Can SEO be guaranteed?

[Barney_B]

Barney b. Your website has been partially optimised.
Titles tags etc......
You have no internal linking structure.
No software can do this correctly.

Maybe, but from my experience finding a decent SEO person that actually delivers what I want rather than what they want always seems to be miles apart. It aslo seems to be on par with walking into a bookmakers and betting on traps 1 x 2 in the 2.08pm race at Crayford. You pays your money and take your chance. The stakes are high and it's just to high risk.

 

[edmondscommerce]

the best thing you can do is learn the principles of SEO yourself..

pay yourself £20 an hour or whatever to read books etc on SEO.

check out this page as well

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

 

Bottom line SEO is an industry that seems to suffer from a large volume of scamsters and rip off merchants.

No disrespect to the genuine SEO's out there, in fact all credit to you.

Couldn't agree more I doubt if there are more than a dozen or so top SEO's in the country.

Earl

 

funny you should mention its cold outside ali i had them phone me today ,I told them that im not interested sounds like i did the right thing

Me to. I have it in my terms and conditions that I will be consulted on any change.
I had a client wit 18 out of 20 terms on page one after 6 months.
The guy then bought links off its cold outside (idiot).
We dropped him as client (breach of contract)
He has lost all positions and is in the middle of suing them (not our problem).

Complete control of website is essential. Slightest changes in content or urls can have major impact on SEO. even more so when not notified.

 

[LBtrading]

I dont think this is a yes or no answer,

You can decide whether you want to give a guarantee or not but make it clear to the client either way,

also if you give a guarantee you should make it clear what you guarantee and follow through if you dont meet it.

You should state what keyphrases you guarantee and a timespan to get them to place you said you would.

either way you should make it clear to the client so they fully understand what they are getting before taking on the work.

You could go down the route of selling a service and list what they get ie:

so many socialbookmarks
so many articles (includes the writing and submitting)
so many pr releases (includes the writing of the pr)
So many blogs if any
So many blog comments etc
a month

You should tailor make the package to the keyword phrase and change or add quantities of the above depending on what you think is needed based on competitor analasys.

also this is just for offpage optimization obviously keep onpage and offpage seperate because onpage is necessary and will need to be done regardless of guarantee's.

this way you dont have to guarantee anything but explain that this is a taylor made solution to them and they are paying for the above to be done.

The moral is there are many ways to tap in nail and as long as the client is clear either way you cant go wrong.

 

so many socialbookmarks
so many articles (includes the writing and submitting)
so many pr releases (includes the writing of the pr)
So many blogs if any
So many blog comments etc
a month

.

Now why would you want to encourage refugee's from celebrity big brother.

Much better to simply stick your page on page 1 and have fare paying targeted traffic.

Unless of course you are a make believe SEO fumbling in the dark.

Earl

 

[LBtrading]

sirearl,

Not sure I quite understand your response, but maybe you missunderstood my point, what I was trying to get accross is that you show the customer what they are paying for, what work you are doing for them, what I mean is dont just say things like £100 month for link maintenance which doesnt mean alot to the customer.

I am not trying to sell any SEO so didnt think it was necessary to write "how to get to the top of google in 24 hours guide"

If you think what was listed above is pointless in seo strategy such as providing quality content and building brand then I may point out that I never meant anyone to take it as a be all and end all of how to do SEO or how I would do it, it was just a sample list so people could use there common sense and inerpret it into providing a list of services carried out each month (a Report).

The post wasnt meant to get anyones back up but just my opinion and view.

 

sirearl,

Not sure I quite understand your response, but maybe you missunderstood my point, what I was trying to get accross is that you show the customer what they are paying for, what work you are doing for them, what I mean is dont just say things like £100 month for link maintenance which doesnt mean alot to the customer.

I am not trying to sell any SEO so didnt think it was necessary to write "how to get to the top of google in 24 hours guide"

If you think what was listed above is pointless in seo strategy such as providing quality content and building brand then I may point out that I never meant anyone to take it as a be all and end all of how to do SEO or how I would do it, it was just a sample list so people could use there common sense and inerpret it into providing a list of services carried out each month (a Report).

The post wasnt meant to get anyones back up but just my opinion and view.

