Is there such a thing as a SEO guarantee? Adam and Chad think not. Google published in its Webmaster Guidelines that there can be no seo guarantee. As an SEO agency or a SEO reseller, it would not be wise to guarantee seo. As a customer, it would not be wise to choose an agency based on guaranteed seo--what they are typically guaranteeing isn't anything you'd want or need. Watch the Video Tutorial to learn more about the great seo guarantee trick.
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Good afternoon, Adam. Good afternoon, Chad.
We got another juicy topic today. We're really hitting some good ones this week.
We're going to talk today about the dreaded SEO guarantee. And I guess I want to know off the top, is this is a fool's game? I mean, should you really trust the SEO guarantee?
Wow, these are going way back to the days of many years ago when these were the big topics.
It's still out there. People are still debating them.
Yeah, you're right. The SEO guarantee-- I mean, to me, there's sort of two sides to that. Should you use that as a criteria for selecting your seo programs? And then as an SEO provider, should you offer a guarantee? And so I think we always immediately go to the Google Webmaster Guidelines and what they provide as criteria for selecting SEO companies. And I think the very first thing-- or maybe it's the second bullet-- but I believe it's the first bullet-- is that basically guaranteed seo is not possible. And the main reason for that is because everyone in the SEO industry that is a search engine SEO company, we don't ultimately control the Google rankings. So we can look at what factors influence rankings. But there is no hot line-- secret phone to Google-- to say, hey, we've got a client. We've done these six things, so we can guarantee seo. So usually, if you start reading into what seo guaranteed is, it usually is meaningless.
So let's just stop right there. So Google's pretty clear on this issue of guaranteed seo. And they say absolutely no vendor should be offering that policy, right? That's what you're saying.
Exactly. No one can guarantee seo results with Google because ultimately there isn't one thing you can do to make it to get a ranking. But people still do it. So now you're saying, you know, let's get into those guys who are going to say I'm going to break the rules with Google. I'm going to offer this seo guarantee. And that's where I think it gets really interesting.
Usually if you look into that, and you peel that onion back a couple layers, usually what is in the guarantee is one of two things. Typically, they're, first of all, not guaranteeing all of your keywords. So a lot of times, people will sell you 10 keywords-- 30 keywords-- which is probably a topic for a whole other discussion on why buying big chunks of keywords as an SEO approach doesn't really make sense.
But usually, what they say is that some percentage of that big keyword bucket you will get rankings on. And usually, there's two, again, asterisks on that. One is there's no guarantee that these are keywords anyone uses in searching. There's no SEO guarantee.
So you could have a keyword. And we did a test with a client one time that came to us and said, look I've got a buddy who can rank on Toyota Tacoma Chattanooga. And they can get us to page one in two days.
And so I think, Adam, you and I did a test. And we actually knocked that ranking out in four hours or something-- right-- by doing a couple things to throw it up on an authoritative site on a keyword that is meaningless. And we were able to beat that.
So the first thing is, rankings on keywords that people don't search on don't matter. So that's usually a part of the guarantee-- that people are using the trickery there.
And then the second thing that you see a lot of times is that basically the seo guarantees in seo packages are only on a certain percentage of words. So what they say is they'll give you 30 keywords. But they only need to get a couple to rank. And it's usually not in position one. But it's usually on page one or page two.
So what's happening is anytime there's a seo guarantee, usually what they're guaranteeing is something you don't really even want. Because anyone who is going to be in business for any lengthy period of time cannot guarantee truly competitive keywords because it just doesn't happen that way.
Yeah, I agree with you 100%. In our years in business, I've probably reviewed, I'd say, when you compare resellers, at least 30 of these guarantees. And I'd say in all cases but one, they were really just playing games with you. And the fine print was really kind of worthless. And the one that actually seemed totally great-- too good to be true-- those guys are out of business.
So I think great summary, Chad. So I think, ultimately, the answer is yes, only suckers fall for the SEO guarantee. Don't do it. And if you want to know how to shop for high quality service providers, watch our other tutorials.
Thanks.