Thanks for reading and commenting on a post I wrote from 2010.

What I said back then, still stands. The bottom line is the main purpose of an SEO program is to increase targeted website visitors from the search engines…not rankings.

Anyway, everyone is entitled to their opinion and I respect yours and thank you for sharing your thoughts here.

Take Care,
Nick

If you understand HOW Google approaches their indexing system, what they look for, how they judge the content, then there are no surprises as the Google updates are only tweaks to improve performance. You need to look at the same factors applied to a human visitor.

How, Where, What, they read are the controlling factors.

As for Guarantees, I offer them on all my products.
I sell software and state:
Don’t like our filters?
Tell us and get your money back.

The closest I have come to actually doing this was a 20 minute Skype call to assist the customer in installing the software.
I have the same 100% success rate with my SEO.

If you are looking at SEO, pretty much all you need is onpage.. Links do not count anymore and Social is more Search Marketing than SEO.
Social will build your local profile and offers many traffic building linking opportunities.
Retweets, likes, G+1 votes have a temporary effect on SERPs. Multiple G+1 citations have an effect, but this is based on content.

I offer everything you do except email marketing, which I wish could be “fixed”.

@Nick
“Rankings in general as a measurement for SEO is an old flawed metric”

Really?
What is the primary objective in SEO?
Why do you SEO a page?
A= To get the best listing possible.

“If they do get you rankings like that fairly quickly chances are they are using very strong black hat techniques which is not the answer to grow a business.”

NONSENSE!
Don’t you remember Caffeine? The update Google did to speed up the index?

I just documented an overnight change effected by a simple heading rewrite. (From #8 to #2).

Top results generate traffic.
It is not just ONE search ranking but a combination of dozens or even hundreds, given the length of tail.

Here is exactly what I say to people who ask for an SEO guarantee:
“Would you ask your attorney for a guarantee to win a case?” — YES! Contingency

“Would you ask your accountant for a guarantee for a tax return?”
YES! And he does.

“Would you ask your doctor for a guarantee on a surgery?”
NO but I would look at his odds.

“Would you as your plumber for a non-leak guarantee?”
YES I would also make certain his work is guaranteed up to code.

“So why should an SEO professional give a guarantee?”
As a matter of reassurance.

My Personal SEO Guarantee.
If you follow my outline exactly and do not get the majority of your pages on page one of Google results (the top 10), not only will I refund your money but I will give you a free year of professional grade hosting valued at $219.45 .

@Hamilton Switches
The amount of scams are endless.
Given that Google finally announced their policy on linking, the sites that still offer SEO linking programs are also scamming.
There is NO white hat SEO linking.
ALL linking to try to affect their SERPs is totally black hat.

best,
Reg

I cant understand how SEO firms that practice this are still getting away with it as a sales pitch.

Not sure why you provide a guarantee even though you claim that you’ve been doing SEO for 15 years. The fact of the matter is, there is no real “SEO expert” out there. You can find individuals and companies who may have tons of experience and know how to handle certain situations – however with the changing nature of the internet and search engines themselves, the expertise deteriorates and unless one keeps up to date with the trends, they will definitely fall behind.

Furthermore, it is a common now a days for clients to back off from companies who have a guarantee disclaimer, this is because many of them are educated enough to realize that it will most likely be a scam service. A review of the various internet marketing and SEO services that you should incorporate are briefed here and can be read through: http://www.9thsphere.com/services_marketing.html (reputation management for example, is something many companies overlook). Now a days it is critical to also incorporate many other things into your strategy besides just “On-page SEO”.

Take Care,
Nick

Sure, strictly speaking, no SEO guarantee should be made.

On the other hand, I think it’s perfectly fine and desirable to give a conditional SEO guarantee – “I guarantee these results with respect to these metrics by this date, OR your money back”.

It is actually common and accepted for malparactice lawyers to give such conditional guarantees – “I win your case or there is no charge” or “I only get paid 10% of damages you win”. Plumbers, car mechanics, they often do give such conditional guarantees – a refund is the task they are charged with is not actually addressed.

I think that an SEO provider who fails to give such a *conditional* guarantee, on the pretext that no guarantees whatsoever should be made, is far more likely to skimp on his work and exploit clients, than an SEO provider who does make such a conditional guarantee. Ergo, clients should be very wary of SEO providers who use such an excuse.

Secondly, truer words were never spoken about how clients sabotage themselves and your work. I have seen this happen several times and had to clean up the mess.

Thirdly, I disagree with teaching clients how to do this. After things have been screwed up royally they come back wanting you to fix it. However, I do agree with making sure they understand everything and what the process is all about. They must also understand that we may get them on the first page for their chosen keywords and primary markets, but we can’t make people click.

