Can Search Engine Rankings Be Honestly Guaranteed?
Maybe you have read something like this about guaranteed SEO results in your email or heard it from a sales-weasel:
“Because of our special relationship with Google, we guarantee top search engine placement…”
Like most webmasters and website owners, you want to achieve a high search engine rank for your site. “Guaranteed SEO” sounds like a great idea, at first.
As Google says in their Webmaster Help Center:
“Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a ‘special relationship’ with Google, or advertise a ‘priority submit’ to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.”
SEO should be an important part of your internet marketing strategy, but only a part of that strategy.
Providing useful site content and information for your users, combined with effective, ethical SEO, is the key to a successful web marketing campaign that is designed for people, not just for search engines.
“Black hat” SEO campaigns or so-called secret tricks to “beat the search engines” can actually put your business at risk, leading to search engine penalties and long term harm to your organization’s online if presence. It is likely that your web site will be demoted or even dropped completely from the search engine’s index, which will decrease your ROI and increase your expenses as you try to do damage control for your online reputation. All of your web marketing efforts will be a huge waste of time and money.
However, an SEO consultant should promise to make their best attempt to improve your web presence and rankings in the search engines. A good SEO expert can achieve incredible results with thoughtful analysis of your site, your business and the motivations of your target audience – and applying that data to the content of your site, its structure, and your search marketing strategy. Not tricks or systems. SEO is an ongoing process which requires more than a passing knowledge of your business, and a thorough mastery of the language of your target audience is also essential.
While your website should not be built solely on SEO, it should definitely be designed with search engine considerations in mind.
Perfect search engine optimization is not instant
The initial actions taken in optimizing your site may not produce the immediate results you may expect. In fact, the results may not be noticeable until a few months have passed. This isn’t necessarily because your SEO consultant made a mistake or doesn’t know what he or she is doing. SEO is an ongoing process since the search engines’ methods – and the methods of your competitors – are constantly changing.
Some clients find this hard to believe, expecting immediate and life changing results. After all, there are all those sites out there saying they can get #1 position in a week or even as little as 24 hours! When there are so many enticing lies, the truth can seem unappealing. Though the internet works and changes at a very fast pace, indexing the entire internet and attempting to give users the most useful information still takes time – even for Google.
Remember that when you hire an SEO consultant you are paying for a talented and knowledgeable professional whose goal is to improve your online visibility in a way that will help your business get real results from your marketing strategy.
Trusting your SEO service provider can be difficult because there are many questionable SEO companies offering you the moon and stars – and so much misinformation! Once you do find a good one you can work with, you have to remember that they are the professional. Listen to their advice and recommendations. Sometimes your requests may not be able to be met by an ethical SEO consultant. If we believe that any of your requests might harm your online presence or marketing campaign, we will tell you and explain why.
If SEO is guaranteed, you may think that since you will get your money back if the desired results are not achieved, then no harm done. But who will pay to undo all of the spammy things done in your name? Does the guarantee include doing all the work to fix the damage done? Who will pay cost of starting over when cheap guaranteed SEO gets your site banned from Google?
Ker Communications cannot guarantee your website will get the number one position for any and every search term you’d like. However, with intelligent and ethical SEO we can help you achieve the best possible ranking for your site and make sure when users find you, they have found what they were looking for.
Google explains in this article:
What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?
