Can an SEO specialist ever 'guarantee' page 1 rank on Google?

I agree Dan, rankings are based on relevancy, and with the right recourses you can become more relevant.

This should be scaled depending on the size of your company. Small companies should look for higher rankings for lesser used keywords and concentrate on social networks, ppc,etc. and get serious about link building

Once your company grows in size and your website in authority, you can then think about ranking higher for more competitive terms.

Remember, being first does not always mean you win.

No SEO consultant can guarantee first page results. If they do, run and run quickly. They are most likely black hat SEOs and dangerous.

I believe page one ranking is possible and plausible, but is takes a commitment from both the SEO consultant and the business itself. If a client takes a vested interest in the process and can provide quality content, I can and will get the client on page one. But I cannot guarantee that because I need you - the client - to participate. You have to have something of value for me to market.

My best SEO engagements have been a team effort between me and the client. We collectively form a plan, work towards a common goal, and execute. The client needs my expertise and I need the client to participate in the process.

And quite frankly, any company who hires an SEO should know exactly what the SEO is doing. It is the only way to stay in control of the process and avoid any penalties that could result for black hat practices.

In addition to what others have said about ranking guarantees being meaningless, I would add that "rankings" in general are not the metric you should judge. Rank can change daily, and be different for different people searching at the same time based on those users web history and other personal factors.

Rather than measuring rank, you should measure the traffic and leads coming from SEO. At the end of the day, that is what you should care about, not the rankings.

Also, you might want to try a free evaluation at www.WebsiteGrader.com before working with a consultant. You might be able to to many of the basics of SEO yourself before hiring an "expert".

The #1 result you are likely to experience with someone who offers a "Google Page 1 Guarantee" is a hefty bill. Sometimes firms that offer such results employ methods that will actually damage your site ranking.

A typical technique is to employ "link farms", which might consist of hundreds of meaningless websites that add links to your site. Google knows about most of these farms, and in the best case will discount inbound links from these sites. There's a rumor Google may penalize you for having joined a link farm scheme.

Another technique is "click farms" where armies of low paid workers mindlessly click on your site to drive up traffic. They even sign up for newsletters and fill in contact forms. Wow, you say- traffic has gone through the roof! But, it's all artificial.

SEO takes time to implement, and getting results does not happen overnight. PPC will bring you immediate results, but you need a budget and a well thought out campaign, or else you are throwing your money away.

No one can guarantee #1 result in Google search results for *any* term a client wants.

A good (or great) SEO company *can* guarantee an improvement in rankings *if* the client has the means and resources to implement necessary architecture changes, content initiatives and offsite promotions (linking).

That still wouldn't necessarily meet a client's goals (traffic, conversions, revenue), which leads me to the question I always ask new members of my SEO team...

Q: "Would you want to rank for a query that no one is searching for?"

A: "Only if the client asks me to"

SEO is an art and science. As long as we SEO practitioners or at the mercy of search engines *nothing* is guaranteed.

Cheers

Suppose an SEO company that guarantees page 1 ranking on Google gains 11 companies of the same type, selling the same goods or services? How would all 11 end up on the first page of results?

@Rob- Great answer. Nobody should try and "guarantee" anything they are not in control of. A carpenter can "guarantee" his or her work, because they are fully in control of it. But SEO hucksters are not in a position to guarantee anything because they are not in control of Google (or Bing or Yahoo! etc.)

I can "guarantee" you that if you give me $1,000,000 I'll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC, but my guarantee is as worthless as the guarantee claims made by SEO firms.

We (HyperGold) built our first website in 1995 - 6 months after the very first website in history was launched by Dale Dougherty. Until the so-called "SEO Specialists" came along, SEO was simply one of the responsibilities of a good web developer. It was our job to work with our clients to make certain that their websites were designed for ease of use, logically assembled, easy to navigate for both search engine crawlers and human beings, and - most important of all - that they delivered useful, relevant and continually fresh content that matched their particular market demographics.

Where and when did SEO get skimmed off that big picture set of responsibilities on the part of web developers, and into a money-making snake oil smoke and mirrors carnival show? Answer: When it became clear to snake oil salesmen that they could spam the inquiry forms of unsuspecting business website owners, introduce doubt that their web vendors could possibly hope to know the magic tricks the SEO "specialists" know, make outlandish promises and guarantees, take their money, and produce no lasting value.

Web designers and web developers must also share in the blame for this ongoing con game, though, because they are also complicit. Just add water, shake, and out plops a website or Facebook page that may have no chance in hell of producing any revenue for their clients, because they don't bother to learn anything at all about marketing or about business in general, or their clients' businesses in particular. They get paid, and then they're off to make another glob of pretty digital baubles that are often disconnected entirely from the laws of supply and demand.

Sorry for the rant, but I call it the way I see it.

