Getting your website online is certainly not an easy task. A perfect website consists of many important elements like website design, development, web hosting, domain name, website content, and search engine optimization. Finding an all-inclusive store that provides all these services is a dream come true for website owners. If you are a GoDaddy customer, or if you are considering GoDaddy services, then it might be of interest for you to know that GoDaddy is a web hosting provider that also offers SEO Services AKA Search Engine Visibility (SEV). This looks too good to be true, let’s get to the depth of it.
The thought of getting “professional” SEO services along with web hosting & domain registration within a single platform might be intriguing. These GoDaddy SEO reviews enables you to get to the depth of Professional SEO services offered by GoDaddy.
But is GoDaddy Search Engine visibility worth it?
Despite the claims made by GoDaddy that many of their clients have made it to the first page of SERPs for their targeted keywords, the reviews online are not impressive.
In this article, we will talk about what the GoDaddy SEO service is and if it is the best option for you to get your website to the top search engine rankings.
What Is GoDaddy Search Engine Visibility?
From this GoDaddy Search Engine Visibility review, we can tell you that it is an SEO service offered to “help people find your business online.” It isn’t any DIY SEO tool, but a complete SEO service where GoDaddy’s internal team gets to work to optimize your website and make it search-engine-friendly.
GoDaddy’s search engine visibility comes as an add-on service with GoDaddy hosting plans. This provides an opportunity to not just build & host a website, but also to optimize it for attracting more visitors by creating a search engine presence. So, this is how it works:
- You call GoDaddy Team for a free consultation. They will discuss your business/website and whether you want to target local audiences or go global. Based on their understanding, they will recommend the best SEO plan that fits your budget.
- GoDaddy SEO team will conduct a complete website audit, research your competition and target market, and implement SEO practices that will help your website rank on top of the search engine results.
Their Search Engine Visibility includes basic SEO services like website review, keyword research, ongoing SEO management – onsite and offsite, content creation, and reporting & analytics.
It is a fact that search engine optimization is a time-consuming process. GoDaddy claims that their SEO service has helped improve more than 100 customers in getting their website ranked on the first page of Google in just a few months. This is like outsourcing your SEO services to a specialized team.
Advantages & Disadvantages Of GoDaddy SEO Services
Advantages of GoDaddy SEO Services
- GoDaddy takes away the task of search engine optimization from you and this is an important advantage as you can focus more on advancing your business and on other important tasks. You’ll have professionals doing search engines optimization for you, saving you more time to focus on your core business.
- A clear advantage of using GoDaddy SEO services is its price. The hosting provider does not mention its SEO pricing outright but offers a custom quote to its clients. However, many users have specified that they are charged $50/hour on average. And any good SEO agency would charge around $134.66/hour, on the price front, it looks affordable.
- Once you sign up, you will have a dedicated account manager. However, you can monitor SEO progress on your GoDaddy account dashboard easily.
- They also have a specialized content creation team that may give your SEO campaigns a boost.
Disadvantages of GoDaddy SEO Services
GoDaddy SEO services tick all the boxes you’d expect from any good SEO agency. They guarantee you one-click submission to all search engines, an increase in SEO rankings, more targeted traffic, and better conversions – everything with a hands-off approach on your end.
But when you go deeper, you will find that their offerings are quite basic and at times they do not match with the current SEO standards. For instance, one-click submission to top search engines might sound interesting to you if you are just beginning with search engine optimization. However, you should know that many search engines do not accept manual submissions today – and this has been around for several years now.
In that case, there are two things we can understand about GoDaddy SEO:
- Firstly, their services are pretty basic among the current scenario of the SEO industry. They are not offering anything out-of-the-box.
- Secondly, it is a smart way to get new business owners on board who don’t know much about SEO.
When it comes to search engine rankings, Google algorithms have become more sophisticated than ever. Google is now a step ahead in identifying and differentiating a good link from a spam link. Gone are the days of purchasing low-quality link packages from link farms or practicing spamming techniques like adding links to blog comments. Google now prioritizes the relevance and authority of the links as an important ranking factor.
