Should SEO's offer money back guarantees?

[catchingsmoke]

Now I've discussed this in a few business forums recently and I have been wondering what the GPWA thinks about this idea.

Of course it is always viable with low budget clients in non competetive areas, however in the gambling niche where so much can go wrong what does everybody think. I would be interested to find out what everybody thought about this from a neutral prospective.


*When I say guarantee I mean something in writing of course not just a verbal promise.

[ddm]

a good seoer doesn't need to offer guarantees imo.

[catchingsmoke]

a good seoer doesn't need to offer guarantees imo.

Surely that statement is in someway counter intuative, if an SEO is as good as he says he is surely he could offer a guarantee with no to little risk to himself.

The idea behind a money back guarantee in this industry is often just to demonstrate that you're not promising things you can't deliver and lets face it a lot of SEOs do that, not just make up for a lack of reputation.

[Simmo!]

Partial returns maybe, but bear in mind that some of what they do might require investment and link building resources. There is also another major problem with this concept:

SEO as a business is a difficult one to balance expectations on. I don't doubt some do it very well and get results but I expect there are a lot of clients who ended up feeling it wasn't worth the money shelled out. I think the money-back guarantees would put more pressure on SEO's to return results in a given time period which would lead to a lot of occasions where they would have to push the boundaries of what is acceptable - grey-hat or even black-hat methods would probably be seen by some SEO's as a way to ensure no penalties have to be paid for underachieving. So a Catch22 - this will cause more damage, possibly even irreparable damage, to the client.

Then of course, as a client, what do you do when/if you don't get the level of return you expected. If you pull out/end the deal or upset the SEO (ie: with penalty payments), is the SEO company you hired suddenly going to pull a load of backlinks down from the network? If teh deal ended, what incentive do they have to keep your links active now? And they are certainly not going to renew paid links they built obviously, so unless you stay betroathed to them, or have a contract that prevents this, you're going to start sliding, at least while Google still allows the gaming of it's algo with the links-as-votes policy anyway.

So to me, it seems the chances of getting success on a level of expectations are slim. I feel it's safer to spend time learning this stuff and thus only I am to blame if I fail...but at a considerable cost saving LOL.

Sorry to bang on, but I also have a final opinion on SEO: only a personal view only that will no doubt conflict with a lot of people's views. I see SEO as a (slowly) dying concept. A search engine wants - no, needs - the best results for it's users if it is to stay popular, but while webmasters can influence SERPS on anything except valuable content, search engines can be manipulated and while that can happen, they will never have the best sites ranking in the best positions.

So it's logical to assume that one day, when the search engines have worked out how to rank accurately on content relevancy and quality, SEO will essentially be just common sense. In fact, most of it already is. I think that was what the latest Google "infrastructure update" prior to the Mayday update was laying the foundations for personally: monitoring user behaviour to help assess content quality, but that's just a hunch.

Short term of course SEO is and remains essential but over the next few years SEO will become a very different beast more aligned to content management IMO.

Cheers,

Simmo!

[catchingsmoke]

interesting thoughts Simmo, but I believe that's just something that a good SEO will evolve to deal with, even if that means he takes more of a consultancy roll in the process of website management. As opposed to the old through a million backlinks at a site and it will rank method.

And of course the concept is more for the benefit of properly managing a clients expectations as opposed to anything else, at leasts that's what I'd like to see come from it.

[Simmo!]

...I believe that's just something that a good SEO will evolve to deal with, even if that means he takes more of a consultancy roll in the process of website management. As opposed to the old through a million backlinks at a site and it will rank method.

100% what I think catchingsmoke. It seems a natural progression if that's one's living. I'm not sure whether I like what I think will happen or not LOL. On the one hand, I enjoy learning and applying SEO principles, and the fact that everyone can influence rankings is a plus. On the other hand, all that time playing golf that I'm missing out on....

[catchingsmoke]

lol, you have time left over to golf? lucky for some :P

[Simmo!]

lol, you have time left over to golf? lucky for some :P

I can still email a backlink request from the 13th tee By the way sorry, I only just noticed your sig - hope you didn't consider what I said in my initial post as a personal jibe.

[catchingsmoke]

that sounds like it could be a caption for the little cartoon in the GPWA mag.

[TheGooner]

I think that a good gambling SEO person would make much more money SEOing his own affiliate site and reaping the rewards than charging others for SEO services ... that's what I think.


