Wed 5 Mar 2008
Can You 100% Guarantee Which Horse Will Win A Race?
Blurb by Shaun Anderson
The answer is a resounding no!
Taking the analogy of a Horse Race, even if you know where the finish line is, even if you have spent ages examining the competition, and even if you have ‘fixed’ the race so that every other jockey is in on it……what if happens if your horse falls at the second last fence? What happens if it breaks a leg? What happens if it drops dead? What happens if another faster horse enters the race at the last minute from left-field? You’re No2.
And if you’re caught cheating - you won’t even be allowed to race.
Google is like a horse race, with hundreds of potential participants. It’s a horse race where;
- You don’t even know where the finish line is!
- You don’t get to see everything the competition is planning to win the race, what they did yesterday or what they will do tomorrow, whether that be address site issues, get those all important quality links or indeed hire a better search engine optimiser!
- It’s impossible to know how healthy your site is in comparison to the no2 site, assuming your site is no1.
- If you are caught cheating, your not allowed to compete in future.
I’m plain sick to death hearing inexperienced seo claim -
“sure I can guarantee a no1 listing, if you give me enough money”
Yeah, throw money at it.
Google Guidelines state;
“No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google“
For me this is the only absolute truth Google tells us. Matt Cutts of Google is on record as saying;
“someone walked up to me and pretended like he wanted to bribe me: $500,000 for a 1st place ranking. I turned him down, because no one can guarantee a #1 ranking — not even me.”Matt Cutts
Even the cleverest of the black hat seo brigade can’t capture very competitive key-terms for long. Google will eventually catch up - Google manually checks some of the most competitive ‘money terms’ when the algorithm misses it and if they don’t pass a human review - the site will be penalised, along with every other site in that neighbourhood.
If you’re in business, you’re obviously not stupid, or if you are, you won’t be in business very long.
A SEO can’t ever guarantee you top results just in the same way as an advertising agency can’t guarantee that next advert in the local press will get you sales. If you’re paying good money to a seo, you should expect good positions, but that’s it. To guarantee anything you need to know all the variables - even seo who claim you can guarantee no1 listings on less that competitive terms are fooling themselves. Google can take these positions away from them as quickly as a better seo with a better site with a better back-link profile. No1 in Google is not an absolute, it’s a floating point.
SEO Who Guarantee Listings Are Either Crap, Dishonest Or £$%^&** Clueless - I guarantee it! 
Don’t believe the hype….. ever. There are no exceptions.
Before you part with your hard earned cash read Google Webmaster Guidelines & Google - What’s An SEO.
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11 Comments
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Claiming to get #1 positions for the big money places is a bold claim in my book in fact its such an outlandish boast.
I have no problem about people boasting about their talents but I think there are more dignified ways to go about it!
Shout Out by Paul-S — March 7, 2008 @ 12:17 am
As ever - a great viewpoint on the slippery world of seo and it’s associated scamsters.
If you’re ever unfortunate enough to shake one of these guys hands, check you’ve still got your rings on…
Shout Out by John — March 7, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
Well said, Shaun. It needs saying over and over again until it sinks in. I just wonder how many of these ’seos’ offering guaranteed #1 placing on high-value terms ever get sued under trade descriptions. But then I remember just how difficult it is to bring the dishonest to justice in this country, and it answers my question.
Nice horses analogy.
Shout Out by Nick James (swags2804) — March 7, 2008 @ 11:20 pm
I agree…However…SEO is not ‘rocket science’ & google is not ‘god’.
Some people are eventually ranking no #1 for every keyword that is available, correct? So if they can go into that position, why can’t you
If your site has what it takes to become number #1….you will be #1 no matter what
Shout Out by SEO Australia — March 10, 2008 @ 3:13 am
SEO comparison with advertising is a good one.
Advertising doesn’t = a brand. A brand is everything that a company is in terms of how it impacts on customer experience, so that is quality of product / relevancy of product / whether the receptionist was friendly, and so on - all of this = Content (content is king).
Sure it helps to do good SEO. Just as good advertising helps (and, you can, in some cases, do really excellent advertising yourself - i.e Sheila’s Wheels).
Advertising is useful. Seo is useful. But you have to have a proper brand first - content first.
Shout Out by Eamon — March 10, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
The problem is that the people who need to know this don’t read SEO blogs, or even any blog at all.
For a lot of business managers the only contact that they have ever had with the SEO industry is by way of emails or cold calls promising “#1 rankings on Google”. It’s no wonder that so many of them think that is actually what SEO does.
No doubt eventually the truth will get out, but in the mean time SEOs are getting grouped with used car salesmen and fly-by-night contractors.
Shout Out by David LaFerney — March 11, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
Thanks for the comments.
David, that’s true, and exactly why we try and set ourselves apart from such seo companies. The simple fact is no seo company can guarantee rankings in Google, and those who do should be held to account where possible.
If anybody enters into a guarantee with any company, make sure it’s a money back guarantee!
Shout Out by Shaun Anderson — March 11, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
You’re exactly right in what you’re saying Shaun, except ‘guarantee’ is one of those terms where the definition can get a little hazy.
No-one can say for certain they can achieve any ranking on Google (number 1 or otherwise) - regardless of their huge resources or how much testosterone is flowing through their veins - because it’s not something directly under their control. For all we know Google are actually using a team of elves to compile the SERPs (more plausible that a few other suggestions I’ve heard). All we see are the end results; what happens inside the box we can only guess.
However, what a company can do is provide a money-back guarantee based on agreed performance levels - as you also say
In this case it’s a bit like the guarantee on your television - no-one is saying it definitely won’t break or get stuck on the Ideal World channel, but if it does you’ll get a refund (and have a strong case for compensation in the event of the latter I would have thought).
These performance-level type agreements are actually pretty common. The problem has arisen from lots of bullshit, back-bedroom SEOs using meaningless ‘guarantees’ to flog get-rich-quick style services (The absurd “#1 in 48 hours” is my favourite). Unfortunately, in the world of SEO, guarantees are now usually associated with this type of scam rather than the original sense of offering a security or protection against a given outcome.
Shout Out by Gavin Mitchell — March 13, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
Thanks for the comment Gavin - I see you take the same approach as us. We guarantee once we start a search engine optimisation campaign for a client we’ll work ‘ethically’ and hard! If we fail to show a good roi on seo, with improved positions in serps etc, we’ll refund money.
It’s an easy guarantee to make to clients, and the only guarantee a seo company can give. It’s the same with building a conservatory, for instance. If you employ a builder who makes a total mess of things, a normal person would want their money back.
Of course, it’s an easy guarantee to make for companies that are not just total con-men! We’ve never had to refund a seo client their money once we’ve started work, because we keep in mind the task at hand - better positions in Google via white hat seo methods.
Shout Out by Shaun Anderson — March 13, 2008 @ 7:06 pm
Hi Shaun,
Nicely written article and I like the analogy. The sad thing about this kind of sales tactic is that people are still getting away with it! I suppose there will always be an endless supply of naive people who will pay these people and then be disappointed. It seems that people who are new in business are targetted by people like this - similarly in the advertising world where I’ve known some of my clients pay ludicrous amounts for newspaper or magazine advertising only to get no responses.
It’s great to know that there are ethical companies out there… but how do we get the message across to the fresh out of the wrapper business people who are wasting a great deal of money on false promises? If you can stem the flow of these people, then there will be no money to be made by people giving their false promises.
Shout Out by Dan O'Neil — March 26, 2008 @ 10:58 am
[...] You must always remember that this is a field which is highly volatile and no one can guarantee your results. It is for this reason that you should weed out unethical consultants [...]
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