If you’re a webmaster, you likely receive dozen of emails each month from SEO companies or individual consultants who promise to take your websites ranking to number one in the search engine results. They often even offer a money back guarantee if you don’t get the results you want.
Firstly, let’s have a look at the obvious issues and problems with the guarantee itself, such as:
* They never mention which search engine, as they all have different ranking algorithms
* Where you’re currently ranking doesn’t seem to be a factor for them. In other words, are you just on the second page or are you all the way at the bottom.
* They never mention the duration of your stay at number one. Constant data refreshes mean the rankings never remain static
But even ignoring the above, let’s explore some reason why no SEO company can absolutely guarantee a number one ranking on Google’s search engine results page (SERP)
Trust Ranks Aren’t Changed Overnight
With the amount of spam SEO happening on the internet today, it can be easy to see why even Google don’t really place that much faith in a lot of their ranking factors. As they can often be exploited.
Which is why your website’s history with Google and the amount of time it has been on their index, have quite a heavy degree of importance. And unfortunately, you can’t really change the past. So if you’re the new kid on the block without any legacy content or you’ve had spam issues with Google before, they’re not just going to put you at number one for some links and keyword rich content.
Sustainable SEO Takes Times and Upkeep
So, as you can tell from the above, SEO is a long-term endeavour. As Google watch your content become more valuable to users and your behaviour doesn’t broach any spam concerns, you will form a more positive relationship and begin to rank higher.
This means adding content regularly to maintain your freshness score, building links honestly with reputable websites and conducting multivariate testing on your site to find the most optimum configuration.
Websites Don’t Just Rank, They Rank for Keywords
The most obvious problem with guaranteed search engine placement is that they promise a general number one ranking. But websites look to rank number one for a specific keyword. For example, ‘buy a house’ for a real estate site.
Let’s say you’re a specialised online bookstore. Are you ever going to rank number one for ‘books’? Almost certainly not. There are a dozen gigantic corporations above you whose SEO budget is triple your site’s annual revenue. And who says you’d get conversion if you did rank well for that keyword?
A proper SEO consulting company helps you get more favourable rankings in keywords that are achievable and, more importantly, used by people with buying intention rather than informational needs.
Black Hat SEO Helps Short Term but Devastates Long Term
Often with guaranteed search engine placement, you’ll find that these SEO firms do deliver on their promise. You pay them, then two months later you website’s rank is destroyed or removed from the Google index entirely.
Black hat SEOs know how to do a quick and effective run through your site and make it soar in the rankings. Firstly, this can never be achieved ethically, so they obviously added a massive amount of spam elements to your site. Secondly, if they don’t find it in subsequent data refreshes, the drastic ranking change will automatically prompt Google to investigate your site personally to assess the reason. Once they find the spammy activity, and they eventually will, they do not take being fooled very lightly.
So the best thing for your website is to have patience when waiting for ranking improvements, keep at it and only use SEO companies who have a reputation in the industry rather than flimsy guarantees.