Property ManagementSearch Engine Myth #8: "Guaranteed Top 10 Results or Your Money Back!"
If you have a web site, I"ll bet that one of the most common spam (unsolicited) e-mails that you receive is for "guaranteed search engine results". Many, many agents have forwarded me e-mails they"ve received like this over the last few years. Recently it seems like there has been an increase.
First, please don"t respond to unsolicited e-mails from people or companies you don"t already know. It just encourages more of this stuff. Second, realize that if the company is willing to stoop to using spam to get business, how credible could they be? Third, there"s a reason that every single one of these e-mails touts a "guarantee": Coming to you as spam, they have no credibility to begin with. The "guarantee" is supposed to give you enough confidence to send them money.
Here are a couple of examples:
"INCREASE THE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE BY 10 TO 20 TIMES. Until recently, only larger companies were able to afford the luxury of having their sites positioned. WE GUARANTEE, in writing, your site will be in the top 10 or top 20 or your MONEY BACK"
"Amazing Search Engine Secrets Discovered By A Computer Illiterate Man Can Practically Hand You the Top Search Engine Positions...And Add 1,550 Hits a Day to Web Site Overnight! You Also Get a 90 Day No-Risk 100% Money-Back Guarantee!"
There is an ongoing debate now amongst search engine optimization companies: "Should we offer guarantees? Can we?" I"ve said it before and I"ll say it again: Guarantees for search engine results have no credibility. Why?
Consider this one real-world example of Google, an up-and-coming search engine now partnering with Yahoo. Recently, in one of these reports that I am always getting about search engine stuff, Google stated that they were "experimenting" with different "search algorithms". The results? Where your web site appeared in their system changed radically from one day to the next, or even one moment to the next.
This is what ALL search engines do -- daily, weekly, monthly, or who-knows-how-often. Search results can and do change in any moment, in any search engine. If you"ve got a web site, and have searched for it in different search engines over time, you know just what I mean, right?
So I ask you, how can anyone give a guarantee with any real credibility? Do you think that the kind folks over at Google, or any other search engine, have some agreement with the people who just spammed you with that "guaranteed search engine results" e-mail? Or any search engine optimization company, spammer or not, for that matter? No way. No one does. My company sends big checks to search engines every month to pay to advertise on their systems, but there still isn"t one search engine that allows us any direct influence on their results. Believe me, we"ve tried.
Search engines don"t want anyone to have control over their system. It blows their "editorial credibility". Because search engines jealously guard their credibility, refusing to let outside sources have any real influence or control over search results, the guarantees of search engine optimizers must, in turn, have zero credibility.
So, how do you choose an optimizer for your site? Ignore unsolicited e-mails. Gloss over any "guarantees". A reputable optimizer will prove the value of their service by references from satisfied clients. ASK FOR REFERENCES. This is the only way you can determine if the company is reputable and knows what they are doing.
While a guarantee is nice because it makes you feel like you can get your money back, the truth is that most guarantees are worded in such a way that you could never get your money back. Let"s look at one classic example: "Guaranteed Top 10 Results or Your Money Back".
We won"t even get into whether their guarantee is for the important search engines, or if it covers only key words that are of value to you. (They usually gloss over lots of details like this.) Let"s just assume that one day you go to Google, you do a search for some variation of your key words, and there you are, in the top 10, just like they said. Hurray! The next day, though, you are gone. As you are the next week, and rest of the month. Want your money back? Sorry. You did get a top 10 result, didn"t you?
See what I mean?
Companies that trumpet guarantees generally don"t want to point to their track record. Like I said, ask for references.
Credible or not, these companies seem to be multiplying like rabbits. Yahoo lists over 150 such companies, but I bet that"s the tip of the iceberg. Just pop up a web site, invent a "killer guarantee", and bingo! you"ve got an instant search optimization company. Throw in a little spam, and you"re done.
How much do these optimization companies charge? I have access to an independent survey of these firms, and my company has checked out dozens on our own. Fees are all over the place, but in general you can"t even get started with less than $1000, because it is very technical and labor-intensive work. Set up fees start at $400 and go up to as much as $30,000 for large corporate projects. If a company has low set up fees, their monthly fees are inevitably high. Stated monthly fees generally range from under $100 to as much as $1200 or more. Don"t want monthly fees? Some optimizers charge from $0.30 to as much as $1.50 per visitor instead. Some firms charge as much as $300 per key word phrase, per search engine, per month. If you want to pay by the hour, it can range from $50 to as much as $500 per hour.
These services are not cheap. I"d want references, not "guarantees" that have little or no value. Reputable companies understand this. Many optimizers now actually require their clients to sign forms, which effectively state: "There are no guarantees."