Did not mean to be offensive ,just pointing out how ineffective social networking and blogging e.t.c.is in generating real income compared with real SEO IMHO.

P.S and how little return there is on a time effort basis.

Earl

 

[LBtrading]

sirearl
Oh right I thought you meant about all I listed, I think there is a time for social bookmarking mainly more for entertainment sites than anything else.

The main purpose I use social bookmarkin is for getting a newpage/site/article indexed and crawled by google quickly,

as anyone knows that submitting pages/sites to google is pointless.

No offense taken and can see where your comming from on the social bookmarking in regards to doing it monthly to the same page.

 

[chrisweb]

Position cannot be guaranteed.

You can usually guarantee a top ten listing, because if you have unique content on the page then 99% of the time if you search for that unique phrase you'll be listed in #1 or at least the top 10 unless the site is penalized or there's some other problem. But nobody will be searching for that obscure phrase so its a useless guarantee.

Really with SEO there are no guarantees and a good SEM will know that. Of course they may have a high success rate so will offer a cash guarantee to entice customers, knowing its rare for them to fail so will rarely have to give cash back.

But generally most guarantees should be avoided and are a con.

 

[ImproveSearchListings]

Whilst positions cannot be guaranteed, there is a lot of noise about strategy internet marketing ltd.

They offer a pay-on-results offering (which I understand is a little different to what is being discussed, but certainly along the same lines.

http://www.strategyinternetmarketing.co.uk/pay-per-results-seo.html

I've seen them at several trade shows and they seem to know their stuff. As long as the agreement focusses on the correct measurables, I see this as a decent step forward in honest guaranteeing of results.

I would also feel safe in the knowledge they will be working hard for their money to achieve the desired results.

 

[edmondscommerce]

interesting!

 

I have been doing pay by results SEO for 10 years.

I think they will be very choosy about what projects they take on,as I am

I suspect they will cherry pick high yield types of business and maybe 1 in a 100 will qualify for pay by results.

Earl

 

[Barney_B]

Just been sent an email from a company that does SEO. It starts of like this

[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']"Hello,[/FONT]
[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif'][/FONT][FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']I recently came across your details on the local business directory but couldn't find your web site so I wanted to send you a quick email to introduce ourselves." There is a bit more, as they couldn't find me why did they email me?[/FONT]
[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']having now visited their website they quote £99 for SEO is this a bargain? Does anyone know a realistic price to have a website optimised fully by a reputable company?[/FONT]

 

[Dmkths]

This wouldn't be from a company called ICO? by any chance......

 

[scene4u]

Working as an SEO 'expert' myself, I tend to offer the client guaranteed page 1 results or at least a significant increase in organic traffic within the 3 months of work. Moreover, if at any time a client is unhappy with the work they can cancel with just a month's notice.

 

[Business Angel]

I have been doing pay by results SEO for 10 years.

I think they will be very choosy about what projects they take on,as I am

I suspect they will cherry pick high yield types of business and maybe 1 in a 100 will qualify for pay by results.

Earl

Actually no, Earl. About 8 in 10 qualify. But clients should have an expectation that this is not likely to cost (on average, over the year) less than £500/month so probably not suitable for start-ups or those with no budget.

And it's not just about volume of traffic either, but also about the quality.

John

 

Actually no, Earl. About 8 in 10 qualify. But clients should have an expectation that this is not likely to cost (on average, over the year) less than £500/month so probably not suitable for start-ups or those with no budget.

And it's not just about volume of traffic either, but also about the quality.

John

John if its going to cost the client £500 a month that is not profit sharing and certainly is cherry picking for most small business's.

and would indicate a fairly established business .

Earl

 

[ElliotClark]

never believe people who guarantee ranking N1. That is simply impossible to predict.

 

[edmondscommerce]

check out this blog post i just did
http://www.edmondscommerce.co.uk/bl...etting-to-postion-number-one-isnt-everything/

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Fnargleblarglewobbady

 

[AndyBlack]

Of course it can't be guaranteed. Unless you are Google of such like you can't guarantee anything. Each niche and keyword phrase is different, but with the right dedication and onpage / offpage practices, anythings possible.

