Lots of SEO companies will do marketing campaigns, or even go out cold calling, and make claims that they can get you to the #1 spot on Google for your desired keyword, “guaranteed.”
This is absurd and a complete lie.
First of all, no one can guarantee anything when it comes to Google. We sure don’t at The ROI Team. We sell based on our reputation, and we always work our hardest and do our best for our clients, but we know full well that Google’s algorithms, both in search and in AdWords, can and do change without warning.
That’s what happened with the Panda algorithm update last year. It was designed specifically to defeat many of the less-than-holy SEO companies who were doing things like automated blog posting and forum commenting in order to artificially inflate a website’s ranking. It worked, and a lot of sites lost rank, but on the bright side it helped legitimated marketers and SEO companies who are using “white hat” techniques that not only improve your search rankings, but get you direct traffic in a variety of ways.
Secondly, the idea of someone guaranteeing the #1 search result for any keyword is so ridiculous, it isn’t even funny. Go ahead and try getting #1 for “bookstore.” Sorry but the best SEO company in the world can’t beat Barnes & Noble and Amazon for that one. And if they tried, by sending insane amounts of links to the client website, Google would detect it, ban the site, and remove it from the index completely.
Finally, any company that over-promises anything, in any industry, is a huge, huge red flag. And especially in a business like SEO where tons of get-rich-quickers are jumping on it as their next past to easy money. People who will say anything to make a sale usually won’t do anything for you as a client.
So beware of SEO services that over-promise and under-deliver. And remember that it’s something that takes time and must be done carefully, and by humans – no software – to avoid violating any Google policies and wind up having your site banned from their index altogether.
