First Page Guaranteed??

Being an "experienced" SEO, I prefer to NOT guarantee anything other than improved rankings and traffic.

Guarantee 1st, 2nd, top 10 -- Good experienced SEO's understand that this is not a business model that stands up to time tested results. SEO's are at the whim of the SEs and the competition -- they are not in control.

 

I'd never be one to discredit someone else's business model, so long as its unethical and legal in nature.

That said, in my opinion I certainly would prefer not to make gauarantees. But there is one overwhelming truth in this market as in all others: The customer needs to feel confident in their purchase.

If you are well-known and have a large client base with many sites in your portfolio than your reputation alone or your demonstration of past success make be enough to allow the customer to feel confident that they aren't just wasting their money.

However, if you are new or have not done much SEO work, its very difficult to get some one to trust you when you've not got much to back it up. If you want to make a money back gaurantee here this may work - since they've eliminated their risk.

 

Making a money-back guarantee is an acceptable business practice.

Guaranteeing a client the top spot in the SE's is nothing more than a well spun lie. You can't do it (ethically anyway), that's the point I was trying to make. You can guarantee you will give their money back if you miss the target, but you can't guarantee you'll even hit the target.

 

I think we are saying the exact same thing.

 

Yes we are.

The whole guaranteed first page results thing ticks me off. I have a handful of clients I perform SEO services for. It never fails, at least twice a month I

 

Yeah well I'm sure we all know that in this industry there are alot of terrible companies trying to make a quick buck. Half of my customers have come to me from them. Its sort of just what we have to deal with...

 

Well I guess I am one of them

becuase with some people I work with they stop paying if they fall off the first page

"why they should continue to use my services"

why should they pay for your service if you are not delievering

its kind of like back in the day people used to thousands of dollars for a 5 page static html site and 50-100 a month for hosting

most don't anymore, I think the same thing will happend to seo

I thnk people like the pay for results model better then the pay for some vague concept of improvement

competition changes things

 

I'll tell you exactly what people like. Sales and leads. That's what I deliver. That's how I make my living. Sure they like being in the top 10 for a given term, and often that's a great way to get leads, but I think you are sort of missing the whole point.

The point is NOT just to get top 10 results. I can think of hundreds of terms I could go out and get top 10 on within 1 week. But are those terms searched often? Do they pertain to what I'm selling? Are they searched by my target market? These are what matters.

Let's say I had a web design business. Any fool could get top 10 for say "affordable web page development in Podunk, Iowa". And sure, for the two or three people that search that term every year you are well positioned. However, to get top 10 on something like "web design" is almost impossible. By contrast, there's phenominally more traffic here, but chances are the traffic is not nearly as qualified as the first.

Let me take one particular client of mine... I'm targeting about 50 search phrases for them - and I track these phrases closely. Of these 50 they have about 20 or so that are almost always in the #1 spot. About 5 of these represent a HUGE amount of traffic. The other 15 #1 rankings produce very very little traffic and very few leads. In fact, there are several #5-7 and #12-15 ranked terms we have in very very highly competitive search phrases that bring in alot more traffic. I wouldn't trade some of these #12 phrases for the world - b/c the produce visitors and leads.

Moral of the story - its about business, man. Sure you need to have high rankings... but why? To get business. If you produce top 10 and top 5 rankings for every key phrase a client asks for, but they don't notice a significant positive impact on their sales, leads, inquiries or whatever they're looking for - then your services are worthless! High rankings are the means, not the ends.

 

I do deliver - but I'm realistic in my assesment of where I can get them without too much, or any, risk. I also don't take on a lot of accounts - I'm not about the volume I'm about the quality. I only have so many hours in the day, and don't want to hire anyone or outsource the work. My services are not "cheap", and a lot of these "first page guaranteed" companies undercut my rates. It's sometimes hard for my clients to understand that they are not seeing an apple to apples comparison. After I explain everything to them they get it - but it's the fact that I have to spend an hour explaining the differences/risks to them...again - when that's an hour I could have used to work on their campaign.

