Are you looking to get guaranteed search engine rankings? Let us inform you on the facts to help you make a better informed decision for your business.
Just the other day, myself and a few friends ordered a pizza. Pizza establishments are well known for offering some sort of guarantee with their delivery. The usual guarantees that come with a delivery is that it will be there in 35 minutes, or the pizza will be at least a certain temperature when delivered. The guarantee that they offered immediately triggered guarantees that the search marketing firms are often faced with.
Are You Paying for Rankings or Time?
Essentially when you hire a search marketing firm, you are buying their time. With this time, they will work on best preparing your site to help increase rankings and traffic to the site. Search marketers do not have control over the search engines, but they are your best bet to properly preparing your site for the search engines. It is always in their and your best interest for your site to perform as well as possible.
It is important that when searching out possible firms that you have a good understanding of search engines and the typical myths and facts. This way you can make a better educated decision that best fits your website and marketing budget.
If you are looking to have a guaranteed ranking, then you should look to Paid Advertising. This is the only sure way that you can get that #1,2 or 3 spot for the exact search phrase in your favorite search engine.
With search marketing, the more competitive the keyword phrase, the longer it will take to achieve that top ranking. This is normal, and this is the exact same thing that a search marketing firm has to do themselves to get their desired rankings. Just as their clients sites start from scratch, all marketing firms have to start from the bottom as well, and it does not happen overnight. It takes time and a lot of work to get to the top of any industry.
Now, How Long Will This Take? Are We There Yet?
It does take time to achieve those top rankings. Search engines generally update their databases on a monthly schedule. For new websites, rankings will generally take a little longer as they need to build their link popularity and the search engines then have to update these links and give credit to that site. Websites that are already established will generally show results faster in the search engines. This is because they attained a number of incoming links to their site and are able to target keywords of a certain competitive level.
The Guarantee and Delivery
The pizza that was ordered met the guarantee they were offering. The pizza was to be at X temperature or it was free. The pizza establishment knows that it can just about always meet that guarantee. With search marketing firms, some offer some sort of guarantee with rankings. It is important to know that any firm you hire wants your site to perform to its potential and with most, you will see results start to happen early on.
Search engines are continually updating their databases and algorithms to help improve the results, therefore the rankings will always continue to change. Typically guarantees that are offered on search engine phrases, are on less competitive longer phrases that are getting little to no searches, and/or they could be paid PPC listings. The majority of reputable search marketing firms are out there to help you improve your traffic, rankings, and increase your overall potential sales leads and not lead clients on with misleading Guarantees.
So be weary of any SEO firm offering Guarantees! Read Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Webmasters/Site owners Help, in this Google themselves make reference to this.
- No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
Gerard Manning is the owner of Manning Search Marketing and has been working in the SEO industry since 2000. Originally started with Enquiro Search Solutions (now known as Mediative). Was previously a Research Assistant on Inside the Mind of the Searcher that was released in 2005.