The only guarantee with SEO is there are no guarantees

SEO and guarantees. It's like running with cotton socks, mixing water and oil and drinking and driving. They do not belong together! I have a potential client who is gun shy about working with me because I will NOT guarantee top rankings in organic search. Just recently, I lost another client who was wooed away by a guarantee-driven SEO firm. This is the response I received:

"So (SEO company - I'll spare the name) agreed to work with us on a no results no fee basis. They have pretty much guaranteed me that by the 3rd week in October we will be listed among the top 10 spas in SF on the google search engine - if not nothing lost on our side.We don't have to sign a contract or anything unless we see the results."

My friends at SEOMoz wrote a great article titled "Why Reputable SEO Firms Don't Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings". The article hit the bullseye and is well worth the read. However, there are three points worth reemphasizing.

1. We're dealing with technology folks! In particular algorithms that are constantly changing. The pure nature of the industry means that rankings are in a constant state of fluctuation. Besides, search results vary across different geographical regions and are moving toward more personalized results. So, guaranteeing a top ranking is like hitting a moving target traveling at the speed of light.

2. Rankings don't equal more traffic. Assuring the client the top position in the SERPs is completely useless unless the keyword drives traffic to your website and causes a conversion of some type. Yes, traffic should be the measure of success, not rankings.

3. “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” I did not say this, the search engine giant also known as Google clearly states this on their SEO guidelines page. If you're still not convinced then I have some swamp land in Florida I would like to sell you.

Ben Franklin was quoted as saying "but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes." It's safe to say that even today that statement holds true even in the world of SEO.

Simple SEO Tips for Bloggers

A lot of my clients know that blogging about their products and services is an important part of marketing in today's social media crazed cyber world. Yet, they are not quite sure how it will help them with their search rankings. Regardless of what platform you use (Blogger, Drupal, WordPress, etc.) make sure you follow these best practices for blogging as they will assist with your SEO efforts.

* Identify a few targeted keywords that you want to be ranked and found by the search engines. These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your blog post and make sure they are in the title, URL, used in outbound links and are bolded.

*Change your permalink (i.e. permanent URL) structure to show the title of your blog post rather than the default URL (ex. "yourblog.com/?p=123"). This will make it easy for search engine spiders to find and crawl blog content.

* Write the title of your blog as a headline in order to grab the reader's attention but also include targeted keywords because your blog will get archived and your titles can become searchable.

* Categorize your content so it allows the aggregation of content according to themes, thus making it easier for search engines to understand your content and giving you a better chance of ranking well on particular topics.

* Keep the content fresh in order to keep the readers and search engines coming back. From a search engine perspective, if your blog is updated frequently, it will attract the attention of spiders and causes more crawling and faster indexing, thus allowing your new content to become searchable more quickly.

* Create internal links by deep linking anchor text to product and/or information pages on interior pages of the site.

* Encourage interaction through comments. This will help create a more active community, which will translate in more content, traffic and eventually higher rankings.

Google Continues to Impress with New Features

Ever since the launch of their Universal Search feature two years ago, Google has been quietly working behind the scenes to improve search. That feature broke barriers by allowing us to view results of various types such as images, videos, books, etc.

The downside to Universal Search was that it left most of us with more questions than answers such as:

How can I find the most recent information?
How do I assess which results are best?
How do I know what I am looking for?

Their latest feature, Search Options, is actually a collection of features or "tools" designed to help you find what you need faster and easier. As if spitting back results in a matter of milliseconds wasn't good enough for the king of search. Their goal all along was to quickly connect people to what they were looking for by providing filters that allow us to view by result and time frame.

They even outdid themselves by adding a cool feature called "Wonder wheel" (see screen shot below).

Still, we know Google is back at it improving Search Options with more innovative and useful features for future search. Now it's easy to understand why Google continues to be the leader in the search industry.

Google Secrets to Webmasters

OK, Google-ians, so how are the links to your website ranked? How do you link out? How to construct internal links to your site? And get more inbound links? How many links to a page is okay?

The revelation came recently, not from the sage saints of the web, but verily from the Oracle, Google Inc., at its recent Links Week event. And that is: Quality content and relevant, inbound links. That’s what draws in the crowds to your website and pushes up its b/o (box office) ratings.

Creating valuable, unique and relevant useful content (videos, original research, interesting tidbits, insights, entertaining and engaging copy, value-adds, useful product or service) is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. Do this, and other sites will want to link to you naturally.

Useful hints:

• For interior linking, use descriptive anchor text links to explain the content to your visitors.
• Anchor text should be rich in your keywords.
• Outbound links to other sites are about adding value to the visitor’s experience.
• Don’t post too many links on a page as this overloads the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages.
• Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

Will this unraveling of Google’s secret-that-isn’t help your website win higher Page Ranks and better web links? It’s difficult to say. Which means, the game is all about providing relevant, unique, valuable and quality content.