 

[QVA - Emma]

Unless you are confident in your abilites I don't beleive guarantees should be offered.

I take on small business websites that are virtually untouched, usually they are start up businesses who are looking to upgrade from a self built version.

I know I can help these businesses - if however they were a medium enterprise and were already on Page 1 of Google for top keywords and were looking to expand this would probably be a bit too much for me at this stage. Admittedly I have only been SEOing for 2 years so I know I still have a lot to learn, at which point I would recommend an expert that I had read about and know that can make their wishes possible.

I hate the hard sell when it comes to SEO which is one of the reasons I decided to set up on my own.

All in all if you are very experienced and are a seasoned SEO professional I think you have every right to make a guarantee - only you can determine your capabilites.

Emma

 

if however they were a medium enterprise and were already on Page 1 of Google for top keywords and were looking to expand this would probably be a bit too much for me at this stage.
Emma

strange thinking ,It is usually much easier to work on a site that has a bit of age and history and of a decent size.

Earl

 

[ukperson1]

If someone guarantees you very specific results eg. position 1-5 on google .....just run and ignore whatever they are saying.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

Unless you are confident in your abilites I don't beleive guarantees should be offered.

Here's a question: if someone isn't confident in their ability, should they really be offering the service in the first place?

And, if the answer is "yes", shouldn't they tell the prospect they're not confident of success?

Personally, I think that this is exactly the sort of situation where you should offer a money-back guarantee. If you're going to use a business as your guinea pig, you should be taking the risk, not them.

Steve

 

[ken_uk]

But even with a full money back guarentee. the customer is still taking a risk, as the money back would only cover what they paid for the SEO.

If the seo went horribly wrong, and they disapeared in a puff of smoke onto page 79 of google, or worse - gets banned then they will have lost a lot of money in sales of whatever they sell.

Plus as google rarely states that bans/penalties have been applied, nor usually gives a reason, then taking the SEO to court for neglicence is going to be next to impossible, unless Mr Cutts takes pity on you and goes public with a explanation...

SEO can give great returns, but bad SEO can cause great damage.

 

[QVA - Emma]

strange thinking ,It is usually much easier to work on a site that has a bit of age and history and of a decent size.

Earl

Ah yes agreed, which is what I do. I am talking about sites that are already established in their market for some top keyphrases - but obviously there are many factors that come into it. If I found that I knew I could make improvements quite easily after thoroughly researching how well the site is doing, then obviously it would be a no brainer to take it on.

This forum isn't big enough for me to explain my philosophies!

 

Here's a question: if someone isn't confident in their ability, should they really be offering the service in the first place?

And, if the answer is "yes", shouldn't they tell the prospect they're not confident of success?

Personally, I think that this is exactly the sort of situation where you should offer a money-back guarantee. If you're going to use a business as your guinea pig, you should be taking the risk, not them.

Steve

Although I agree with you in an ideal world.

There are various levels of both skill and pricing in the SEO world.

I suspect that for most the top SEO guys are not within there budget.

That leaves the majority faced with companies like Big Mouth e.t.c.

Who will do a corporate make over to a degree.

or possibly a word of mouth recommendation .

So is it not better to have a level of SEO within your budget than none at all.?

I switched to profit sharing many years ago,partly because most of the business's I came into contact with simply could not afford my fee's on the level of business they were doing at the time.

Earl

 

[QVA - Emma]

Here's a question: if someone isn't confident in their ability, should they really be offering the service in the first place?

And, if the answer is "yes", shouldn't they tell the prospect they're not confident of success?

Personally, I think that this is exactly the sort of situation where you should offer a money-back guarantee. If you're going to use a business as your guinea pig, you should be taking the risk, not them.

Steve

I see where you are coming from Steve, however if I thought that I couldn't help my customers I would not have started up in the first place.

Although there are many established SEO's in the industry, there are also many "in training" if you like. Seeing as there is no official SEO Training School and no "magic bullet" formula alot have to offer there services for free when starting out.

I considered offering money back guarantees but for the amount of hours I put in for a very small fee anyway I do not think that this is warrented.

Emma

 

[directmarketingadvice]

So is it not better to have a level of SEO within your budget than none at all.?

