When SEO Firms Make Guarantees: What You Should Know

When you run a digital marketing agency, the #1 query you get is: if I contract with you for search engine optimization, can you guarantee a first place ranking on Google?

What this tells us is that there are SEO providers out there who make such promises. As a result, there are clients who may achieve a top ranking – but not much else to show for their investment in SEO. The words “guaranteed rankings and traffic” have tainted the reputation of the industry. One of the most common tactics is for the SEO provider to select your keywords for you. They will select non-competitive keywords which your potential customers are unlikely to use. This makes it easy for them to deliver a high search ranking based on those keywords, but this does not deliver quality traffic.

Companies who spend a lot of money raising their ranking from #2 to #1 may lose sight of conversion or dismiss pay-per-click campaigns that could help their bottom line. It’s possible to reach #1 and achieve little or no impact. It depends.

Search Engines Warn Against Guarantees

Google provides a very instructive set of guidelines on search marketing that every SEO client should read. They make one very clear statement: No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Although this section specifically warns about providers who claim to have special relationships with Google (such as access to knowledge of the ‘secret sauce’ behind Google’s search algorithms), the warning comes straight from the company who would know better than anyone that SEO guarantees are not feasible. For one thing, this would destroy the integrity of Google’s organic search model, which is the entire basis of their business success.

Rankings are Dynamic and Unstable

A reputable provider knows that search results for the same search term can vary from hour to hour, and from location to location. It depends on which search engine server is fulfilling your query at any point in time; whether you log in to your personalized Google account or some other account; or which city you’re in when you type the query. These factors change the order of results, so making guarantees based on uncontrollable circumstances does not make sense.

Rankings are the Wrong Metric for Business ROI

This is the most important thing to remember. The reason companies want high search rankings is to increase business. Rankings are a means to an end, not the end. Rankings alone do not increase traffic or convert traffic into business.

The most basic metric of SEO success is quality traffic. If an SEO campaign shows a marked increase in search engine traffic, that’s one part of the success. The other part is whether visitors stay on the site and spend time on product and services information, play with demos or watch videos. This means SEO has brought the right audience to the site.

Traffic is good, but converting traffic into visitors who take action is the ultimate success metric. Conversion could mean buying a product, or for non-eCommerce sites, it could mean signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a white paper. When visitors land on a company’s website, how easy is it to find information? Is the content clear and informative? Is the website easy to navigate? Does it provide calls to action in visible, logical places? Does the company know which phone calls or emails to the sales department come through search and which ones through traditional marketing?

SEO can drive traffic but not conversion once the visitor lands.

This is where Analytics come into play. An SEO provider will always install analytics to determine where the traffic is coming from, which were the most popular search terms and so on. Analytics can also monitor user behavior on a website: which pages were most popular, how long did visitors spend on each page, when they abandoned the site and on which page. This helps determine how a website could be improved for better conversion. A website optimized for conversion is also part of the business equation. A high search ranking definitely helps, but by itself will not convert business for you.

So What’s a Reasonable Promise?

A good digital marketing provider will focus on increasing a client’s business. This means taking a consultative approach that is broader than merely SEO. Typically this means an audit of the client’s existing online presence that includes search, website effectiveness, social media, and even offline mediums that drive visitors to the website. This will generate recommendations which may include content strategy, website optimization, or a social media strategy. This takes a lot more work than just promising to submit a client’s website to all the search engines.

A client may not have the budget to implement all the recommendations, but the provider will be able to advise which components are the most critical.

The other factor is time. There will always be components that only the client can implement. This includes tasks such as freshening content and images, developing marketing content specific to the business, regular blog posts, and setting up offline mechanisms for tracking (different phone numbers for web queries and print ad queries is a good example). Fresh content helps boost search engine rankings; this is why regular blog posts are important. Social media also requires real commitment from the client. But a client may not have the staff or time to do this, so again, a good provider will explain how the various components impact the success of the plan and help the client prioritize.

Given factors such as: competing SEO campaigns, changing search algorithms, client resources and/or ability to implement, the only guarantee a digital marketing agency can give a client is: to provide the best advice possible for using the Internet to increase traffic and improve business.

Google Plus, Panda and Social Integration

If you’ve used google to search something this week then chances are you’ve noticed some minor cosmetic differences they have implemented, such as the black toolbar at the top and the options on the left of your search results.  As an average user this might be all that you have seen and not taken much notice, but the reality is that this is just the tip of the iceberg of an entire suite of new products and changes that Google is rolling out this summer. Changes that will affect what you use Google for, how your search results are delivered to you, what makes certain websites rank higher than others, and your overall activity on the web.

Google Becoming Social

Google Plus is an entire suite of social products that in a way integrate the functionality and features of Facebook, Twitter, Skype and then some. All under one roof with one account. Here is a short video overview of the platform:

The three main elements of google plus are circles, sparks and hangouts. These three features are the social elements that are going to rival companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype as the platform picks up momentum. And considering that Google is the largest internet company in the world traffic and exposure shouldn’t be a problem. The coolest element of Google plus has to be hangouts. Imagine if Facebook chat was done via video and you could talk to 10 people at once. Google hangouts:

Will Google Plus Succeed?

