankPay for “no ranking, no pay” policy. Here is a quick walkthrough to help you to give a try.
Keyword Research for SEO Strategy
For every online marketer and website owner, researching for the right keywords for a page content is one of the most important tasks in order to improve search engine rankings. Needless to say the process is time consuming.
Firstly to gather as many related words and phrases as possible (brainstorming), secondly to refine these words and find out better word combinations and other word suggestions, typically by using Goole Keyword Planner or using a premium tool such as Jaaxy. How competitive the phrases are, and whether the phrases are frequently searched or not, are the crucial factors to consider.
Professional SEO Services
Professional SEO consultancy will cost you, and it is never cheap. If it is cheap, not only you cannot expect high quality services but there is a risk that your site may be damaged in the long run. The cheap consultants may use wrong tracking system such as automated spam link building on your site. Therefore it is essential to learn what the professional SEO services involve, their system, strategy and reputations before making a contract.
Pay For Performance SEO Services
Most SEO services charge monthly flat charge or even hourly service fees, whereas RankPay simply only get paid when you rank in search engines. You only pay for results.
RankPay – Who Are They and How Does It Work?
RankPay is based in San Diego, CA, established in 2007 and has been giving results-based SEO services since.
Before registering, you are able to see the pay-for-performance price plan against your desired keywords on the actual website that you own. The fees are based on your ranking position at both Google Search and Yahoo! Bing Search.
Below is an example that RankPay will instantly show...
The 2nd column tells you that your site is not ranked within top 30 neither Google nor Bing. 3rd column however tells you that the particular keyword/phrase has an excellent opportunity to be ranked. This, and the price plan are is calculated by comparing SEO related factors for both your site and your competition for each keyword.
And the last column shows what you will pay. If your site ranks at No. 4 on Google ($250) and No. 11 on Yahoo!/Bing ($100) the monthly service fee for your keyword would equate to $350.
Of course, if your site is already ranked in top 30, you’ll only pay for the ranking increase. As the second example above, your site is ranked at No. 8 on Yahoo/Bing. A price is still displayed for 10-7, as the keyword’s rankings can still improve within that pricing Tier to position No. 7. However, you are not charged unless the site ranks at No. 7 or above, which is both within the top 30 positions and an increase from the existing ranking at No. 8.
How Does RankPay Achieve Rankings?
RankPay claims it uses proven SEO practices to achieve rankings including credible link building, relevant blog postings, trusted social bookmarking, and select directory submissions in order to build a consistent, customized SEO program for each and every customer. Also their SEO Team has partnerships with hundreds of publishers, blogs, and directory sites to identify relevant context to strengthen the customer’s SEO programs. Almost all their SEO activities result in permanent exposure, even if the program is no longer in active status.
No Payment In Advance, But No Free Trial
Understandably, free service trial would not be possible – the goal of SEO strategy is to get your site “known” therefore it wouldn’t be fair on their business if you already reached the goal during the free trial period.
Monthly Invoices are distributed and collected on the 1st day of each month. RankPay system will check your site’s average rankings for all of your active keywords in the search engine results, and charge the corresponding amounts for those rankings.
You will receive a detailed Monthly Summary via e-mail on the 1st of each month, also a Mid-Month Ranking Report is distributed on the 15th of each month, and all rankings are updated in your RankPay Dashboard each and every week.
If a keyword’s service is cancelled on any day other than the first day of the month, the keyword will be subject to a pro-rated service charge based on the number of days that the keyword was active in that given month.
Six Months Contract
All RankPay Performance-based SEO Services programs are set for six months from the day of activation. Monthly charges are locked-in once the keyword is submitted and approved for your program. These charges are calculated based on the competitive landscape at the time that a keyword is prospected for service. And of course, you are never charged if the rankings don’t increase beyond the original position, and into the top 30.
The only exception is if you wish to change the landing page which the keyword was optimized for. In which case RankPay will review the new page submission, and if there is any pricing impact, RankPay and the customer will both need to confirm and approve the change before continuing with the page optimization change process.
Keyword pricing is locked on the Activation Date, and will not change. If you wish to cancel their service within 6 months, there will be a deactivation fee of $200. After the six month period is completed, you have the following 2 options;
- Cancel at any time with no fee (applicable monthly pro-rated charges applied)
- If the keyword ranking reaches the top 10 on Google, the fee will be reduced by 50%.
Customer Support
Online support as well as telephone support is available with RankPay. You can submit a support ticket via Dashboard 24/7, which will be replied to within 24 hours (most tickets are resolved much sooner). Phone support is available 7am-5pm PST Monday through Friday, on 1-877-RANKPAY. Also by email.
