The Risky "Top 10" Guaranteed
WildmanProduction.com
Director of Marketing & Sales
There are only a few things in life that are "guaranteed":
- Your money will not lose principal in a savings account that is FDIC insured.
- 1G Gravity will accelerate objects at 9.8 meters per second squared.
- Your mother will always love you.
(Ok, well maybe two out of three are guaranteed.) But what about web site placement on the search engines?
As you can imagine, a lot of unscrupulous search engine optimization companies promise fantastic (or fantasy) guarantees. You've seen them -- 1000% return guaranteed. "Top 10 Placement Guaranteed." " Will submit your site to 500,000 search engines - guaranteed." Why do they do it?
Comfort. Investors tend to feel reassured with the term "guarantee." It provides peace of mind, a security blanket and a restful night of sleep. After all, wouldn't you feel more confident if your stockbroker guaranteed you a 25% return year over year? If you are naïve (or slept through the bear market during 2000-2003), you might believe such claims actually exist.
Certainly some guarantees of search engine placement can be valid, but as they say when buying a product, "Caveat Emptor - Let the buyer beware."
Guarantees can be reassuring - without a guarantee what exactly am I getting? Even worse, what could I lose? A guarantee seems to mitigate downside risk. Many firms promise multiple "Top 5" or "Top 10" rankings within a certain time frame - say 30 to 90 days. Do some of these companies honor their guarantees? Sure, many do. In the process of researching many companies policies, however, due diligence might involve reading between the lines.
The goal if you enter into a guarantee contract with a search engine optimization company should be top placement on the major search engines and internet portals (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL etc.). Many SEO firms will guarantee several hundred "Top 10" placements. However your results may reside on many search engines that you have never heard of.
Keep in mind the portals themselves build their own algorithms. They decide which variables of a web site are important in their proprietary ranking formulas. And, only they are the ones who control or 'guarantee' specific placement. Search engine firms may boast of "partnerships" with major search engines and imply that such partnerships will ensure the rankings they guarantee. The reality is the opposite. Search engines do not have truly favored business partners. The engines are independent. In fact, their independence is essential to their rankings operations (as opposed to paid advertising). No search engine optimization firm can legitimately claim control over or priority with a major search engine or its methods for ranking sites.
There are also techniques which are not generally allowed by the search engines. These methods may get you a top ranking in the short term, but when the search engines find out - and they will - severe penalties will follow. Among the unscrupulous contrivances are cloaking, doorway pages, hidden text, keyword stuffing and spamdexing. Any of these will lead to a significant risk of getting your site banned from the search engines. Is that "guarantee" worth the risk? Interestingly on a message board on Webmaster World, one of the commentators writes about the guarantees,
"Top Ten ranking on Google within 3 months or your money back
...and in the fine print:
Not responsible for and no refunds given if our SEO tactics get your domain banned after 90 days; hey, we got you your top listing, didn't we? "
Other companies that promise true optimization use your payments to buy spots in "sponsored" (or pay per click, PPC) sections of the search engines. These placements are usually found above the true results and might appear to be a "Top 10" placement when they are actually not. If the optimization company is using your money to buy sponsored placement, they are not doing optimization. They are buying ads. You can do that on your own. This is another devious technique used to circumvent the 'guarantee' on web site placement.
Good optimization should reduce or eliminate entirely your need to buy ads.
Unfortunately, in certain competitive markets, a client's desired keywords are simply untouchable for top placement. You would have to spend from now until eternity generating compelling content pages to increase your chances for a true "Top 10" success. One example might be the term "Car". Currently, there are 94,400,000 car web sites indexed on Google. If you are starting an auto site from scratch, I don't care how much a SEO firm guarantees, you will never get top placement for this word. Period. (Sorry!)
More important than a guarantee, is making sure that your SEO firm:
- Targets the major search engines.
- Is honest and hardworking.
- Uses ethical practices.
- Is realistic about which keywords have potential for a top ranking and which do not (based on exploring your existing web site content.)
- Understands your expectations is clear (and realistic) about the results you will get from an SEO campaign.
In the end, it is important to check up on your firm's ethical standards. Guarantees that are otherwise comforting can be offered only through the use of questionable practices. Those practices can lead to harmful penalties and loss of business. You do not need a guarantee to have a successful campaign. What you do need is a partnership with the experts at an ethical, responsible search engine optimization company.
|