This isn’t the first time Google has made attempts to break into the social space. Google Wave and Google Buzz were million dollar projects that were launched before with similar intentions that have made practically zero impact on how we use Google. The Google +1 button has been around for months now but it is still not clear what purpose it actually serves. It is essentially Googles version of the Facebook Like button but unlike the latter it doesn’t share anything or have any residual value, it is just a button that you click that seems to have no impact on your immediate experience. Only time will tell, but the amount of commitment and back end changes involved with Google’s venture into the social element of the web it is a good guess to say that the large social media companies now have another heavyweight competitor to share it’s user base with.

Down the Rabbit Hole…

As an ordinary user the new layout or the new social products  don’t really impact your life in any way other than giving you the ability to do even more cool stuff on the internet that you weren’t able to do before. But as a business owner or somebody who utilizes the internet to some degree to generate revenue or leads this leap into the social space brings with it a heap of new problems and opportunities.

Google has been focusing on location based search over the last few years and has succeeded in delivering relevant results to users based on their geographic locations. By doing this it has also succeeded in practically putting all phone book companies out of business. It has diminished local newspaper advertising revenues and taken on an entirely new type of media. The leap into the social space has brought with it the time and relationship factors. Bing has tied in Facebook search a while ago where if you are logged into Facebook any searches you type into Bing will return Facebook related results specific to your social network. Google has been giving you Twitter results for certain topics for a while now as well.

The sidebar on the left of your search results now lets you choose a date range for your search results. So if you are looking for the latest sports scores you can search your teams name and filter by 24 hours thus getting the latest updates on the topic.

If you use Google analytics you can now set it up to track your social media efforts as well as your website interactions:

The implementation of social elements into analytics tracking and webmaster tools is much more than a set of new features, along with Google+ and other new social products it’s a clear statement of the direction in which the company is headed. It is also an outrageously blunt hint as to what factors are being looked at by the new search algorithms updates when ranking certain sites above others in search results.

Google Algorithm Update “Panda” 2.2

If you have noticed that your search engine rankings are all over the map these last few weeks, going up and down twice daily or if your website has disappeared from Google’s results completely then you are experiencing the full wrath of Google’s Panda 2.2 algorithm update.

Google is about relevance and user experience. The main objective is to give the user the most relevant high quality result for their search query. SEO or search engine optimization is nothing more than at attempt at telling Google that your site is more relevant than the other sites about your specific subject. Link building and and keyword placement on the site have been proven factors in ranking your site higher in organic search results since the very beginning. However, people have learned through trial and error what elements the Google algorithm looks at when deciding which sites rank highest and have begun to take advantage of their knowledge by concentrating primarily on black hat techniques that work exceptionally well in raising their rankings. However once this became the focus the content quality has began to decline. People would rank mediocre or poor content sites at the top for high search volume key words in order to make an extra buck. This in turn makes Google look bad as the quality of the results it delivers to it’s users suffers as well. The answer – Google Panda.

SEO Practices are Changing…

Google panda focuses on filtering out those sites that have thousands of poor quality spam links and those with duplicate or poor quality content out of it’s search results. Unfortunately it isn’t possible for Google to make an algorithm that will de-list all the websites that use these bad practices because that would give spammers a weapon against good quality sites that they could sabotage via the same methods. So what’s the answer? Avoid the whole situation all together, rather than punishing sites with poor practices they will reward sites that have good practices. And with all of the new social media features and directions that Google is taking you can bet that your social media efforts are now of direct relevance to your keyword rankings on Google.  As noble as the attempt and idea is, it has millions of website owners around the world pissed off as they watch their rankings disappear completely for 2 hours and come back better than ever 2 hours later only to drop again to the bottom of the pile the next day. If you have a web store or a business that relies on the internet to generate leads or income you will definitely feel uneasy while these changes are happening. The ripple effect from the panda update and the social media direction can be felt most by those websites who have relied on link building more than content and social media before. This is likely to go on for the next few weeks as the dust begins to settle and your rankings begin to solidify again.

So what will work now? The same concepts apply: quality content, quality link building, quality website, etc. Everything works just as it did before but with more emphasis on one thing: quality. However there is now a social layer added to the equation. If you are up against a website with a bigger social media presence and activity in your industry, you can bet that they will be ahead of you in the search results as well.

How To Search Google Without Personalized Search Results

Google is now personalizing search results based upon your previous search history and your location (based on your IP address). Google has made it clear that personalizing search results is a significant part of its future search strategy so this is a trend that will continue. The result from personalized search is generally better and more accurate search results for most Google users.

However, if you want to search Google more objectively to see how your own website is ranking, for example, then Google’s personalized search can be very frustrating. Your website may be coming up first for important keywords when you are searching, but you’re not getting any traffic from these keywords because for everyone else you’re nowhere to be found on the first search results page. Fortunately, Google has made it easy to opt-out of the personalized search. [Read more]

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