It’s perfectly understandable for people to put a string into their dollars before engaging SEO agencies to rank them on Google. Because of this, some SEO agencies make an offer for guaranteed results.
Just before you bite into this tempting treat, we suggest you put your detective nose on and “sniff” the truth from what’s hidden behind. Chances are this statement can be a cunning riddle instead of an honest offer.
Here’s the 4-way test to the “Guaranteed SEO” offer:
1) What keywords are guaranteed to rank?
Remember, keyword is everything in SEO.
Suppose your business is Betsy’s Wickedly Divine Cakes. To sell you guaranteed top 10 on Google in just a few months, the SEO agency will offer to rank you for the keyword “Betsy’s Wickedly Divine Cakes” and its derivatives like “find Betsy’s Wickedly Divine Cakes” or “how much is Betsy’s Wickedly Divine Cakes.”
What results would you expect in a search phrase like these?
Of course your business will come up on top!
Why, it’s your business name being searched! If your nemesis Decadent As Hell Cakes comes up, then it’s really Armageddon, the end of the world!
Most often, no other company will come up on the first position when your business name is directly searched!
And who do you think will search your business name on Google? It will be those who already know that your business exists!
You are engaging SEO so that people who don’t know that your business exists will know.
Unless you burn your earlobe talking to new prospects who found you on Google, then your SEO keyword and ranking just aren’t working for you.
In this case, position #1 stinks and has no value at all!
2) Is the ranking guarantee for long-tail or short-tail keywords?
It’s easier to rank top 10 for long tail keywords simply because there can only be 2-3 people searching for it.
Short tail keywords are way more competitive.
If your SEO provider promised you top 10 ranking on Google, qualify this too-good-to-be-true offer by identifying the length of the keyword to rank.
The better approach is to provide the set of keywords you want to rank and challenge the SEO provider on the ranking forecast (timeline, that is) given these tough keywords.
3) When will the ranking show?
In SEO, time is the essence.
Sure, you can sign up an SEO provider based on guaranteed position #1 or top 10 results for short tail high traffic keywords.
But the question is when will you rank? In 10 years? Forget it! By then, you would have spent thousands of dollars already for zero ROI!
So if your SEO provider promised ranking, this promise has to be tied up with a specific time frame.
4) How many backlinks will I get every month?
It’s a fact that Google likes backlinks on a site. Google interprets links as votes of confidence and recognizes that a website has a lot of “friends” on the worldwide web because a lot of other websites are linking to it.
If your prospective SEO provider promises you hundreds or thousands of links in a month, clip your hands up your sides, squat like a duck and stand up and shout: “Go home with your stinkin’ link building bot!” Or simply walk away in quiet dignity and make a statement without saying a word!
Links per se are not good to have – quality links are what counts. You don’t get quality links overnight. You can’t spawn articles and generate hundreds of backlinks automatically.
There is no short cut to relationships – you have to be genuinely interesting for other websites to link to you.
Face it; the short cuts are really tempting considering the millions of websites and webpages out there.
Try the bots and what you will get is a whipping from Google Penguin’s tail with the high probability of penalization!
Google Penguin punishes websites with unnatural links.
So when your SEO provider offers link building activities, make sure these are natural organic links. Not run-off-the-content-mill ones.
Be Careful!
The operative word here is “Guaranteed SEO“!
While it is certainly possible to achieve first page ranking on Google, it is never too easy to offer a guarantee without taking dangerous short cuts or speeding up a blind curve.
SEO is like a dance of tango with Google. Because you can never control Google in the sense that you will never know what algorithms it will implement next, then locking a guarantee is almost a sure way to tell that it’s all cheap talk and nothing genuine.
Also, remember that while you are doing SEO, your competitors are likewise doing SEO. So your bid for the number 1 post or top 10 rankings cannot be guaranteed – it is subjected to how well you compete in the online marketing arena against equally aggressive competitors.
Remember: the principle behind achieving top SEO ranking is ethical SEO, for which there can be no short cuts.
