Do SEO experts offer clients guarantee?

A good read of replies. Thanks everyone for feedback.

MisterF, yes I plan to be honest about my experience, if they ask. I've got 13+ years of running my own biz for web development so I'm not exactly starting from scratch, but I've never offered SEO services.

kboxer7, that is an interesting angle. I like it. That could really work in your favor. I assume you have a sliding scale of cost depending on how high they want to rank? Do you break down costs like

top of first page = $3,000
first page = $2,000
second page = $1,000
etc.

?

mickyfu said:

All newbies will be PMing now. "Sirs mees can give number ones guarantee". Two weeks down the line they are making " My Client" threads here, asking the most basic dumb as shit questions.

Click to expand...

Everytime I see a thread with some entry-level zero-effort question like "will use backlinks help rank for my client site ? it has many page " I feel bad for the 50 year old executive who had no idea how to hire for SEO and chose someone who has clearly never run a website before, let alone ranked anything.

There are max 7 people on this planet who know anything about SEO.

waterworks said:

A good read of replies. Thanks everyone for feedback.

MisterF, yes I plan to be honest about my experience, if they ask. I've got 13+ years of running my own biz for web development so I'm not exactly starting from scratch, but I've never offered SEO services.

kboxer7, that is an interesting angle. I like it. That could really work in your favor. I assume you have a sliding scale of cost depending on how high they want to rank? Do you break down costs like

top of first page = $3,000
first page = $2,000
second page = $1,000
etc.

?

Click to expand...

If you're offering results-based pay by position for keywords, you would probably want to have the pay scale exponentially by position reached, since CTR is affected exponentially by position. Relevant (sort of outdated, but good enough; you can find a bunch of other studies that say the same thing):
https://moz.com/blog/google-organic-click-through-rates-in-2014

For by-position commission rates, would suggest more like the below where $x.xx is some arbitrary base pay. Adjust the multipliers as relevant. Base pay and multipliers would also vary by keyword and so on.

• Ranks #11 and below (anything not on the first page)
  • $x.xx * 0 (nothing / worthless)
• Ranks #6 through #10
  • $x.xx * 1
• Ranks #4 and #5
  • $x.xx * 1.5
• Rank #3
  • $x.xx * 2
• Rank #2
  • $x.xx * 4
• Rank #1
  • $x.xx * 8

A different and probably better alternative to get paid by results is to run your own website, get leads/sales directly, then sell those to others. Or sell the site entirely. For example, instead of doing local SEO for some lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio, make some website (supercoolclevelandohiolawyers.com or something, but preferably a better name). Rank the website for relevant terms ("best lawyers cleveland oh", "defamation lawyer cleveland", "divorce attorney cleveland oh", etc). Collect client/user emails with some form like "leave your info for a free consultation" or whatever. Then you go and contact some lawyers in Cleveland and either sell them your list of leads or sell them your entire website for a lump sum.

SEO Ranking Guarantees - not possible practically as Google is unpredictable.

I offer on all my clients guarantee that will rank in top 1 page from 9-12 month whatever keyword difficulty is.
Its costly but profitable in some niche

MatthewGraham said:

Everytime I see a thread with some entry-level zero-effort question like "will use backlinks help rank for my client site ? it has many page " I feel bad for the 50 year old executive who had no idea how to hire for SEO and chose someone who has clearly never run a website before, let alone ranked anything.

There are max 7 people on this planet who know anything about SEO.



If you're offering results-based pay by position for keywords, you would probably want to have the pay scale exponentially by position reached, since CTR is affected exponentially by position. Relevant (sort of outdated, but good enough; you can find a bunch of other studies that say the same thing):
https://moz.com/blog/google-organic-click-through-rates-in-2014

For by-position commission rates, would suggest more like the below where $x.xx is some arbitrary base pay. Adjust the multipliers as relevant. Base pay and multipliers would also vary by keyword and so on.

