Why Indextree Does Not Offer an SEO Guarantee?

There are so many variables that escape our control that it would not be reasonable to expect any SEO firm to guarantee rankings. Only search engines have all the control and can control how pages are ranked.

The truth is that Google itself has a section on their Webmaster Guidelines, http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291, which states:

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEO shops that guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a website to Google directly is through their Add URL page or through the Google Webmaster Tools program, and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

We do not think that all SEO companies that offer “Guaranteed #1 Rankings” are all scam artists, but we think that a lot of them prey on the lack of knowledge by business owners about search engines. Here are a few scenarios on how companies generate “Guaranteed #1 Rankings”:

Long Tail Keywords Are Targeted. They are guaranteeing you a #1 position but not necessarily for keywords that are competitive or highly searched. For example, they may target a 4-6 keyword search phrase like “cost effective widget solutions” that has no search volume or competition.

Non-Major Search Engines. Some SEO companies guarantee top rankings for keywords in smaller search engines that are not relevant and produce a minimal amount of search engine traffic. Remember that Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and possibly AOL. Combined account for approximately 80- 90% of all search engine traffic.

Never a Full Money-back Guarantees.  The terms for refunds can be so specific as to make the guarantee to be less than it may initially sound. For example, a lot of these companies offer a guarantee if they obtain top rankings for a percentage of keywords they targeted on a list of like 10 or more search engines. If they target 10 keywords and get top 10 rankings for 5 of them on any of the search engines from their list then they have met their guarantee.

Pay Per Click Listings Instead of Natural Listings. One actual scam is when a company pretends to optimize your website and instead they use a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign to obtain top rankings. These are legitimate means of being placed at the top of the first search engine results page under the "sponsored links" categories, but not in the natural results where there is no limit to the amount of clicks that you can receive.

Things to Look Out For. Here is a list of “black-hat” techniques that some SEO companies use to obtain top rankings. These techniques can get your website penalized or even banned from the indexes of the search engines. If they mention any of the techniques listed below, grab your wallet and run because even if it works for the short term in the end the search engines will find out and you will get penalized or banned.

• Keyword Stuffing
• Meta Tag Stuffing
• Hidden or Invisible Text
• Doorway Pages
• Cloaking
• Links from Free-For-All Directories or Link Farms
• Link Spam in blogs, forums and other types of website
• Mirror or Duplicate website

No One Should Offer Guarantees
Ranking results are impacted by so many variables that escape our control like industry competitiveness, keyword competitiveness, domain history, website history and numerous other off-page factors that it would not be reasonable to afford any SEO firm to guarantee rankings.

Also, actions taken by the client including changes and/or redesign of the website, changing optimization work, overuse of auto-submit or auto-rank checking programs, mirrored websites or duplicate content are just a few actions that can also affect rankings.

Although no one can guarantee a specific ranking in any particular search engine, we will always strive to get and keep your website ranked in the highest possible position. Our clients have obtained top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.