I Think It Should!
Anyone who can’t keep to a promise or makes excuses for not hitting a target, should take the risk from the client onto themselves!
They lack confidence in their ability because they don’t produce consistent results or don’t understand the Google game.
Thoughts??
That’s the number one reason why you need to hire an SEO expert for a period of time and why they NEED to offer a guarantee. If they are not prepared to spend the time monitoring for changes in the algorithms and adapting yous page to compensate then what is it you are paying them to do - possibly a rain dance?
Any guarantee would also need to specify a timeframe - eg. Your site will have a top ten listing at least 90% of the time for the six months following it first reaching a top 10 position. The guarantee conditions eithe would or would not be met at the end of that time.
SEO is an ongoing process and so if you are hiring someone to do SEO for you then you should be hiring them for a period of time anyway and not just until they first achieve a specified result.
At the end of the time period if they met their guarantee then you’d rehire them for the next period.
And therein lies the scam with those who DO guarantee it.
You’ve hired some SEO guru to get your site at the top of Google for a relatively competitive keyword (so he says), and he’s done it! Against all the odds you’re now #1 and the guy gets his hard-earned cash.
Three months later, you’re sixth. A bit better than you were when you started, and you didn’t get the sudden influx of users you were hoping for for such a “competitive term”.
Do you get your money back? Of course not! He kept his end of the bargain, most likely by sticking your link on a bunch of noted link farms until you hit #1.
This isn’t a rare situation. I know of a couple of businesses who have hired in-house SEO consultants that have used dodgy techniques such as link farming and using thousands of “long tail pages” to attract any traffic they possibly can. It works well for a bit, but then you get caught and you suffer greatly. The Panda update has killed a lot of legitimate sites who have banked on their previous good fortune, and real businesses have lost real money on these techniques.
Nowadays, many businesses are wary of SEO consultants and those that guarantee a good rank will probably be ignored. Google have done a good job in limiting the use of many of the stupid SEO techniques and within the next three years I’d predict that SEO in general will be on its way out.
The truth is that SEO consultants are now too expensive to justify what they do. For the price of a good SEO consultant with genuine domain knowledge (has worked on legitimate campaigns for sites in your sector) you can hire a medium-sized marketing firm to run an online marketing campaign and achieve far more for your money. More often than not, these agencies will also run basic SEO campaigns for you, using things that they KNOW work through their years of experience. These people have degrees in Business/Marketing/Advertising, and decades of experience off the web (along with years on), whereas SEO consultants have read a few SEO blogs and maybe a book or two. A full digital agency will give you even more, using tools and techniques that will PROVE where you need to go better, such as multivariate testing. SEO in itself is too expensive for a SEO consultant to justify spending three months on a typical campaign, unless they’re either from a country (like India) where the cost of living is far lower, or they’re scamming people by taking money for quick results.
As an industry, Google is killing off SEO as we know it, and many of us are glad for it.
No, I don’t think any one can give guarantee for SEO. One of the most common reason you don’t know when search engines will update their algorithm. Those who are giving you guarantee for keyword position they are making you fool at last they will make only excuses.
It is not a simple answer. Sometimes you can guarantee the approximate position, and sometimes you can’t. Anyway I think SEO work should be paid not by position that site reaches but by the effort that SEO person put into someone’s website.
For example you agree on price of on-site work (sorting titles, providing relevant content, clearing URL-s, naming images plus research before all that, etc.) and then you agree on off-site work proce like link building and promotion. The result will surely be better position for someone’s website but precise position is not something that even should be considered in a price negotiation.
For first position or page in Google results you need different amount of work for different sites so it is not type of work on which you can put fixed price, while work that I stated before can have fixed price and can be guaranteed.
That’s why SEO is something that goes on forever rather than being something that is only done once. You don’t hire an SEO person for a few days or weeks - you need them for decades (or at least until the search engines finally get intelligent enough that SEO ceases to have any meaning).
I would think six months would be the minimum time you’d employ an SEO expert to work on your site for and if they do a good job over that period you then rehire them to do exactly the same job for the next six months and so on. Anyone offering a shorter period of time is obviously not an SEO expert but just someone trying a con.
There is no guarantee in SEO work as the search engine and visitors trend changes time to time. But I am sure that quality SEO work never got in vain. SO just try to do quality work and other will be in your favor.
There are two elements here to keep distinct:
I agree with all those here that say that it is impossible to predict (that is, to guarantee) that you’ll be able to deliver a first page result. There are too many variables beyond your control. Nobody can truly guarantee (as in, predict for sure) a first page result in advance.
BUT, even so, I think an expert SEO that is confident in his or her abilities could make a very interesting business model out of a first page guarantee. “You pay nothing until you’re on page 1!” or some variant on that. But really, this is nothing more than the SEO assuming the risk of not being able to rank on page one – it is still not a guarantee in the “predict for sure” sense.
Interesting discussion, though.
Alfred
Confidence means nothing in business. Results do.
The point we’re trying to make is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to guarantee a certain result on Google, and if a business owner falls for this trick then it’s their own stupid money they’re wasting. A lot of SEO salesmen push this guarantee, and they may manage it two times out of ten for a week or two. They’ll then take their money, repeat and when it fails go elsewhere.
There’s a reason why SEO has such a bad reputation. One only has to look at some of the posters we get on these forums to see that there are people with absolutely no clue of how the Internet is run, who own SEO companies and are scamming small business owners whose only crime is to want their business to succeed on the Internet.