Rob

Getting page one ranking is certain with the right investment of resources. Is page one ranking worth the investment for the company seeking it? That has to be determined in a financial planning session. In some cases it makes sense to set this as a goal and in others, it does not.

As Dan points out, Google ranking is only meaningful in the context of a keyword. Once you tell them which keywords you want to target, the SEO specialist can assess the rank that can be reached.

An SEO Expert or Firm can give many performance guarantees regarding reaching a page 1 ranking, or your money back for example. Though when a SEO Expert gives a guarantee that they will reach page 1 rankings for any targeted term in general, that is when I would be leery and want to check under the hood. As they are riding a fine line of ethical vs. unethical behavior.
SEO Consultants do not have control of the search engines, thus how could they guarantee something they have no control over. I would rather have a guarantee that no black hat or spammy techniques were being used to achieve top rankings that could end up getting my site banned or penalized by the search engines long after the SEO Expert has been paid and is gone...
In my opinion fine tuned keyword research to determine the value, strengths & goals, followed by high quality content that attracts visitors mixed with a strong link building campaign is the general recipe for success.

Nicole:

I believe, as others here do, that results (conversions) and sales are more important than Search Engine Results (which are different that mere Page Rank). However, if you believe what is being said of the new importance of being #1 on page 1, then that goal does become important.

But no one seems to address the second part of your query, which I will.

For small businesses I advise my clients to outfox the competition and search for what the competition is missing and where they are vulnerable. Look for keyword phrases people actually use in searches, not what you think they use. Build you page content around keywords and optimize your site. Show activity rather than being a static site. Then go out and build back links.

Does it take some market research as versus guesswork? - yes.
Is it time intensive? - yes.
Does it offer long term results with greater ROI? - yes.
Can you dominate results for targeted niche keywords? - most definitely!
Have I duplicated results for both B2B service, B2C retail and professional business sites? - yes!

Michael

Linda King, you are talking about paid advertising and this is one of my pet peeves when I look at so called SEO firms. Paid advertisings is not SEO, it's commonly called SEM and has nothing to do with helping a client perform well in the organic (the O in SEO) search results.

And please don't imply you have special insider Google knowledge. There are many "Google Certified Partner"s and The Google Guys don't do anything special for you. You're paying for adverts and that's how Google makes money. They will be nice to you, like anybody that gives them money.

It annoys me when I see guarantees when I find out its based on a few paid adverts. Once the client has paid, the adverts are stopped and they've got screwed. I hope you don't do that!

While I rant, offering a SEO guarantee is easy. It doesn't cost anything and may get you a client. You could sit there and do nothing and have a chance to fulfil the guarantee, or end up keeping the cash anyhow. It's hard to get cash back!

And to get back to the real thing.

As some have stated. It's not about position. It's about understanding what you want (sales?) and working out what gets you that. Un-directed chasing of Google ranking for individual keywords may not get you that.

It is not hard if your in a specialized area. But the key really with SEO it is time, keeping your entire website content's relevant to what you want the user to find you under. You really need a person devoted to your marketing mission of the website.

Because in order to reach the top tier status in a heavy saturated searched area you have to generate hundred and hundred of pages (if not thousands to guarantee success). with this keyword information you want highlighted mentioned on the pages.

Another good way is to become a blogger, columnist and specialist in this to area you want people to find you and your business under.

One last thing carefully planning and targeted re-purposing of information creating an array of back links on highly optimized websites helps to.

So to summarize:

- all about your content - meta info, images, header, text, video, page titles and naming(the actual html files), embedded tags with page objects, etc.
- specializing in a particular area and making that area when searched popular based on your saturation of content throughout the web.
- become an active user on the web to generate a reputation as an expert, blogger, etc. on popular highly optimized websites in the area(s) your targeting - which will in turn generate extra backlink information thus increasing the possibility of obtaining your SEO goal

--- that is my 2 cents

No one can guarantee #1 result in Google search results for *any* term a client wants.

A good (or great) SEO company *can* guarantee an improvement in rankings *if* the client has the means and resources to implement necessary architecture changes, content initiatives and offsite promotions (linking).

That still wouldn't necessarily meet a client's goals (traffic, conversions, revenue), which leads me to the question I always ask new members of my SEO team...

Q: "Would you want to rank for a query that no one is searching for?"

A: "Only if the client asks me to"

SEO is an art and science. As long as we SEO practitioners or at the mercy of search engines *nothing* is guaranteed.

Cheers

Yes they can guarantee a number one spot but it might not be for the word(s) that you wanted. So always be weary of what they are really offering. Some companies can get you exactly what you want where others might just get you ranked for uncommon words and say they filled the contractual agreement on gaining a number one spot for your company.

I wouldn't go with a company that guarantees page 1 results. Search is all about relevancy, it depends how good your content is, how competitive your industry is, how good your link environment is, and many more elements. Most of companies that guarantee page 1 results within a short period time use a lot of low quality links or spmmy links which will harm your rankings in the long term.

