- demystify the guarantees, identify the catches, avoid scammers and more
Perhaps it’s not your first time reading about Guaranteed SEO or similar phrases, which have been flying around for quite a while. This buzz word creates almost as much confusion as it does curiosity. Over- used yet seldom-delivered, many business owners become skeptical, especially those who have been burned a few times.
So before Guaranteed SEO becomes a cliché, let’s have a closer examination of what in the world the guarantees are and what they are founded on. You may be surprised how many layers of guarantees are out there, and how they are fulfilled.
Let’s start with common skeptical questions.
1) “I’d love to be ranked in the first page of Google. But … can they really do it?”
Interpretation: “Few people know exactly how Google ranks websites. Only the big companies can afford to rank at the top. How can they possibly guarantee the first page result for my website? Is it a scam? Or are they just trying to lure me in and then charge me a fortune?”
Answer: Demand a pay-for-performance guarantee – or don’t sign. This is the more basic layer of guarantee.
First of all, Google’s goal has remained that of delivering the most relevant search results to ordinary users. Although Google’s algorithm is not open to public, its ranking formula is. All the legitimate SEO firms who follow the ranking formula to deliver SEO service are actually helping Google reinforce the formula and therefore help Google achieve its goal.
However, SEO used to be a pay-n-pray service. It provides no guarantee whatsoever and the market was sheer chaos. Anyone who can drop a little jargon could claim they are SEO experts and charge their customers premium prices for the most basic of services. That’s why guaranteed SEO is important to get past the buzz words, and answer many marketers’ prayers. An SEO service would be meaningless without guarantees.
When people hear something like “1st page of Google … or it’s free”, their skepticism is founded on a misunderstanding. It only means the company does NOT charge you for unsuccessful SEO campaigns, which is pay-for-performance all about. If any SEO firms interpret this guarantee as meaning that they can rank ANY websites to the first page of Google, you can safely bet those are scammers.
However, the devil is in the details. You definitely want to find out what are covered by guarantees. For instance, how many keywords, often in percentage, are guaranteed to rank the target website to the 1st page of Google? Typically you see the guarantee goes from 40% all the way up to 90%. Of course, the higher percentage the better (and often pricier). But you don’t want to go with the 100% guys (unless they can prove that they own more than 50% of Google).
More importantly, you should find out the quality of the keywords. Many SEO firms would suggest you to avoid the high competition keywords and find the ones overlooked by your competitors. For lack of better word, that is worthless – honestly, who CANNOT deliver a guarantee on weak keywords? Such suggestions would only tell you one thing – the firms themselves are weak. To maximize your ROI of SEO and capture the best converting traffic, you should always select the keywords that are of high competition, high relevance (to your business), and high search volume. Those should be the most converting keywords that would bring you leads and sales.
And don’t be fooled by those who can show you nothing but their own website ranking in Google under some “SEO” strings. It really doesn’t mean much because it only shows the capability of the firm in one category. In the SEO business, result talks. Ranking customers’ (NOT the SEO firm’s) websites on the 1st page of Google is the only result that matters. In fact, some top SEO firms never rank their own websites because they don’t want their competitors to track through and find out what resources have been leveraged to deliver the incredible results.
2) “How long can I stay in the first page of Google?”
Interpretation: “Yeah, I know you might be able to push my website to the first page of Google starting out, but the most important thing to me is staying there indefinitely. I don’t want to pay forever for a one-day first page result.”
Answer: Obtain an ongoing guarantee. This is the second layer of defence against scams
In fact, the most valuable guarantee in the SEO business is ongoing guarantee. Let’s face it – everybody in the same industry or categories fight for those precious 10 spots on Google’s first page. You can safely bet that, in competitive markets, all the websites in the first page of Google are backed by some SEO experts. In other words, staying in the first page is quite a challenge because it has to be an ongoing effort that outperforms those poor sods on the 2nd and 3rd page.
Only the most confident, competent SEO firms provide an ongoing guarantee, especially on competitive categories and competitive keywords. You would be lucky if you find one. Check the fine print twice before you put pen to paper.
3) “Are they legitimate?”
Interpretation: “Are those guys trying to bring my site to the top using dirty tricks or spamming Google? I don’t want my website to be blacklisted by Google, or my reputation and business would be ruined.”
Answer: To deal with this issue, demand a legitimacy guarantee. This is the third and final layer of guarantee.
After all, Google is not a government but a publicly traded company. So really we should not use the word “legal” or “illegal” for this topic. However, Google zealously enforces its rules on SEO and, in fact, has a dedicated anti-spamming department to uncover and penalize those who think they are smart enough to fool Google.
In the SEO industry, the terms white and black hat are used referring to legitimate and illegitimate measures. According to Wikipedia, white hat measures include backlinks development in credible websites and blogs, while black hat measures mainly count keyword stuffing, cloaked page and link farms. For more info about the topic, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_or_black_hat.
Almost every year, Google does a major cleanup to remove the rankings of thousands of websites resulted from black hat SEO. The most recent one happened in February 2011 and 14% Google indexed websites were affected by the sweep. Even large corporations, such as JC Penny and BMW, were caught and penalized by Google (see New York Times coverage at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all).
There’re a few ways you can easily identify if the SEO firm you are about to hire uses white or black hat measures to improve its customers’ organic ranking:
a) Make sure the firm has been established for more than two years. Most black hat guys are fly-by-night operations, establishing new business names to cover their illegitimate past and poor reputation.
b) Find out how long the firm’s customers have been ranked on the first page of Google. If the customers’ websites were ranked up using black hat measures, the ranking typically won’t stand longer than six months.
c) Ask the firm if they provide any sort of ongoing guarantee. This is the Achilles' heel of all black hat firms. Sooner or later, the rankings pushed up by black hat measures will be removed by Google for good. [Note: Many legitimate SEO firms, with a proven record of business, do NOT offer ongoing guarantee, either. It only means they are NOT in the pay-for-performance business model yet.]
Remember:
1. Pay-for-performance guarantee is essential, but not enough. To achieve the best business results (leads and sales), the guarantee has to be on the keywords that are of high competition, high relevance (to your business), and high search volume.
2. Ongoing pay-for-performance guarantee is the most valuable guarantee. You might have to pay more, but it’s worthwhile. Otherwise, a 6 or 12 month contract might cost you dearly for ranking in the first page only in the first month or two.
3. Legitimacy guarantee is fundamental to everything else. White hat SEO is relatively slow. For low to moderate competition categories, it takes about 1 to 2 months to rank most of the keywords to the first page. For high competition categories, it might take 3 months at least to get there. Better safe than sorry – you don’t want to hire a black hat guy who promises you instant results (2 to 3 weeks or so) only to find your well-designed site blacklisted by Google three months later, do you?
Now, with all three guarantees in place, can a successful SEO campaign guarantee you business success? Not necessarily. Google is powerful, but is not your ATM machine.
Imagine all the right keywords have ranked your website in the first page of Google, and simple ask yourself “Now what?” Have all the business fundamentals in place. You’d better be prepared before the glorious moment comes.
For detailed strategies and methods of how to build an effective lead capture mechanism and how to improve online sales, stay tuned for our next article: Best practices of SEO – going beyond the first page of Google.
