Why Guaranteed SEO Is a Myth

Advancing technology has brought several revolutions to the marketing department. From mobile optimization to social media marketing, technology has made marketing both infinitely easier and so much more challenging at the same time.

There are many different techniques and tactics you can choose from to bolster your inbound marketing and digital advertising initiatives. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular tool marketers use to drive their efforts today.

Why Use SEO?

SEO helps you increase your rankings on search engines like Google, making you more discoverable for your target clientele.

Many companies will advertise their SEO services as “guaranteed” to work. You should probably take those claims with a hefty dose of salt.

What Does SEO Do?

Before jumping into why guaranteed SEO is a myth, it helps to be perfectly clear on the function and purpose of SEO services. SEO makes your webpages, including your blog posts and more, easier to read for the robot web crawlers used by search engines like Google.

These robots “read” webpages and determine what they’re about. The use of keywords and other SEO tactics makes your pages more appealing to these robots. As a result, they’ll then rank the page higher in the results when people search for different terms.

SEO thus makes your website more discoverable. It’s an excellent service to invest in, but anything billing itself as “guaranteed” isn’t the way to go.

Changing Requirements

The first reason “guaranteed” SEO is a myth is that what counts as “search engine optimized” changes on a regular basis. Search engines reprogram their robots as consumer behaviours change and SEO service providers begin to manipulate rankings.

What counts as optimized today may become instantly outdated. As search engines’ web crawlers become more sophisticated, the things they look for will also change. In such an environment, you can’t be guaranteed anything.

You Don’t Know What Others Are Doing

No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to read your competition’s mind or predict their next move with 100-percent accuracy. As there are many other businesses out there competing with yours, writing on the same topics, and using similar keywords, it becomes impossible to guarantee SEO because you don’t know what your competition is doing.

You can use SEO services to improve search engine rankings, but guaranteeing anything with these services is foolhardy. No doubt, many of your competitors have been promised something similar by their service providers. Those providers may do something slightly different, or your competitor may have a slight advantage that gives them a boost over you.

In some cases, your competitors may even be working with the same service provider.

What Should You Look For?

The reason many SEO providers call their services “guaranteed” is to make them more appealing. Many businesses are rightfully leery of SEO’s ability to drive any kinds of results. Even if your service provider can make you the first result in the Google rankings, does it actually do anything for your sales or brand recognition?

Instead of looking for “guaranteed” SEO, look for a provider who offers a more complete and comprehensive inbound marketing package. They should be able to create a custom plan designed to meet your needs, and it should most definitely include more than SEO services alone.

While SEO is one good tool to have, it’s important to keep in mind it isn’t the be-all, end-all of online marketing. It’s also likely it will continue to change, especially as search engine technology becomes more sophisticated and as users continue to change how they use search engines. Keywords, the staple of SEO, are starting to be phased out by many users.

Look for a provider who can promise more than “guaranteed” SEO. You need concrete results, not fanciful myths if you want to truly achieve marketing success.