Yes. SEO will help you to be on the top of Google's first page. But it must be ethical process. Many SEOs are using black hat techniques which gives you instant boost but slowly your website/business will be disappeared from search engines permanently.Hire SEO after a long discussion and also ask for previous work. You can subscribe Live2support's monthly news letter for other business promotion news.

http://live2support.com/newsletter/index.php

This is a timeless question and I believe the answer is NO -- as Matt Cutts ( Google's software engineer in Jan 2000/currently head of Google's Webspam team ) explained in his Google Webmaster Help Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6zGjcf6Snw

and no one can guarantee it either..

HI,

It depends that what market and audience you are targeting? There are some of informational key phrases and some of transitional key phrases. The transitional key phrase are highly competitive some time and the informative too but not much. So in my point of view if you want to get top rank in Google so you have to be more focus on your content and your Title of the website.

THX Becka
http://commuserv.com.au/

You might be able to get rank 1, but the REAL MUSCLE is to sustain it. Keywords are worthless without Content (The King) . As many of the contributors above stated it's definitely a two way process between the SEO Expert/Company and you. Apart from keywords other allied activities such as blogging, social media presence etc also would add up to your repo. So choose an SEO Expert/Company who would be adept in handling all the requirements. Said so , all this would also directly depend on your business plan both short and long term.

Jerry Jose

yes a good seo specialist can rank you in page 1 but it still depends on kws. The competitive the keywords the longer it takes time to see the results because as I they say that SEO is not a magic bullet. Cheers. You can get to page 1 not the rank 1 immediately since very competitive kws already obtained that position. To get to the top it takes time to build for it. For less competitive kws you can achieve higher rankings. :)

Absolutely not. The only people who know Google's algorithm are the people at Google. The rest of us know best practices. Sure you can rank #1 for your business name fairly easily but for highly competitive keywords, it takes a LOT of work. At the end of the day though, you have to ask "why do I want to rank #1 on Google?" - are you just trying to create brand awareness, drive more traffic to the website, have presence when someone is looking for your product/service. I would absolutely run away from any one who guarantees your first page or first place ranking on the search engines through organic placement. We have an amazing product that for every client I have on it has achieved first page placement, but even so I will still not guarantee anyone anything because at any time Google could make a change that results in a shift in their organic placement.

The answer is always YES to this question for any decent SEO firm - on the basis you were given uncapped budget, and a decent enough period of time (at least 1 year). But for some phrases and keywords, a decent SEO firm could probably get you onto Page 1 of Google within 24 hours especially if given free reign to use Black Hat SEO! Regards, Guy at www.digvertising.com

Money can buy anything, if you invest smart!

In general, it is hard to guarantee page1 rankings but it depends an 2 things:
1. How strong your website is
2. How strong competition is

If competition is weak like for some keywords nobody search for, then it will not be hard to guarantee that. But if you want to be ranked for some short medical term/disease for example you gonna fight against hundreds of .gov and authority sites.

But again, if you have a good strategy and big budget it is possible.

I would answer this question in 'YES'. If you are really an expert, you may easily guarantee on #1 page rankings. This guarantee would be based upon the in-depth analysis of website + keywords that are to be targeted + competition of that particular domain + level of marketing efforts of your competitors and few other matrices. Once you have all these details, you can easily predict what kind of SEO/marketing efforts you would require to outrank your competitors and from your previous experience, I am sure you would have the numbers that how much time/money these efforts require.

My point is quite simple, I believe SEO a combination of science and marketing. And science can not be factless or figureless. So if you have all the facts and figures, it is easy to predict a timeline to get a website ranked on #1 page.

yes it can be done with lot of hard work and knowledge.nothing is impossible in SEO

it depends on who you are up against

Yeah, We can guarantee,
But, the website has
1.User friendly
2. The keyword will optimized
3.The content is relevant to keywords and
4.Do appreciate off page steps.

http://www.drjspada.com/

It totally depends on the competition.. If you are trying to be on google for the keyword house or dating, then its really difficult.. because you will have to do a lot of seo for it.. but i have had some good success for strong keywords..and its not difficult.. all you need to do is stay focussed

Hello Nicole - A very interesting question here!
Many SEO experts will give a guarantee for services but many are trying to manage what Google's analytics have changed to. Now, some do this very well but others can not. Research takes time, keywords/keyword phrases need to be tested and changed periodically to manage the campaign.

Our particluar company is a Google Certified Partner so when we give a business owner a written guarantee, we let the Google guys do their magic! This partnership allows us this guarantee and it also lets us provide a campaign at a much lower price then many of the individual SEO professionals.

If you need to maximize your ROI for this type of service I would suggest you talk to a few SEO professionals, check our site out and make an informed decision!

Here's to your business!

Linda King
http://www.adzzoo.biz/lindaking