However, when we analyzed GoDaddy’s off-page SEO strategies for link building, it included outdated efforts like keyword link building, business citation building on directories, social bookmarking, etc. Although these strategies don’t qualify as spamming; they are not good for search engine optimization. Creating citations on huge business directories does not make sense to SEO. You’d rather want your website to be listed on high-authority, relevant websites that belong to your niche, industry, or location.
On the other hand, social bookmarking often drives no-follow links that can be detrimental to your SEO campaign. So, we can see that GoDaddy’s off-page SEO techniques are not up-to-date with the latest trends and may not add any significant value to your website’s SEO results.
Other vital factors that may not be included in GoDaddy SEO services (at least these are not mentioned in their website) are speed optimization, local SEO, and mobile-first indexing. Without these modern SEO practices, effective and long-term results might seem far-fetched.
How Much Do GoDaddy SEO Services Cost?
It is difficult to review GoDaddy’s SEO services costs by having a glance at the website because it is not mentioned on the website. Search engine optimization is a service and the cost will vary depending on the website size, complexities, and level of SEO effort required. This can be best adjudged after a thorough review of the website and your digital marketing goals. As such, GoDaddy offers different price quotes for different clients which they charge on an hourly basis.
Many users of GoDaddy SEO services have reported paying approximately $50/hour. This is substantially less as compared to hiring a professional SEO agency that would charge around $300-$500 per hour. Therefore, from the price perspective, GoDaddy is a clear winner in search engine optimization services. But do they provide quality services at this price? Are customers genuinely happy with their SEO results?
What People Say About This Add-on: GoDaddy SEO Reviews
GoDaddy SEO service user reviews on G2 or Trustpilot are not impressive; in fact, poor. Most users have complained they were forced to switch their hosting to GoDaddy to receive SEO service. Additionally, it isn’t anything more than an upscaling technique they use to get more clients on board – something like a product bundle, which includes website hosting, domain registration, and SEO along with all the other specifications.
Several users have complained that the results are exceptionally poor. Here are some GoDaddy SEO service user reviews on Trustpilot:
Here’s another one:
Even their support service is poor. GoDaddy’s SEO team is mostly not available or is not able to provide genuine reasons why the campaign is not working.
Some users have also complained that the SEO results promised by GoDaddy were not achieved. GoDaddy agrees to help only when the users buy additional services. Here is another review on Trustpilot:
These reviews make it evident that users are highly dissatisfied with the GoDaddy SEO service. Many of them feel they are being scammed, while others think they have wasted money on this service because it did not deliver quality results.
GoDaddy SEO Services Alternative
By reviewing GoDaddy SEO services and taking into consideration poor feedback from most users, we can say that the service is NOT worth your money – even if it costs a mere $50/hour or so. Because even if you invest a small amount in SEO service, you would expect some good results. But the same cannot be guaranteed for the GoDaddy SEO service.
Is there any alternative to GoDaddy SEO services?
Yes, hiring an SEO expert as a freelancer is the best alternative to GoDaddy SEO services. It is important to understand that the core business of GoDaddy is website hosting and domain registration. They offer search engine optimization as an addon service and they might not have the specialized skills required to fulfill your SEO expectations.
On the other hand, when you hire an expert, you can be assured that he/she would have in-depth professional expertise and you are always executing the right strategies as per the latest SEO trends. A professional is likely to deliver better results than GoDaddy’s SEO team.
Furthermore, having a freelancer SEO consultant would cost you less whether you pay a fixed fee or an hourly price. Even if it costs you a little more than GoDaddy’s offer, the services and results you get would be worth the investment. And if you are ready to invest more to get effective results in terms of higher rankings or more traffic, you must consider hiring a specialized SEO agency.
What About GoDaddy SEO Tools Addon? Are They Any Better?
Other than SEO service, GoDaddy also offers SEO tools as addons that you can buy along with the web hosting plans. This isn’t some service which means that there is no SEO team building and managing your campaign. It is just some DIY tools that can help improve certain aspects of your website, which plays an important role in search engine optimization.
