Want a #1 Google Listing Guarantee?

I was reminded today to take another look at Google’s guidelines for picking an SEO company and was glad to see that I don’t fall foul of them in any way.

One of the main things that I am often asked for by prospective clients is to provide a Guarantee that we can achieve #1 or top 10 listings within 3 or 6 months. Google clearly state on their SEO guidelines page that “No one can guarantee a No. 1 ranking on Google“. I have always reiterated that no-one can guarantee a listing in Google, let alone where it might occur in the rankings. (Combine this with the Google Aging Delay and we can probably guarantee that new sites will NOT have a top 10 listing with 6 months).Some SEO firms might provide a guarantee but are likely to only fulfill their obligation for extremely obscure search terms.

For the most part the client is not trying to catch you out when they ask you this. They have a budget and they want real results so they can justify ordering your service. Guaranteeing top 10 results for particular search terms is not the way I approach guarantees though. The process of SEO acts to improve the content and general accessibility of the entire site and while we might focus on a particular search term or two, our improvements could force another completely different term to cause your listing to appear in the number 1 position and drive insane amounts of traffic to your website.

I think if a guarantee were to be applicable, it would be along the lines of “All other promotional factors remaining constant, and taking seasonal variation into account, we guarantee that your website traffic will increase rather than decrease as a result of our optimisation and submission procedures.”

Anyway, nice to see that Google are giving this advice to help clients out. The more transparency there is in this business, the better it will be for everyone.

14-Sep-2005