Seeking an SEO Guarantee Is a Terrible Marketing Decision
When looking for the best SEO agency, you may notice a lot of companies advertising some sort of an “SEO guarantee.” The guarantee can take on different forms. The company might promise a percentage of traffic growth or even guaranteed search engine rankings—often within a specified timeframe.
But however they lay it out, this kind of promise is a massive red flag. Reputable, top-tier marketing agencies never make SEO guarantees for several important reasons.
1. SEO Guarantees Go Against Google’s Rules
Google warns webmasters to steer clear of any SEO agency that guarantees search engine rankings.
As noted by Google Developers, “Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a ‘special relationship’ with Google, or advertise a ‘priority submit’ to Google.” Google Search Central also notes that “Your prospective SEO should be able to give you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved. If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.”
Google wants webmasters and business owners to understand that no SEO professional has a Google VIP card, and none has access to secret insights. They all have to play by the same rules and weather the same ever-shifting search engine algorithms. Based on that alone, it’s impossible for an SEO to guarantee a specific result in good faith.
2. SEO Guarantees Are Typically Marketing Ploys
Disreputable agencies will sometimes guarantee rankings (even #1 rankings) to entice frustrated online business owners who can’t seem to crack the Google top 10. When the guarantee isn’t met, the agency may promise discounted service, a month of free service, or additional services for a specified amount of time.
But the cost of those added services is usually baked into the initial cost of your SEO campaign anyway, so the “guarantee” is largely a marketing ploy to get you to sign on the dotted line. This usually happens when the agency knows that it can’t compete with more reputable firms and needs a more persuasive angle to attract clients.
One common scenario looks like this: “If we can’t rank you in 3 months, your next month is free.” Be skeptical of claims like this. Your free month will come with plenty of lip service (“Here’s what we’re doing for your website…”) but very little if any actual work on your account. At this point, the company knows they’re probably going to lose you anyway, but they already have your initial investment. So as far as they’re concerned, their work is complete.
3. SEO Companies Have No Control (or Insider Knowledge) of Google’s Algorithms
SEOs cannot control Google rankings; they can only influence them. Google uses over 200 ranking factors to determine where your website appears for various search queries, and the weight of each ranking factor is constantly changing.
In 2020 alone, Google released 11 algorithm updates, including 3 core updates that significantly impacted rankings for billions of websites. These updates can affect different industries (for instance, the May 2020 core update had the biggest impact on real estate, travel, and health websites) and different ranking factors (some crack down more heavily on thin content, others on suspicious linking patterns, others on technical search metrics).
Google never reveals what an algorithm update will entail or what it’s designed to address, so it’s not something that an SEO can plan for. They simply have to be diligent about following search engine best practices within the boundaries of Google's Terms of Service.
And even if your SEO is doing everything correctly according to the current standards, that’s no guarantee that you’re going to maintain your current momentum.
In 2013, for example, Google shook up the SEO world with their release of the Hummingbird algorithm update. It came entirely without warning (Google didn’t even officially announce it until a month after its release), and it affected 90% of all Google searches. The main purpose was to improve semantic search, or to reassess the value of each keyword phrase based on precise user intent rather than the words alone.
This was becoming increasingly important as voice search became more prominent, but most website owners were completely unprepared for it. Millions saw their keyword rankings plummet, not because they were doing anything wrong (up to that point), but because their content simply didn’t fall in line with the new standard.
This is another reason why SEO guarantees are so ethically problematic. Nobody can predict what the search engines will do tomorrow, and anyone who suggests otherwise is taking you for a ride.
4. Black-Hat Companies Make SEO Guarantees
We’ve already established the ethical issues surrounding SEO guarantees, so it makes sense that black-hat SEO companies (those who apply search engine optimization ‘hacks’ and ‘workarounds’) love to make these types of performance promises.