How do you use the GoDaddy SEO Tools? The web hosting provider claims that these tools can help in diverse aspects of search engine optimization as mentioned below:
- Optimize your website for search to boost its rankings on Google and other search engines
- Step-by-step guidance for keyword research and help discover the most relevant, high-potential keywords appropriate for your business.
- One-click changes are made to your website automatically.
- Track your website performance and search rankings.
GoDaddy claims that you do not need to have any SEO knowledge for using these tools. An automated wizard will guide you to make the website SEO-friendly. All approved changes will be auto-published on your website.
The question arises – is it a good alternative to GoDaddy SEO services? Our verdict – NO.
GoDaddy’s SEO tool is basic and does not offer substantial value to your optimization campaign, despite that it is paid. It allows you to add a sitemap and meta tags and recommends strategies for website optimization – nothing out-of-the-box that will deliver you quality results. Rather, many other tools allow you to do many things and often, for free.
Coming to the cost factor of the GoDaddy SEO tool, it is an add-on to their Economy Linux Hosting plan. When you visit their SEO Tools page, you would see the cost quoted as $6.99/month and it might sound quite attractive to you. However, the reality is a little different when you click on the “Buy Now” option. The check-out page looks something like this:
As you can see, the SEO tools are packaged with a hosting plan. You can opt-out of the product, but if you want some sort of SEO service, you need to pay $167.76 for a 12-months plan and NOT $6.99/month as you would think.
Here’s another strategy that GoDaddy uses to upscale – Like any other hosting company, a 12-month plan or higher offers more value and less cost than a 1-month plan. They have implemented this strategy for SEO Tools as well. You cannot just try the product for 1 month and then decide. You would need to purchase it for a minimum of 3 months.
So, initially what seemed attractive turns out to be expensive. Moreover, the features you get are very basic and not worth the amount you spend.
Free Alternatives To GoDaddy SEO Tools
It is observed that GoDaddy does not live up to your expectations when it comes to offering search engine optimization as a service or product. Thankfully, several other free alternatives provide better SEO features and effective results as compared to GoDaddy SEO Tools. Here is an insight on some excellent SEO tools that you can use:
- Great SEO begins with a comprehensive website audit. Ahrefs Website Checker provides a complete solution! Use this free SEO tool to assess your website’s SEO health, view all backlinks, keywords that you rank for, identify 100+ SEO issues, and find proven ways for internal linking.
- Ahrefs takes SEO a notch higher with Backlink Checker that includes a free version and yet provides one of the most insightful backlink resources in the industry.
- For in-depth keyword research, there is one free tool worth using – Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator. It helps you find thousands of keyword ideas in just a few seconds. They have a database of more than 8 billion queries, which can help find the most relevant keywords easily.
- Ubersuggest is another popular SEO tool that allows you to do a lot of things easily and for free – but the results are great. From keyword suggestions to domain overview, finding the best SEO pages, getting content ideas, backlink data, and much more!
- Moz is also a robust platform where you can find tons of free SEO tools like Keyword Explorer, MozBar, Link Explorer, My Online Presence, etc.
If you are looking for some really good DIY SEO tools for free, you can opt for any of the tools mentioned above. These aren’t just the best in the industry, but they are also free.
Conclusion: Is Godaddy Search Engine Visibility Worth it?
Let’s get to the most important point of the discussion – Is GoDaddy Search Engine Visibility worth it?
Our recommendation: No.
From this review, it is clear that GoDaddy SEO services + SEO Tools do not serve the purpose. They are a waste of money if you are looking for genuine search engine optimization results. These addons are a form of upselling tactic that GoDaddy uses to attract more clients. Their SEO services are unreliable, costly, and do not deliver what they promise.
Rather, it is worth hiring a professional Digital marketing agency (aka SEO agency) or an expert to manage your campaigns and deliver quality results. And if you are looking for some DIY options, the above-mentioned tools or a free SEO WordPress plugin such as Yoast will work great for you.
If you want to contribute to the information mentioned in these GoDaddy SEO reviews or if you have a suggestion, you can share your views in the comments section below.
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