Discussing SEO in general - it's a tough business I think - after all only 10 sites can really be in the first page for a chosen term and as there are literally thousands of SEO firms plying their trade I think that expectations have to be realistic .. both by the client - and in the proposal sold by the SEO firm.

I agree that I think that it is reasonable that part of the fee for SEO services could/should be based on performance metrics, page rankings, increased visits, key words search results etc.

And that part of the fee would be based on actually completed work, on-site and off-site SEO, new links and such. Where there is some sunk cost and time spent by the SEO firm - that should be paid for.

The problem arrives of course when the customer does not get what was promised / expected. He/she finally realises that the "SEO firm" that was hired is in fact just a kid working out of his back bedroom - who is internet sharp and savvy but not really an "Expert" at all - and cannot deliver the results promised in the sales pitch.

[catchingsmoke]

I think that a good gambling SEO person would make much more money SEOing his own affiliate site and reaping the rewards than charging others for SEO services ... that's what I think.

Well I think it depends Im doing pretty well as an SEO provider, but thats just me.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I think that a good gambling SEO person would make much more money SEOing his own affiliate site and reaping the rewards than charging others for SEO services ... that's what I think.

That's been my understanding as well. Why would a "SEO" webmaster make money for others when he could make more him/her self? If so then they are probably not worth it.

I think that the new "SEO" is migrating towards quality content publication as opposed to other techniques.

Sine SEO as we know it today is a slow process, it's hard to calculate the real contributions of a "SEO expert".

Actually, what would really worry me is if your "SEO expert" placed yoru site in the first 1st SERP overnight. That would be scarry in my opinion. You need a constant SEO work ethic that looks organic and not a one time effort.

[catchingsmoke]

well yes a 1st placement overnight would be a little worrying... and SEO is a long term process like you said which is why I think money back guarantees should be in place to ensure that SEO's give reasonable time frames and costs and thus manage clients expectations in a fair and proper manner, that's the logic behind it for me anyway.

As for making their own affiliate sites, there are reasons to stick with SEO, maybe the SEO has a specific skill set which doesn't always lend itself to marketing as a whole. Ie creates site which don't convert well etc..

[CoopersPick]

I know a guy who will do a front page guarantee where u pay when u hit front page and if you dont pay than we can just remove all your links and let you drop back down. so thats efficient imo.

[TheGooner]

Yes - fair play to you CatchingSmoke - those are valid points.


As a former financial systems coder and technician I'm very much aware of the extra skills that need to be learned in order to create the whole affiliate package to create a site that actually generates cash.

But I will say that it can be very rewarding when you manage it!

[Murton]

It is totally against Google Guidelines for any SEO company to offer a guarantee as Google state that no SEO company "owns Google". This is obviously correct but obviously our industry is savaged by rip off merchants and there is nothing that can be done about this. All I can say is that SEO is best going off word of mouth just as I feel this is the best form of staying safe. The only thing that an SEO company can do to counter offering a guarantee is to do many options like paying 50% upfront and then 50% on performance but even some companies does a runner with the 50% upfront...

[catchingsmoke]

Well offering a guarantee would be, but offering to give somebody their money back if you don't achieve what you promised to do for them is not going against googles webmaster guidlines in any way. At least as far as I'm aware, it just causes SEO's to quote in a more conservative and realistic manner.

[dhayman]

Everyone in every industry should offer a guarantee. Both Bush and Obama should return all their paychecks, IMO.

[Murton]

I wish that everybody did offer guarantees in SEO, it is a known fact that on the Google Guidelines it does say that if an SEO company guarantees a position on Page1 then they are "unethical"

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=35291

[catchingsmoke]

I wish that everybody did offer guarantees in SEO, it is a known fact that on the Google Guidelines it does say that if an SEO company guarantees a position on Page1 then they are "unethical"

I think you're missing the point, there is nothing unethical about offering a guarantee to give somebodies money back if you fail to do your job, it would be unethical to suggest that you could acheive a ranking, fail, then not return the clients money surely? If the comapny simply says that they will definately do that job and all it they have to prove that is their word then these would be the con artists and unethical businesses that google is talking about in their guidelines. I don't think google would say it's wrong to give a client their money money back if you didn't achieve what you promised them in the time frame? would anybody here say that?