Beware of Search Engine Optimisation "Guarantees"
This afternoon I had a phone call from a 'search engine optimisation' company. One of my private clients received their phone call and because they weren’t sure whether to proceed with them or not referred them on to me.)
I'm really glad they did because this company were making the usual ridiculous promises I've heard so many times before...
"Pay us just £100 a month and we will get you on the first page of Google!"
“Wow — that’s unbelievable!” I said… (because it really is truly unbelievable! ;-)
Getting a web site in the ‘free listings’ (on the left hand side) of Google’s first page of search results is a glorious thing. Sales can easily double or triple the moment that happens.
But the problem is, for the most important keywords any business could aim for it’s usually a pipe dream! (Or certainly takes a darn site more effort than £100 a month could enable.)
It takes a combination of backlinks (how many other sites link to your and how relevant they are), how many outbound links you have (links to other web sites), internal links to other pages in your site — and especially the text content of your web pages (it’s length, wording, etc) and many other factors… even the domain name (web address) itself can have an impact on search engine ranking.
So just working on a single ‘ranking factor’ (like backlinks or site content) is almost never enough.
For example one keyword I gave the guy as a test — my private clients single most important keyword in terms of generating sales — returned more than 4.6 million pages when searched on Google.
And yet the salesman still said — albeit unconvincingly by this point (I think he started to get the idea I know my stuff when it comes to search engines) –even so he still said ”oh yes we can get first page Google on that phrase” quite matter of factly.
Funnily enough — I’ve spoken to the salesman before. He didn’t remember me — probably because he makes hundreds if not thousands of calls a year (so why would he?)
But I already knew he’d failed another business a few years ago in providing the same service. I choked the call off early.
The simple moral of the story... BE VERY CAREFUL when dealing with anyone who makes bold assertions about where they can get your web site listed on Google.
For example, early on in the call the guy was saying “it’s only £100 a month” …but later on he happened to mention “minimum contract 12 months!”. In other words the real cost £1,200.
(And you can bet your bottom dollar there’s no money back guarantee if they fail to achieve page 1 on Google.)
It's what gives the web development industry a bad reputation — it makes it so much harder for the ethical web development companies out there to gain trust and achieve a good client relationship.
In a nutshell… if it sounds too good to be true… it probably is!
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consultant Ed Rivis — for the real truth about SEO and how any
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