Can Internet Marketing Agencies Guarantee First Place Rankings on Google?
Over the years, marketing tactics have been used to draw in buyers looking for help with ranking on Google and other search engines. However, being the buyers are unfamiliar with how SEO truly works, they are mislead by the statement of “we guarantee first place rankings”.
If a company makes this statement, please procceed with caution. You do not have to avoid the company making the statement, just understand the claim fully.
It is becoming common for marketing agencies and digital marketing companies to avoid the phrase, but some still do it. Using such guarantees are now frowned upon within the industry.
Here are a few things to look out for:
- “We have the latest technology to guarantee link popularity and website ranking”
- “We guarantee to keep you on 1st-page results each month, or you don’t pay for that month.”
The marketing and SEO firms that still have these types of guarantees are guaranteeing ranking results on keywords they choose themselves. They can select non-competitive terms and get high rankings.
For example,
- You want, “best hiking gear”,
- They choose, “best mountain hiking gear for the Appalachian trail scenic trail”
Performing SEO tactics to rank for the second example is MUCH easier than the first. It’s much easier to guarantee first place ranking with this tactic.
So why are ranking guarantees so frowned upon?
Rankings are very unstable. If you were to do a search on “whats the best hiking gear”, the results you get are likely to be in a different order, or completely different, if you drove a few hours away from your original location and did the same exact search. There are some instances where something as simple as refreshing your page can cause different results to show up as well. This alone is enough to understand how unstable rankings are. So, how can you guarantee first place?
What SEO companies could guarantee is that they can provide the best advice possible to help your website gain more traffic. Guaranteeing their customer will be satisfied with results is also not a bad idea if they are confident enough. But guaranteeing something specific that is out of your control, like first place Google rankings is just asking for trouble.
If you want to learn more about SEO and how it work, read our other article on What is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
Looking for an SEO service? We recommend checking the THE HOTH and their various SEO products.