Well we’ve established that, like a man trying to fix a broken kitchen appliance over the phone without ever seeing or knowing what it is, it is impossible to guarantee results on something that you don’t know.
They aren’t just idiots; they’re effectively criminals that are deluded in their own ability, like miracle healers. They believe that by following the sage advice of sites making money off of these idiots with SEO myths (also known as “authorities”) they’ll improve other peoples websites (I mean, how could SEOMoz be wrong?! Surely they know the Google algorithm perfectly?!).
There are those of us who have an interest in SEO so that we can gather domain knowledge and help our businesses and others through tried-and-tested methods, such as through A/B Testing, remodelling of information architecture or through genuine online marketing efforts. Sadly, these idiots do not fall into this category.
Anyone who makes their living by targeting the terminally clueless isn’t going to want to take the risk on themselves!
The problem with SEOists charging by results is that they don’t have any actual control over those results. Google’s algorithm is Google’s algorithm, and while they can push things in a certain direction, that’s all they can do. And then you’ve got other sites to worry about. You might launch your SEO drive just at the same time as your biggest competitor ups his game.
Performance-related pay is notoriously tricksy when you are not directly responsible for the outcome. Teachers, for example, have always fought against their pay being related to the exam results their kids achieve – one year’s class might be much less able than another, and penalising the teacher for not achieving the same results would be unfair. Likewise some websites are up against much stiffer competition than others, so you can do everything right for your site and still not get to the top of the tree if there are much better sites out there.
They lack confidence in their ability because they don’t produce consistent results or don’t understand the Google game.
My experience of SEO snake oil salesmen is that the one thing they have in abundance is confidence in their ability. Knowledge, understanding or skill, very little, but confidence, oh boy yes.
Unrealistic. SEOists would need to be experts in the website’s industry to know how feasible that is, and that’s unlikely. There are too many unknowns.
One of my biggest concerns about pay-for-results is that it encourages short-termism even more than is usual among SEOists. As a trade, it’s hardly known for its ethical stance, quality control or long-term ambition. Encouraging a guarantee of getting to #1, or p1 or whatever result you pay for, is only likely to lead to SEOists using ever more dodgy tactics to blast your site up the rankings before Google notices what you’re doing, there you go sir, that will be $1000 please, thank you, goodbye, whoops, now your site is back down on p50 and has been penalised for having a blacker hat than Darth Vader. That’s a common enough problem now, we don’t want to make it worse!
Ultimately, the results of SEO will usually only be as good as the content on the site. Some sites simply don’t deserve to appear in the first five pages for the keywords the author is targeting.
if an SEO wants to take a risk using his own resources and skills, and has the confidence to say “yes, this will make page x in x days/weeks/months”, it is also the SEO who is taking the risk that others are also competing in a similar fashion for that keyword.
if an SEO is confident enough to make that statement, then it either shows a. they are an idiot, or b. they have the skillset to deliver what they say they can?
I am following a thread on this exact topic on another forum - and the jury is out.
1/ From a customer perspective - Absolutely, no-one likes spending money on the unknown.
2/ From the SEO companies perspective - No, as there are no guarantees.
Certainly as the web is always updated SEO is constant and needs work that is ongoing.
We are not experts in SEO, but this article (note: link deleted) was put together covering some of the many areas of SEO - but I know there are things that have been missed off.
Regards,
Marketing Quotes Support
i don’t outsource any work … i have an internet marketing company and our SEO is all done inhouse, basically i just wanted to get a debate going, for and against.
it’s interesting to hear everyones opinion. i myself offer a guaranteed first page domain service, but its for local search terms only, and very cheap.
my other link building packages don’t however come with this guarantee, but i am thinking of making a new package that does, as 9 out of 10 of my clients do hit the first page.
i just want to get an idea on the market first, as a lot of seo’s who ‘guarantee’ come under a lot of scrutiny, but sometimes it is the SEO who is taking the risk not the client.
Your post is quite confusing seems like you are quite pissed off over someone who you outsourced your work
This is where your argument is flawed. Regardless of any research you may be doing, there may be someone else out there who has their own research and is looking to enter that market.
I could spend six months building the perfect website for a client that will get them ranked #1 for the term “freelance bloggers in exeter”, but there could be a dozen others doing exactly the same thing, or other changes to pages that become relevant to this search term.
The reason why any guarantee in ranks is stupid is because it is impossible without being able to control every page on the Internet. It’s like saying that you can calm the sea by putting sea water into a glass. Your glass is calm, but the sea still rages on.
based on previous performance and successes you would know realistically whether you could make first page or not with a little research.
how would someone be getting conned from a pay per result situation? if the seo doesnt deliver you don’t pay?!
i appreciate your input.
But in that case none of the 15 should have been given guarantees because at the time they wouldn’t know which of the 5 would miss out.
If someone is silly enough to be conned by an seo guarantee then they deserve what they get and have only themselves to blame from my point of view. You can’t legislate against stupidity. 
You asked for thoughts. They’re my like it or lump it 2c worth 
any reputable SEO should know through research whether they can feasibly make first page or not, and it what time frame.
if 15 people make the same guarantee, of course 5 will miss out. but the 5 who miss out, shouldn’t have been promised first page in the first place, and it would be the seo that would lose out on a pay per results formula.
I think anyone who believes a guaranteed position is a fool.
If say 15 people give a guarantee at the same time to their clients that their web sites will be in the top 10 rankings at a given time then it’s not rocket surgery to work out that at least 5 will miss out.