What You Should Know About Guaranteed Placement
by: Benjamin Pfeiffer - July 14, 2003
Its Guaranteed! You can be number #1 in the search engines! Top 10 rankings for any keyword!
Ever heard any claims like these? There's a lot of hot air floating around these days and if you ask any professional in the search engine marketing field they'll tell you the same. As a business or website owner that is considering placing their money and trust into a possible search engine optimization company, a guaranteed level of service is a comforting feeling. Knowing you will be number #1 just by spending a few dollars at a search engine marketing company is priceless. Let the company do the work, and you reap the profits of all the search engine traffic. Only if it were so easy. Instead, a guarantee is more of a marketing pitch than anything and any self-respecting SEO company will only use a guarantee if their level of service has a proven track record.
Think of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France this year, the man has a proven track record for being the best at what he does. He trains, works, sweats, and thinks of cycling on a daily basis. If the man ate corn dogs and drank 44oz. Big Gulps everyday of the year, winning the Tour de France again would only be a dream. The parallels to SEO companies are quite similar.
In order to achieve top rankings (first page placements) for your website, a SEO company must train, work, sweat, and research the best way to get your website to the top of the major search engines. Eating corn dogs and drinking 44 oz. Big Gulps is as easy as setting up a pay-per-click search engine account, and letting it bring temporary traffic to your website. Yet, you want lasting search engine traffic to your website, and not a band-aid fix. It's not always as easy as it looks and I believe there are some critical variables clients should ponder when selecting a SEO company.
1. Search engine marketing firms do not control the search engines and the algorigthms they use to rank your website.
2. Search engine marketing firms do not control the competition. Competition is more than happy in most cases to strike a counter attack at some possible SEO efforts you do. Be prepared. They could hire their own SEO, learn the techniques themselves, or train its staff.
3. Search engine marketing firms do not control the market for such products, services, or interest in what the website has to offer.
If your website sells blue exploding gumballs, and the market for such a product is two people. Getting 100% of the market share with #1 rankings across the board is only going to bring you two people. Hardly worth all the effort. Likewize, rankings are really nothing without the visitors behind them. Investigate the keywords that are getting visitors and those that are not. Thirdly, and most importantly, wishing to achieve top 10 rankings for keywords such as "casino, web hosting, web design, viagra, etc..." are going to be pipe dreams unless you have the money and the time to wait for these rankings to happen. Remember, generic high traffic keyword rankings are possible, for anything is possible, but it comes at a price. Think about your budget, and what you would like to achieve.
Now look back over the three variables that we showed you. Slapping a guarantee on those three variables is quite tough to do. You can see why SEO companies have their work cut out for them when it comes to a standard level of service or guaranteed placement for each website. There are many site specific issues that must be overcome in order to get a solid ranking on every website. Having a good influence on a lot them can signify a good SEO company, and a guarantee would be warranted. I go by the philosophy that if a company can slap on a "Quaranteed Top 10 Ranking" for its services, it MUST have the experience to back it up. Because experience is better than a piece of paper with the words "Guaranteed" at the top. Spending a few extra dollars to hire that proven experience might be one of the best marketing decisions your company can make.
Check out a few of our client's ranking reports here.
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