Guaranteed Search Engine Ranking - Guaranteed Search Engine Optimization
Conventional SEO Wisdom: If anyone offers you “guaranteed search engine ranking” or “guaranteed search engine optimization”, run far, far away very fast. Today is the day that I … support conventional SEO wisdom — at least when it comes to guaranteed search engine ranking and guaranteed search engine optimization.
The answer I usually give is something along the lines of: “It takes time for people to pass on information. If I blog about something today, someone may repeat what I say in two months. Someone else may repeat what they say two months after that. Every two months, the advice is repeated. The process may continue for years.”
There are, in fact, SEOs today who advise people to go out and get as many directory listings as possible, to exchange as many links as possible, to drop links in blog and forum comments, to buy as many links as they can, to “leverage social media profiles for links”, and to do lots of other things that were once cool ideas but which are now either frowned upon or at least no longer constitute the majority of SEO blog posts.
When you’ve been reading SEO blogs and forums for several years you tend to settle on a handfull of core sites where you tap the pulse of the SEO community, and it’s easy to forget there are thousands of people out there blogging away or posting in forums, sharing advice that Jill Whalen and I gave out 8-10 years ago. Brett Tabke introduced the idea of “website theming” in 1998 or 1999 and people are still talking about how to do it today. People still look for ways to build doorway pages, even though doorway pages supposedly fell out of favor with the SEO community ten years ago.
If you browse Google News or Ezinearticles, you can see examples of some pretty schlocky, amateurish attempts to promote new SEO firms and consultants. Some of them might offer you “guaranteed search engine ranking” (conveniently linking to their own sites with that anchor text). Some of them might hire copywriters from, say, the Phillipines or India or Pakistan, whose command of American English is so inadequate that they promote their clients’ SEO sites with exceptional idiom like “very less number of people is actually aware of ways to popularize their sites….”
I have to wonder if I really want to rank for that awful expression.
I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and education that millions of people in Asia possess. India alone has as many college-educated people as there are people in the United States. But they speak and write differently from Americans, and there is in fact no guarantee that the SEO copywriter you hire in India is even college-educated. I might as well be writing copy for people in Hindi — it would sound about as intelligent and convincing as “very less number of people is actually aware of ways to popularize their sites”.
When new SEO consultants (who want to rank for the term seo consultants) issue multiple press releases that link back to their own sites with anchor text like SEO optimization, you have to wonder what century they bought their SEO handbooks in. Did they get that wonderful terminology from Chapter 4, “How to write doorway pages for Altavista and Infoseek”? I don’t know. Maybe these guys aren’t so new to the business after all.
I still find some so-called “A List” SEOs telling people that all you need are links. But at least they confine that nonsense to their blogs and leave the press releases and free article archives alone.
I’ve published press releases and I’ve contributed articles to Ezinearticles.com. Heck, if you search for “three point plan” you’ll even find an article I wrote years ago ranking well in Google. It also ranks well for “building online visibility”. Of course, who searches for “three point plan” and “building online visibility”?
Hm. Actually, people DO search for “three point plan”. How foward-thinking of me.
There are days when I browse all the big SEO blogs and find fairly simple, basic tips and advice in their articles and I wonder, “Why does this industry need to rehash the fundamentals so much?”
Then I browse News Search or an article directory and I see all the badly written, horribly mangled advice being handed out by cheap self-promotional shmucks who couldn’t optimize their ways out of brown paper bags and I realize: this industry has a LONG way to go before it builds any real credibility.
We’re mostly recognized by the media as the people who fight with Google and manipulate their results. Fortunately for many of us, a lot of companies with significant marketing budgets managed to see their way through all the crap being shared on the Internet to give us their business and/or hire us to do what search engine optimizers are supposed to do: get content indexed and ranking for something useful.
Can you guarantee results? Of course not. But I’ve had plenty of conversations with people who, aware of my reputation, hoped I’d pull my ego out of my boot and say, “Sure! I’ll guarantee your search engine ranking. I provide guaranteed search engine optimization.”
It ain’t gonna happen.
I’ll guarantee that I’ll do my part. You’ll get the service. The results really depend on more than one factor.
This industry SHOULD be able to offer some sort of guarantees. Unfortunately, the unreasonably high expectations that lead to too-frequent disappointment make it impossible for many SEO firms to offer any guarantee beyond, “We’ll go our separate ways if you don’t like the results we obtain”. Too many people would abuse a money-back offer if they thought they could hold us responsible for number 1 listings in competitive queries.
Some SEO firms do guarantee 1st positions in uncompetitive queries, and of course the rest of us roll our eyes and shake our heads. That is SO unethical, unless you’re talking about building brand value (before the client gives you the contract) or protecting online reputations in low-traffic queries.
There are certainly days when I could honestly say, “Sure. You’ll get your number 1 listing. You’ll even get your search traffic.” But in an industry lacking proper standards, making such a guarantee would be a dangerous thing. A client that wants to hammer a competitive query needs more resources, more patience, and a deeper understanding of the fact that we’re navigating through a stormy ocean of Web sites, search engine algorithms, and competitive strategies.
If search engine optimization were as mature as financial services, we would all be required (by our attorneys) to include the following language in our proposals and contracts: “Past results do not guarantee future performance”. In fact, I have often thrown those words into communications with people just to remind everyone that my influence over search results is not absolute.
Yeah, I’m good. I’m sure I’m good enough to compete with anyone in the business. But I’m not going to promise anyone guaranteed search engine ranking or guaranteed search engine optimization.
SEO, optimization — whatever you want to call it (even “SEO optimization”) — it’s all about managing resources and tuning them to achieve their best possible potential results. If you think all you need to do is embed a few links in a press release, then you have much to learn about search engine optimization — guaranteed.
www.seo-theory.com
published @ November 1, 2008