One of the questions we’re asked on a regular basis from companies that are considering hiring Thrive for SEO services is: “Why don’t you guarantee results?”
That’s a great question. If you’re paying us to provide SEO services, shouldn’t those services lead to guaranteed results?
Let’s go over a little bit of SEO history here to answer this question.
Some SEOs Used to Manipulate Google
If you’ve been in the industry for about 6 years or longer, you may remember a time when some SEO companies advertised guaranteed results. “We’ll get you ranking as number one or your money back!” was something that companies often advertised. This was back before Google had such a sophisticated algorithm, and it was a little more basic in terms of how it decided what ranked high in search results.
In those days, there were a couple manipulative things an SEO could do to your website to get you ranking pretty quickly for the keywords of your choice. These days, we call these tactics “Black Hat,” and they no longer work – in fact, they’ll get you penalized. These were tactics like filling your website’s background with words that were the same color as the background, or building a big network of links to your site on sites that were spammy and had nothing to do with whatever topic your site is about.
Google Gets Smart
Google (and all major search engines) has undergone a large amount of change over the past several years to no longer tolerate those spammy, manipulative tactics. As this happened, companies that used to guarantee search engine rankings began removing that from their websites, because they just couldn’t do it anymore. In fact, companies they had worked with in the past were now getting penalized and not ranking at all for those “guaranteed” results they acquired a year or two before.
These changes that Google and other search engines have made have really been great for their users – it’s much easier now to find answers to your any and every question. As for those of us in the SEO industry, although it’s harder now to get results for our clients, it’s a lot more authentic. We work on getting our clients to rank through natural and authentic campaigns, with no manipulation involved.
Results Take Time & Vary by Industry
In a recent blog post, we discussed how it can take 6 months (or longer) to start seeing results from an SEO campaign. The amount of time it takes to see results depends on several different factors, such as what industry you’re in and how much competition you have. Some industries are much easier to make results happen quickly in, whereas some just take much longer to start beating that competition.
Your level of competition is also a factor. For instance, let’s say you’re a local co-op in Chicago, and you want to rank for “grocery store”. But, nearby, there are two big box stores with a bunch of locations across the state. While you might be able to make it onto the first page of results depending on the searcher’s location, beating those two huge ones just might not be possible. When you’re so little and they’re so big, that can really be a challenge.
Results Aren’t Guaranteed, but Quality Work Is
So, for all of the above reasons, we can’t guarantee specific rankings or instant results. However, we CAN guarantee great work from a knowledgeable, experienced team. This is something you’ll see clearly, right from the get-go. The SEO Specialist you’re paired with will be asking you a bunch of questions, getting to know you, your website and your industry, and diving into work on your site. You’ll see us working like crazy to get the best possible results for you and your website.
At Thrive, we focus on improving your ROI (return on investment), not just your rankings in search engines. That’s only one piece of the puzzle to making your company or brand more profitable online.
Ready to get to work? Let’s chat.
