OK, I just got an email asking “How can an seo company guarantee me top placement? Is that even possible? I mean, they don’t control the search engines, so I don’t get it.”
My response is this – Good point! It’s been my experience that most companies offering a “guarantee” are really offering more of a warranty – meaning that you would not pay full price unless you received what they agreed to provide. This, in my opinion is a fair business practice.
The guarantee or warrantee is typically a number of “top 30 rankings in five or more top search engines” or something to that effect. But buyers should be aware that the “top” rankings might be for useless keywords that were easy to rank for, such as your company name (which is often the domain name that could have been typed in directly without need of a search engine). This is just something to be aware of when agreeing to the search terms they guarantee.
Yeah, no joke! I’ve had so many customers insist on getting a "guarantee" because so many other SEO’s offer one. But when I read the competitor’s "guarantee conditions" and explain what they mean, that same customer feels a little foolish. I assure them that it is not their fault, but they feel like they were almost taken advantage of. And I can see why. SEO’s who pull stunts like choosing easy but worthless keywords, just to fulfill a guarantee, give all of us a bad name.
Comment by SEOguy — October 6, 2005 @ 2:44 am