Or something for nothing.......
It is realistic to expect some kind of guarantee from a service.
When dealing with search engines however, it is not realistic to expect a guarantee of placement in the SERPs (search engine ranking positions). Especially when an SEO firm offers such dramatic results on the cheap.
Common sense dictates that you and everyone else wants a top position. The company that is offering a guaranteed result for $100 does not have magic Google dust to spread over your website. There is no red phone sending your proxy love over to Sergey and crew.
The promise of guaranteed position can only be legitimately offered via one avenue. Pay Per Click.
The trick goes like this: Offer Guaranteed position for a low fee.
Say for instance you have a real estate related website. You want it to position in at number one. Along comes Dr. Feel Good SEO company offering you painless top position (The Traffic part is implied). Read the fine print.
-----You will get that top position as long as your budget is paying for it.-----
Now, I guess as long as this scenario is disclosed everyone will be happy.
However, once your dollar runs out, your position runs out. Unfortunately, I have read pitches that promise to get you position in the search engines. Not even disclosing whether that it is a Pay Per Click (PPC) management offering.
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Side note:
Spider Juice Technologies metaphorical definition of PPC and Natural Search results
PPC- Like a sprinter your campaign takes off full speed only to exaust itself out after about 100 yards (your budget is exausted)
Natural Search Engine results- Like a freight train it takes awhile to get going. But once it gets going, it is hard to stop.
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A firm up in Redmond used the guarantee pitch and have been ordered by the court to refund monies and pay heavy fines on a lack of performance on their guarantee.
There is much scheming by companies wanting to grab a fast buck. They always tug at that place right next to your heart called greed.
A for sure way to avoid being taken is to realize that something so good, that is so competitive is not cheap. That will whittle out most of the scammers for sure.
Do you know if Google has a mechanism in place to prevent fraudulent clicks? I'm curious to how this works because I would hate to run out of allowance because a competitor decides to run a click-spider on my ad campaign.
Posted by: Jeff | August 17, 2004 at 09:56 PM
Yes they do their very best to stop this. However, the point of my article is that if there is a will there is a way.
The bad guys will always try. It does not mean it doesn't work. Just be careful and pay attention to your clicks.
I know a guy whose budget blew out in a few hours. Come-on you know soemthing is fishy in this situation.
If you do think something is fishy let Google or your PPC engine know and they usually are very interested in fixing the problem.
Posted by: Tim O'Keefe | August 17, 2004 at 10:24 PM