Maybe I'm sometimes more frustrated with the client who never took the time to educate themselves on what they are buying than I am at the company taking advantage of that ignorance.

 

most poeple don't see much past the dollar sign unless they have been ripped off once

I know the sales are the end product but if you have someone who has a bad businees model , no amount of seo will save him

that doesn't mean he shouldn't have to pay for top 10 rankings

if what they sell is junk or overpriced thats on them

"However, to get top 10 on something like "web design" is almost impossible"

umm, I'm ranked 8 for "website design" right now, so I would say it can't be that hard, and I'm not even a real "seo"

/////// disclaimer I disappeared again

but I disappear every other week, sometimes day,

the thing with ranking high for terms like web design, I live in NY USA people who type in general terms like that are looking for cheap as hell web design , I cannot compete in price with some people, say in the third world

 

Going back to Alex Doyle Associates, I was conned into parting with money (my own fault, I was new in business and green around the gills). With hindsight I should have known better, especially as

1. thay did not design their own web site (see http://www.anvilmasters.co.uk/clients/alex_doyle.htm)
and
2. they cannot even come top on Google for their own name.

Office of Fair Trading here I come.

 

Okay so I just checked out their site - looks like their just a keyword vendor and don't do any SEO at all. This is quite possibly one of the more poor jobs of SEO of one's site I've ever seen. What's with the * * * in their title? Do they not understand that the title tag is an important attribute in SEO? I feel for all you who lost your money to them as the 30 seconds I spent on the Anvil Masters website and AD's website it became pretty apparent to me that they are highly amateur at best.

 

Where did you find the Alex Doyle site? I searched on "Alex Doyle Associates" and this forum comes up #1. I couldn't find their site anywhere. So much for their SEO work...

 

Go for it! Teeth and all

 

Same search w/o the quotes on Google. I got them as the #6 listing.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=alex+doyle+associates

It does, however, bear a strikely similarity to the AsOne site. I'm guessing they are the same/partner company.

 

How can these guys continue to practice such bad habits and get away with it. We should start a black list or something.

 

This is the reason i dont use SEO companies. There is just too much factor to guarantee a website in 1st position, if they can guarantee, all the SEO companies will be listed 1st place wouldn't they?!

If you read the forum you will realise many of the tips and trick can be easy done even by novice there are great deal of information out there those days. The main factors are:

1.Keywords
2.Contents
3.links

just my 2 cents

 

I think you should consider some professional SEO help. After all your reading you still haven't got it right. The order is definitely:

1. Keywords -- mainly for the correct anchor text.
2. Links
3 And somewhere back in third place content -- with the title being the most important content element.

I really get pissed off with people who generalize about all SEO practitioners. People who promise first page are not typical of, nor do they speak for, all SEO people.

 

This is just ridiculous. I'm not even going to bother going off on my rant about "guarantees" and SEO - which relies on fluid SERPS.

However, a solid point is brought up here. Yes, any fairly regular Joe with some basic web design/html knowledge can certainly read these forums, read other info, apply to their site and certainly see definite improvements. The tough part is when you are optimizing for highly competitive terms. This is when you need some professional help. But then again, what is the difference between a professional and anyone else? Just experience really. If you want you simply keep reading these forums and optimize many sites and after enough time you'll be good enough to call yourself a professional - mind you it may take several years but it can happen.

When you pay a professional you are paying for their experience and knowledge. You are paying for the fact that they have been reading these forums and learning and keeping up with the latest for a long time. Indeed, they spend probably 1/3 or more of each of there workdays in these forums - typing posts, replying to people who make ignorant comments in an SEO forum that criticize SEO companies and don't realize that 80% of the forum participants are small SEO companies themselves! Hey, this is part of the 1/3 of my day right now.

 

Oh you are so right Ephricon!