It depends on the quality of the SEO.

I have a lot of clients who have hired SEOs who failed miserably.

(one of my clients hired 4 different SEOs and none of them got near page 1)

Nono of the SEOs told him:

"you know what? I'm not particularly good at SEO - I don't really know what I'm doing and I've no idea if I can get you onto page 1 - but I'm hoping that I'll get lucky... oh, and if I don't, I'm just going to keep your money... or, to put it another way, I'm betting on my own ability, but I'm doing it with your money."

If they'd said that and my client hired them, he'd have done it with his eyes open and, when they failed, he'd have had no-one to blame but himself.

But, it wasn't done that way and he rightly feels ripped off... four times over.

Finally, I'd say SEO is hit or miss: you might be willing to pay someone £x to get you onto p1 for a keyword, but you wouldn't pay them 20% of £x to get you onto page 5... it just doesn't work that way.

If page 1 is worth £x, then page 5 would be worth less than 1% of that.

Steve

 

[Coderea]

I haven't had the time to read the whole 7 pages of this thread but I would love to post my views over here..

SEO is not a trick nor it is a substance which you can feel in your hands and actually vouch by talking on the quality of the product....

People generally talk about appearing in the top 5 positiions in a competitive industry which is a tough task but quite achievable if it's a constant process..and the website has quality content ...!
We have been doing SEO for past 3 years for a particular niche and have achieve quite good results and also have worked on projects where there were ups and downs..
I'll give you an example here...We were doing SEO on a printing/designing site which was a contract of 6 months and at the end of the 6th month the site was appearing on the 2nd page for some related industry keywords..so it's quite obvious that the traffic of the site increased and the client was happy....In the 6th month the client cancel the contract and didn't want to spend more on the ongoing process ...fine enough..!
After a month..he sends a mail to our company...about the site dissapearning from results which was not expected . We had no clues what could be the reason and asked the client to show us the traffic stats ..We saw that majority of the traffic is coming from the bookmarking sites and some autobots programs..We asked the client about the referers stats and he said that he was quite happy with the traffic and he wanted more so he paid a guy to bookmark and submit his site to some more search engines and the freelancer used some automated systems..for the reason which his site for banned to appear for SERP's..

Clients need to understand that it's not about obtaining 1st or 5th position...SEO is about optimizing your site to appear in google which even you can do by learning some SEO articles but if you aren't bothered than you can hire someone who is experienced and can do this for you..!

 

[Ali-v-8]

Hey guy's
I've just realised that we are all agreeing but in different ways
Points to be made-
Google decides who goes where (so we cant guarantee how the Google will list you).
How ever we are confident in our work and experience with the results we have achieved. (we can guarantee a level of service WE will provide)

So to summarise. the guarantee provided is only as good as the company that is providing the guarantee.
So here is the trust factor.
Do you go with a new company that offers a guarantee or a company (or person) that has a proven track record that offers no guarantee.

My choice is track record.

 

[DRB]

Position can not be guaranteed, but good traffic can be ensured!

how to get good traffic could you please give me some points. I have a site but most of the time it flucuates. some time there won't be much traffic and sometimes it will be more. Please give me some solutions to get traffic more. I used to do blog posting, article submission and directory submission, but no use.

 

Hey guy's
I've just realised that we are all agreeing but in different ways
Points to be made-
Google decides who goes where (so we cant guarantee how the Google will list you).
How ever we are confident in our work and experience with the results we have achieved. (we can guarantee a level of service WE will provide)

So to summarise. the guarantee provided is only as good as the company that is providing the guarantee.
So here is the trust factor.
Do you go with a new company that offers a guarantee or a company (or person) that has a proven track record that offers no guarantee.

My choice is track record.

I am going to disagree with you there:

"Google decides who goes where (so we cant guarantee how the Google will list you)."

Google is an algo,that we decipher ,and we then instruct google where to put our site based on there algo.

Earl

 

[Ali-v-8]

I am going to disagree with you there:

"Google decides who goes where (so we cant guarantee how the Google will list you)."

Google is an algo,that we decipher ,and we then instruct google where to put our site based on there algo.

Earl

Like i said
google decides and we tell it ( in a round about sort of way)