• Ranks #11 and below (anything not on the first page)
  • $x.xx * 0 (nothing / worthless)
• Ranks #6 through #10
  • $x.xx * 1
• Ranks #4 and #5
  • $x.xx * 1.5
• Rank #3
  • $x.xx * 2
• Rank #2
  • $x.xx * 4
• Rank #1
  • $x.xx * 8

A different and probably better alternative to get paid by results is to run your own website, get leads/sales directly, then sell those to others. Or sell the site entirely. For example, instead of doing local SEO for some lawyer in Cleveland, Ohio, make some website (supercoolclevelandohiolawyers.com or something, but preferably a better name). Rank the website for relevant terms ("best lawyers cleveland oh", "defamation lawyer cleveland", "divorce attorney cleveland oh", etc). Collect client/user emails with some form like "leave your info for a free consultation" or whatever. Then you go and contact some lawyers in Cleveland and either sell them your list of leads or sell them your entire website for a lump sum.

Click to expand...

I love this, way less liability. Easy money if your city has low competition

What I Reply When Client Ask Me.
"I assured you that you will get ranking but there is no guarantee"

Array Experts said:

What I Reply When Client Ask Me.
"I assured you that you will get ranking but there is no guarantee"

Click to expand...

Might want to rephrase that. Assured is a synonym for guarantee.

MatthewGraham said:

Might want to rephrase that. Assured is a synonym for guarantee.

Click to expand...

Yups It's a synonym of guarantee.
Think What Your Client Want To Listen & What You Want Tell Him.
I Tried Both
1. "I Can't Give You Guarantee as I Don't Own Google Educated Him Latest Link Strategies Which Working Fine"

2. "I assured you that you will get ranking but there is no guarantee"

Results:
The Conversation Ration Is Very Low (Less Than 20%) Using First Phrase.
The Conversation Ratio Is (Great More Than 70%) Using Second Phrase.

Actually Assured Word Build A Trust Between You & Your Client.

I've seen sellers on other forums offer a guarantee that rankings will improve.
When you dig deeper and ask questions, it's not worth a jot.

If you're starting off for your main keyword at position 199 and after a month you're at 196 then job done, your position has improved.

Others don't offer a timescale, so you sign up with them and 24 months later you're still paying for crap, but each month you've moved a single spot for your keyword, so from position 100 you're now sitting at 76.

I spoke with Straight North, a very established Digital Marketing company a while back ago. They specifically mention that you can't guarentee this type of thing.

Here's my point of view. If I see a niche and a client's competition is weak for the keywords their trying to rank for, I'll tell them that and next to guarentee it, because I'm that confident I'll be able to rank them.

But this only goes if the client's competition is non existant or very weak.

Simong457 said:

I spoke with Straight North, a very established Digital Marketing company a while back ago. They specifically mention that you can't guarentee this type of thing.

Here's my point of view. If I see a niche and a client's competition is weak for the keywords their trying to rank for, I'll tell them that and next to guarentee it, because I'm that confident I'll be able to rank them.

But this only goes if the client's competition is non existant or very week.

Click to expand...

There was a seller on WF called Matt Laclear ( no idea how the scammer was never banned ) who was raking in thousands on various seo sales threads and none worked.
People saw the ( false ) promises and piled in. This was one of his offerings.....

SEO Services For $999 A Month...Money Back Guarantee

when I got askes for #1 guarantee, I send them the SEA / SEM proposal.
Those "guarantee " morons annoy the fuck out of me. IF they still respond after that, I make them a 4-digits backlink campaign. usually quitens them.

SEO is all about long term success, so guarantee is not guaranteed!

The general rule of thumb is that only the errant or shittier providers will offer guarantees as a closing tactic. The experts as you called them, know well enough to know that a guarantee to be on page one will result in trouble for themselves.

However I think there can be one exception, a guarantee could possibly be offered if the potential client is stuck on page two of the Serps. A decent SEO provider should be able to identify the issues that prevent the website from entering page one results, and come up with a strategy to rectify and improve the site.