I also have to disagree that guaranteeing first page placement means using black hat. I get them on the first page and I don’t know how to do black hat. Never learned it. I get more satisfaction getting top rankings without smoke and mirrors. Underhanded tactics always get found out. Just ask that “locksmith” who was spamming the maps listings with a bazillion sites and fake addresses, who called me by the way. Wanted a bunch of maps listings done for locksmith and admitted that all the locations were fake. I turned him down. I had already read about him in the Google threads.

Question: Whats the going rate when a client asks for extra keywords? We give them three and get them first page for those. I then search using any combination of those and can find them on the first page as well. This is great, but when they specifically ask “Can I add another keyword?” What is the usual rate and what do you base it on?

Thanks. Really like this topic and have been waiting for it to come up.

Thanks so much for reading and presenting your thoughts! It does make sense and is good to hear the other side of things!

Take Care,
Nick

My guarantee is simple.
I will get the majority of your search terms on page 1 of Google or I will give you your money back.

I can offer this with confidence as I have over 15 years experience and my last few SEO campaigns never went below 75% page one listings.
My last client saw 100%

If you understand the process it is not difficult.
It is also not due to linking.
Most of the necessary work is on page and no “trickery” is involved. Metas like <meta name="SEO" content=" and <meta name="zipcode" content=" are not necessary.

I would have to be really dumb a**ed to not figure out what Google wants after 12 years of catering to them eh?

I am not talking about "weak" keyword phrases but those targeting the company's core products and services. The money makers.

SEO is ALL about results.
IT is all about getting your client in the top positions for their keyword phrases.

I used to offer SEO by results.
PRICING BASED ON PERFORMANCE
$75.00 for each # 1 listing
$50.00 for each position from # 2 to # 10
$35.00 for each position from # 11 to # 20

Not by week or month, but a one time payment.
Here is an screen from my old site.
http://dotcom-productions.com/images/guaranteed-page-1-seo-old.gif

Most of my small clients could not afford fees like this. Even the smallest would be looking at over $2000 for a realistic campaign.

With all the changes in Google's algos, the complete restructuring of PR, and their high standards for relevance, success depends on picking your keyword phrases carefully then developing their relevance in the site.

With the amount of competition in most areas online, success depends on defining your niche.

While Google's keywords tool may report no searches for a phrase, it is not all that accurate.
I have seen where Google reports no traffic but the client receives 10 or more searches for that exact phrase per month, which could be worth over $5,000 annually.

SEO is results oriented. What do you tell a client if you cannot get their primary KW phrase in the top 100?

I have to agree that clients are their own worst enemies.
I had to turn one away because he would not consider a content change. HIS boss told him "I want some of thet there SEO stuff in the site. I want you to move all our competition down and take their place.", but would not consider a departure from a totally graphic layout.

best,
Reg
nbs-seo.com

Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!

You bring up some excellent points, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most from what you said is an SEO client is buying into a marketing strategy. I think too often clients think that every part of their web marketing works in a silo, when in actuality every part of an internet marketing plan fits into and feeds each other, especially a white hat approach to SEO…

I agree you cannot say you will get a definate page ranking and anyway the SEO company should be explaining to the client that the work we do is based on one or more keywords. To me its going to be very difficult to guarantee to have 10 keywords all ranking on the first page of Google, quickly anyway.

Clients sometimes are there own worst enemy though, they themselves should be trying to at least understand what they are purchasing.

If the client is after any sort of service level they should take the time to get involved in the definition of the service, its not about ranking or placement its about traffic. But it has to be noted that if the site is on page 22 of Google for all of the keywords then the liklehood of being found from a search engine is remote.

The client is buying into a Marketing strategy and they should take the time to put the web design company under the spotlight and define correct terms. For me you could have a tiered system of costs but it should be based on increased traffic that can be proven to have arrived based on the strategy that is being used.

We build SEO into all of our sites, this allows us to work with a small number of keywords but ensure the important elements of that site are synchronised with these keywords. Before we start development we find keywords that we know are not too competative but that will drive traffic, we then optimise the site for these.

Thanks,
John.

Don’t talk about doing it, don’t say you’ll do it, just do it!

Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts…I see that you are with an internet marketing company, have you ever taken on any clients using this pricing model? If so, where you able to sustain their positioning using white hat techniques? And if so for how long? I would also love to hear from a client that purchased one of these types of performance based SEO services and had long lasting results (done well for longer than 12 months)…

Thanks again for the comment,
Nick