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Why Indextree Does Not Offer a Guarantee? |
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By Richard Horowitz
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There are so many variables that escape our control that it would not be reasonable to afford any SEO firm to guarantee rankings. The search engines have all the control and only they 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 SEOs that claim to 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 site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Google Sitemaps (Beta) 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 “Guaranteed #1 Rankings”:
#1 – Long Tail Keywords Are Targeted
These companies sometimes advertise that they guarantee #1 rankings but they do not tell you for which keywords. The truth is that they are guaranteeing you a #1 position but not necessarily for a keyword that is competitive or highly searched. For example, they may target a 4-6 keyword search phrase like “cost effective online marketing solutions” that has no search volume or competition.
#2 – 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. Here is an example of such a guarantee:
Company Name guarantees placement among the following search engines depending on your choice of service: AltaVista, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Google, Overture, HotBot, Lycos, MSN, Netscape, NBCi, StopDog, Yahoo, Search.com, Infospace Network and Open Directory!
Notice that Overture is in the list even though it is a Pay Per Click platform and the Open Directory is a directory. These are not even search engines. There are really only four maybe five search engines to focus your lead generation and keyword rankings: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com and possibly AOL. Combined, these five search engines total approximately 80- 90% of all search engine traffic.
#3 – 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. It doesn’t matter which of the keywords or which search engines. If you look at #1 and #2 you will see that if worded properly, they can meet their guarantee even though the results are worthless to you.
#4 – 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.
#5 – Things to Look Out For
Here is a list of “black-hat” techniques that some SEO companies use to obtain top rankings for their clients. These techniques can get your website penalized or even banned from the indexes of the search engines. There have been many known instances of SEO firms using “black-hat” techniques that got their own website and all of their clients websites banned. Ask your prospective SEO firm about the techniques they use. 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.
It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts.
• 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 websites
• Mirror or Duplicate websites
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 site, changing optimization work, overuse of auto-submit or auto-rank checking programs, mirrored sites or duplicate content are just a few actions that can also affect rankings.
The search engines have all the control and only they can guarantee rankings but they never would because it takes away from the relevance of their results.
Although no one can guarantee a specific ranking in any particular search engine, we will always strive to get and keep your site ranked in the highest possible position. Our clients have obtained top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.
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| Richard Horowitz is the Director of Online Marketing Services for Indextree, Inc. |
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| Indextree helps companies dominate their markets by designing and implementing winning internet marketing services including search engine optimization services, pay per click management, website development and other internet marketing strategies. Call 1.866.528.4924 to speak to an Indextree internet marketing Expert. |
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