Guaranteed SEO - No Way!

To me, "guaranteed SEO" is one of those oxymorons - you know, like "military intelligence" and "giant shrimp."

How can you guarantee SEO results when you can't control the search engines - you don't know all the variables baked into the search algorithm and you can't edit it to your satisfaction?

What does guarantee mean?

• a promise or assurance, especially one in writing, that something is of specified quality, content, benefit, etc., or that it will perform satisfactorily for a given length of time
• something that assures a particular outcome or condition
• to undertake (to do something)
• to promise (usually followed by a clause as object)

I can guarantee that I'll apply SEO to a site, but I can't guarantee the outcome, yet there are SEO individuals and agencies that make that statement on their websites.

How do they do it?

By applying less than ethical, "black hat" SEO tactics that work in the short term, but back fire horribly in the long term, but the only one who pays the price is the website owner by losing all rankings and traffic, and possibly even getting her domain de-listed or banned by Google.

The search engine knows all the tricks. There isn't anything out there that hasn't been tried and caught. Doorway pages, cloaking, excessive linking, hidden text, keyword stuffing - there isn't anything new under the sun.

Can you afford to lose your website in fell swoop? Do you have enough resources to weather a long down period? I'm guessing not.

SEO can't be guaranteed - at least organic search engine optimization can't. With PPC, given enough tender loving care and tinkering with ads, you can get some results.

So please...don't get taken in by guaranteed results. I think the best you can ever say is that the site's visibility will increase, visitor traffic will be boosted, but beyond that, promising to be put on page one of Google search results and staying there, isn't a guarantee I can ever give and fulfill every day, year in and year out.

Make the commitment that you'll develop an interesting, evolving, fresh website that complies with Google's Webmaster guidelines adn recommended best practice.

That's the only real guarantee you can keep!

Here's some SEO advice that be helpful to you.

Want to learn more about those best practices and guidelines so you can incorporate them into your site? Let's schedule your own SEO training course - call me at 202-725-1422 to get started. Or, learn how to do SEO online with Invenio!

Until we meet again, keep it safely between the ditches, OK?

All the very best to you,

Nancy McDonald

Image courtesy of www.flickr.com