Black-hat SEO includes any optimization strategies or tactics that fall outside of Google’s Terms of Service. It may include such practices as:
Purchasing large numbers of low-quality inbound links for your website
The use of link wheels, link farms, or other linking schemes
Creating low-quality, keyword-stuffed content to manipulate Google’s crawlers
Using negative SEO to try and sabotage your competitors’ rankings
Cloaking, or the practice of presenting different content to human users and Google crawlers
The thing about black-hat SEO is that sometimes it can deliver results in the short term. That’s one of the reasons why disreputable SEO companies like to make guarantees. Quite often, the client will see impressive gains in the beginning, allowing the agency to fulfill their end of the bargain.
But what they don’t tell you is that black-hat SEO is devastating in the long run. Those initial gains are wiped away as soon as Google catches on to what’s happening—and they always catch on.
Most often, your site ends up in a far worse spot than where it began. Your rankings may disappear entirely, and you may face manual action penalties and even removal from Google’s index.
5. A Guarantee Does Not Mean Results
When an SEO company makes a guarantee, they typically keep the language vague:
Guaranteed Rankings in 3 Months
Strong Ranking Improvements or Your Money Back
Our Results Are Guaranteed
Guaranteed rankings in what spot for what term? Strong improvements from 70th to 60th position? Results to do what exactly?
When it comes to SEO guarantees, you really have to read the fine print. A dishonest SEO company will set the bar just low enough so that they have a reasonable chance of meeting their obligation on paper, but without actually delivering meaningful results for your business. Here are a couple of examples:
The SEO agency targets a series of long-tail, obscure keywords with little competition. As a result, they’re able to rank each search term in just a couple of months. Unfortunately, the keywords are only loosely relevant to your business and have very low search volumes, so they result in no boost in traffic to your website. But hey, you technically rank #1, right?
The SEO firm promises to double your organic search traffic in 30 days. But your website only generates 200 visits to begin with. This is an easy win for the agency, because if they can’t bring qualified customers to your site, they can still process an extra 200 visits with almost zero effort. Once again, this is useless for you in terms of actual ROI. It’s just numbers on a page.
A sketchy SEO company will fixate on meaningless numbers devoid of important context. But a reputable SEO firm will help you meet your specific business goals, and that means qualified traffic from the visitors most likely to convert. If you run an online store, they’ll look past the raw numbers and focus on all of the most important ecommerce marketing metrics to help you become a power player in your industry.
What Do Best SEO Companies Guarantee?
The most reputable SEO companies don’t make specific performance guarantees, which is reason in itself to be skeptical of any agency that promises you the moon.
But if the best agencies are as good as their reputation suggests, why are they so hesitant to put their money where their mouth is and promise results? There are numerous reasons:
A reputable SEO agency will acknowledge that it can only work towards influencing Google’s search results using their tested & proven methodologies. However, what works today may not work as well in the future, especially considering Google’s algorithm changes.
It’s impossible to make guarantees within specific time frames. Legitimate SEO vendors know that results in organic search take time, and they are upfront about this fact. It can often take more than 6 months for results to become evident, especially if your business or brand is part of a hyper-competitive niche.
Professional digital marketing agencies takes a big-picture approach. Rather than just focusing on specific keyword rankings, they will employ numerous strategies to increase your overall visibility in your niche, build trust in your brand, and transform your website into an asset that naturally attracts and converts visitors—which creates true business & revenue growth.
A reputable search agency understands that it’s not enough to generate traffic. In order to succeed, you need to generate the right kind of traffic, and that takes time. Ten qualified visitors are more valuable than 100 unqualified visitors.
A reputable agency won’t use black-hat shortcuts to deliver quick results at the expense of long-term growth and success.
A reputable agency doesn’t need to lure in clients with exaggerated or misleading promises. The quality of their work speaks for itself, and they have the SEO case studies to prove it.
A reputable agency is committed to building lasting relationships with clients, constantly setting new goals and benchmarks, making continual and cumulative gains, and course-correcting as new competitors and algorithm shifts come along.
SEO is an ongoing and ever-changing process. It takes time, and it can be messy, but if you’re diligent about it, it can be one of the most valuable investments you make for your business. So next time someone offers you guaranteed SEO services, remember that old adage: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