My Verdict
RankPay in my opinion gives a great opportunity to accelerate the level of sales if your business has just started. It is also handy for medium to large companies to give it a try. Of course it depends on the unit of your products/services that you’re selling and the decision is up to you. It can be expensive for individuals – as the example above, if your site gets in the top 3 of the search engines, you’ll be paying $550 per month for the next 6 moths. So the questions are whether your total sales can cover the costs or not, and you think it’s worth investing or not – it is up to you.
I have had a liaison with a few RankPay team members and, what I’m impressed with is the customer service team’s friendliness, swiftness, and found their technical support very helpful.
Check Your Site Rankings For Free
Now, enter any domain to check how they can refine your keyword list here.
The big worry for me choosing an SEO company to optimise my rankings on the first page of search results is are they using old techniques which may damage my website’s performance in the long run, the thought of automated spam link building tactics simply horrifies me but like you say, you get what you pay for.
RankPay on the other hand sounds legit in the way you only pay once results are achieved which brings peace of mind but for a newbie like myself in the early days of website building, it’s too risky but I may consider RankPay further down the line once I become more established.
I entered my domain in the RankPay banner to check my current rankings in the search engines but unfortunately it didn’t run. Have you had others mention this? Would love to know how my website currently ranks,
Simon.
Hi Simon, thanks for your comment, and thank you also for pointing out the error within the banner which I’ve now taken down – it seems to only work intermittently, therefore I’ve swapped it with a button. You can check your site rankings with desired keywords from the destination (RankPay page).
I agree, I wouldn’t put my trust entirely in professional SEO company’s hands, unless they bring out good results and only charge along with them. As you say, RankPay may be an option for newbie content markers while struggling to get their pages ranked. Thanks again for your visit and for sharing your thoughts.
I’m really nervous about paying someone to help boost the rank of my website. The search engines are constantly evolving.
You never know what they will penalize a site for, but gaming the system in any way can hurt you rank. If not now, maybe later.
Many of the ranking methods that were all the rage a few years back are now considered blackhat and a big No-no.
Hi Gary, we all know blackhat methods won’t get your site ranked. And they probably have more knowledge and experience than you do, otherwise they won’t get paid! Like any professional services in the world, it’s a matter of whether to trust someone else or do it yourself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you for providing an interesting article. I too am thinking about how whether to concentrate on SEO myself or getting someone who knows what they are doing. As one of your readers said its all about money. And I am still wondering why whether to shell out more money. I don’t like however that there is no free trial. That’s a turn off for me.
Thanks Owain for your comment. Whether to pay money to make more money, or go with your budget is all up to you. There’s no such thing as free trial in this case. That would not make sense – just like Google Adwords don’t offer free trial. Pay on results. I hope you understand.
I think it is great that you only pay RankPay if you get a ranking. I think that some keywords will also be more expensive that others because of the amount of competition and traffic volume.
Most other SEO services only charge for the amount of backlinks and then you are also not certain to rank. I just wonder whether their link building services will last through the next Google update.
Thanks for your comment, yes indeed it’s more promising when you only pay for the results. It’s a 6 months contract unless you pay deactivation fee to cancel before. Once your page has been ranked, you’ll have a great chance to promote in many other directions. For example to build a strong customer/visitor relationship via email subscription. I believe it’s worth a try if you have enough resources.
Hi Ray,
There are some SEO companies out there that are using dated techniques like setting up private blogging networks and doing other dated and to be quite frank shoddy black hat techniques.
Very interesting service provided by rank pay. I do my own SEO and they certainly would lighten my work load.
Interesting to know would be their long term success when you cancel a contract with them. Also, not sure how this works would they need some kind of admin access to you site to do the SEO on it? and is their service recommended for wordpress powered blogs?
Hi Derek,
Thanks for your comments, yes I’m aware that some SEO companies use dated tricks, so no surprise that you are interested as to how RankPay provide their services. They do claim that they liaise with hundreds of publishes, directories and blogs so I guess majority of their work is a link building, as well as discussing the keyword options to test for better conversions. No they won’t have a free admin access to your site but they do support wordpress powered blogs (assuming they could give advice in your php file contents?)
In terms of the long term effects when you cancel a contract with them – I will ask the support team and get back to you here. I’d like to know myself (if there’s a data with their past customers).
Thanks again,
Ray
An SEO program. It does show a harsh lesson, that even simply getting your website known takes money – money really does run everything today, even the popularity of a website. I’m actually considering this program, hopefully when I get a job I’ll be able to pay for a subscription. This program is also great in that it promotes a “no results no fee” policy,
Thanks for your comment, yes I agree money really does run everything… Web trafficking solution is a difficult hurdle especially for individual starters. I hope RankPay will help. I must say their customer service is excellent, so it’s worth considering.