the "Guaranteed Rankings" Scam

Rankings Don't Always Bring Traffic

Many SEO firms out there are offering "guaranteed rankings" as a way of bringing in new business. This is almost always a scam, and here's why:

Long-tail and obscure rankings can bring in little to no traffic.

Think of it this way: a "ranking" is a search phrase that, when entered into a search engine, will result in the display of one of your pages. An SEO company might be able to show you 300 search phrases that bring up your pages. These are "rankings" alright, but you need to be asking whether people actually search for these phrases. Ranking for a phrase, for example, that is searched for 10,000 times a month is far more valuable than a phrase that is searched for once a month.

The point is the traffic and not the rankings. If your SEO tells you "you gained fifty page one rankings this month" it can mean absolutely nothing. If someone searches for "tek web solutions rankings traffic" this page is likely to be right up there on page one. Does that mean our website is going to receive any new traffic? Probably not from that "ranking."

Don't let an SEO company sell you on this scam - they pull it off more often than they should, and it's the clients who suffer. An honest SEO won't make empty promises about how many rankings you'll get. The goal is a return on your investment, and the only way you get that is with a significant increase in traffic. Honest and worthy SEO companies will be up-front and honest with you on this point.