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Last week, Mark Cofano had a meeting with a prospective client that owns a limousine company.
After spending loads of money with an unidentified website designer, the owner (we'll call him
"Mr. Limo") was upset. His website listing was found on page six (6) of Google™ for a search of "********** County Limousine".
Mr. Limo said "I want to be on the first page of Google."
It didn't take Mark long to figure out the problem. First, every limo company in town was competing for
that same search phrase. Some of the sites were very well designed. Second, Mr. Limo's site was built incorrectly to achieve high
ranking for that search term. Mark knew he could help, and after assessing the scope of work, Mark offered to take the
project on and quoted Mr. Limo a price to "improve ranking." Mr. Limo thought for a minute and said "OK, but only if you
guarantee me first page placement on Google." Mark Cofano paused for a nanosecond and said "absolutely not."
You could have heard a pin drop. Mr. Limo says "EVERYBODY I talk to
(read web designers / search engine experts) says they can put me on the first page of Google. Why won't you guarantee
your work?" "Mr. Limo", Mark said, "it's like football. You're the owner of a football team in the cellar for your league.
You want to hire a new coach and you want to win the Super Bowl. I can get you out of the cellar (fix the website design
and do some SEO), but the other teams are still competing hard to win. No coach can honestly guarantee that you'll win the Super Bowl."
Mr. Limo asked "are you saying the other website guys are being dishonest?" Mark replied, "You be the judge. There's only ten
organic search results on the first page of Google and you want one of them. It's a good bet that many if not all of your competitors
are using the services of a third party web designer. If only 11 of of the more than 50 firms in your area are guaranteed first page
placement for the search phrase you asked about, at least one of those guarantees is bogus." After thinking about it, Mr. Limo
finally understood that unconditional placement guarantees by search engine "experts" are misleading at best, and possibly fraudulent.
We can already feel the heat coming from the search engine community. Please stand down ladies and gentlemen...we are not trying to
be disrepectful. Note that we are referring only to "unconditional first page guarantees." We know you ethical SEO firms always qualify
your guarantees, right? We believe that IF THERE IS NO CONDITION TO A SEARCH ENGINE RANK GUARANTEE, IT IS MISLEADING AT BEST.
Here are just a few important qualifiers...What search phrase are we talking about? How long will your site be on the first page of Google...a day,
a week, forever? Are we talking paid search? If so, do you have an unlimited budget? Are we talking Google Maps? Are we talking Organic
Search? Are we about talking searches done by people living within 25 miles of where your business is located or are we talking anywhere on
the planet? Are we talking about searches done on a computer or from a mobile phone? The list of possible conditions that qualify
the "First Page on [Search Engine Name] Guarantee" is endless.
What's even more amazing is that in Mr. Limo's case, ONLY TWO of the organic searches for limousines were visible to us using the search phrase
in question (1280 x 800 resolution). By the time we had to wade through the paid search (ads) and Google Maps listings, eight of the
listings commonly thought of as free (organic) were below the fold (off the bottom of the screen). To see the OTHER EIGHT organic search
results, the user had to SCROLL down. Sometimes you can't see any of the organic search results above the fold. In our humble opinion,
Google's really devalued their service when the first organic (non-paid) result cannot be seen without scrolling down. This brings Google's
original value proposition into question.
So what's our point? If you want to be mislead, there's plenty of "web experts" ready to take your money. On the other hand, if you
really want success on the Internet, you're going to have to spend the time to understand your options and be clear about what the
guarantees for placement really mean. Ask for a WRITTEN guarantee and remember that even organic results aren't really free. You had to spend time and money to have a website...right? ;-)
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