If you’re an entrepreneur looking to invest in your business’s online presence, you’ve probably heard the phrase “SEO Guarantee.” But what exactly does that mean? It sounds like it might be a worthwhile venture, but don’t take the bait! SEO guarantees don’t do much for your site’s ranking. In fact, they can hurt your rankings in the long run. Read along, and we will explore the concept and explain why you should avoid them.
What is an SEO guarantee?
A guaranteed SEO ranking is a promise by an SEO marketing company that they will deliver specific rankings for your website on a certain search engine (side-eyeing you, Google) within a certain timeframe. A price tag often accompanies these promises—a higher one if you want to be guaranteed that you’ll hit the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Okay, now we’re up to speed on what an SEO guarantee is. You might wonder, what can an SEO guarantee look like?
The guarantee can be time-based:
e.g., “we guarantee you’ll rank #1 for your target keyword within 90 days.”
or cost-based:
e.g., “we guarantee you’ll rank #1 for your target keyword within 90 days, or we’ll pay for the difference in cost if we don’t.”
Sounds great, right? Well, not really.
For starters, no one can guarantee where your website will rank on any given search engine. The algorithms used by search engines are complex and constantly evolving. The truth is, no one knows exactly how Google ranks sites, except for Google itself.
Did you know that all SEO guarantees are against Google’s standards?
It’s true! When you stop to consider the reasoning behind it, it’s easy to understand why. SEO is a practice of making your website rank higher in the search results for specific keywords. When you buy an SEO guarantee, you’re paying for the promise that the company will help your business rank higher in search results—which is against Google’s policies.
Google is the undisputed king of search engines, and any guarantee that an SEO service can offer is simply not valid. Google doesn’t allow anyone to make any guarantees about their ranking, and if they do, they’ll be penalized and possibly removed from search results entirely. The fact is, there are no guarantees in search engine optimization. Even if you pay for a service that claims to be guaranteed, it’s not worth anything if real data and metrics don’t back it up. The only way to ensure your site will rank well on Google or any other search engine is to continuously improve your site.
The best way to do this? You should create content that people enjoy! Suppose your site is full of informative and engaging articles, videos, and images that encourage users to spend time reading, watching, and sharing them with their friends. In that case, your site would gain an excellent reputation. Once you’ve got that, there’s a better chance of ranking well on Google’s results page. If you want more information about how this works, check out our other blog posts on SEO best practices.
Are SEO Results Guaranteed?
The short answer is, No. The algorithms used by search engines change frequently and are proprietary. The truth is that there’s no way to guarantee rankings because Google constantly updates its algorithm so it can continuously evolve along with its user base. Because it’s so difficult (if not impossible) to predict exactly what these changes will be, trying to guarantee rankings over time would be like trying to predict a stock market crash. Technically possible, but incredibly unlikely. So, when someone promises they can get your site ranked #1 for a keyword within a certain deadline—and then charges you extra if they don’t deliver—they’re lying to you and/or themselves.
The only way to get results from an SEO campaign is to do it right, with the right content, on the right sites, based on where your customers live and work. Guarantees can be enticing if you don’t know what you’re doing, but they’re not worth a thing if you do.
5 Reasons Why Guaranteed SEO Services Should Be Avoided:
SEO Guarantees are Legally Unenforceable.
SEO guarantees are marketing ploys. It’s just a way to get you in the door. They don’t mean anything, and the companies making them know that. You don’t see any truly binding guarantee on an SEO company’s website for a reason. They understand they aren’t on the hook when they can’t deliver on their “guarantee.”
Black-Hat Companies Make SEO Guarantees
The term Black-Hat in SEO refers to any SEO practices considered unethical and therefore banned under Google’s Terms of Service. Offering guarantees is unethical, because it encourages Black-Hat practices like keyword stuffing and spammy link-building strategies, which could get your site penalized by Google.
SEO Companies Have No Control Over Google’s Algorithms
It’s impossible to guarantee any ranking because so many factors are involved in determining the success of any website. These include things like backlinks, social media presence, technical infrastructure, and more. There are also many variables that can affect search engine algorithms daily (for example, Google updates its algorithm hundreds of times per year).
Guarantees Do Not Equal Results
So what’s the difference between a guarantee and actual results? It’s all about the wording! If you see any language suggesting your site will rank on Google’s first page, or that your business will increase by X number of customers/clients/revenue after getting a certain amount of SEO work done, then walk away. A guarantee is simply not possible because too many variables influence whether a site will rank well in search engines.
All SEO Guarantees are Against Google’s Standards
At the end of the day, all SEO guarantees are against Google’s standards. Google doesn’t allow anyone to make any guarantees about their ranking, and if they do, they’ll be penalized and possibly removed from search results entirely.
Contact CadenceSEO For a Free SEO Audit
Search engine optimization is an intricate business. Many factors go into getting your website to rank, and they can change at any time. That’s why we don’t offer SEO guarantees. We believe that guaranteeing results is misleading and unethical. It puts the customer at risk should something happen that prevents us from delivering on our promises.
We also don’t want to give you the impression that we can guarantee first page rankings on Google in two days—because we can’t.
At CadenceSEO, we believe in transparency. We offer a free consultation with one of our experienced SEO experts, where you can get an honest assessment of what we can do for you and how much time it will take to accomplish those goals.
