Why Real SEO’s cannot Guarantee Results

There is something that needs to be addressed, in most cases you will find posts on this blog of the educational type, and at its heart this topic is also meant to teach. This post deals with the very real obstacle people who sell search engine optimization must deal with, and as potential customers what you will need to understand as well.

To guarantee or not to guarantee results?

The reality is many search engine optimization companies are faced with the decision of whether or not to provide a guarantee on their services. Innately, clients feel more comfortable when they are offered a guarantee and you’ll close more business that way; however, the reality is—you can’t really guarantee anything and here’s why:

1.    We cannot know what your competition is doing
2.    We cannot know what search engines will do
3.    We cannot predict search volume accurately (long term)
4.    We cannot predict market demand (long term)
5.    We cannot  know exactly what timeline your site will be on

Expanding On These 5 Points

At the end of the day, it’s just too difficult to know exactly what is going to happen. We can make our best guess, but that’s all it really is—money back guarantee is just a calculated risk based on several assumptions.

When we say you cannot know what your competition is doing, that is true for the most part. You can look at certain aspects, monitor their site, and get a pretty good idea what their overall strategy is. The safest decision we usually make from looking at competition is simply whether or not it looks like they’re doing anything online at all.  Usually it’s pretty clear who is and who isn’t.  Though most businesses at least have a website—often times that’s about it.

The second, and most obvious, point is that we can’t know what the search engines will do. As internet marketers we are charged with the task of understanding as much as we can about certain search engines—and what they like and dislike. That said, we do not control the search algorithm and it’s impossible to predict. The best we can do is follow best practices and react when things change.

The last three points are all more about our inability to definitively see what the future will hold. We can use previous numbers, industry traffic trends, and make professional assumptions. To get a better idea, here’s an example: Let’s say you had a website about Swine flu. You’ve hypothetically owned it since 2001, had lots of information on it, had a great url, and some decent links. Now fast forward to spring of 2009, swine flu hysteria strikes and your website is getting a million hits a week. The influx of traffic wasn’t dictated by SEO; it wasn’t about anything other than being in the right place at the right time. While this is an extreme example, it still illustrates that we truly cannot know. We can only make our best estimate. An extreme case will always be pretty accurate, but we find that managing our client’s expectations is much easier than making bold predictions and hoping we are right.

Bottom Line

There are simply too many variables when it comes to predicating a sites traffic increase, and in reality, it’s not about increasing traffic in most cases—it’s about increasing the actions you want. If you were trying to generate leads, what good would 10X the traffic be if it didn’t get you 10X the leads or sales?  It is very easy to get caught up in terms like page rank, overall visitors, and time on site—when the real number you want to look at is ROI.  That’s what we focus on!