Top-Ten Placement On Google, Yahoo and MSN

Revised Nov. 1, 2015

Have you ever seen an Search Engine Optimization firm advertising an irresistible offer like that? Chances are, you have. In fact, some eNewsletter will flood your inbox with offers for that very thing about 314 times a month.

And you don’t have to look very hard on Google to find about 100 million companies that will make that same promise.

Unfortunately, many web site owners don’t know that joining forces with a firm making promises like that is a terrible idea. All they know is that they want their web site to show up above their competition. Small businesses seem to fall victim to that ploy most often.

A company that makes that type of promise might get your web site ranking for some obscure terms for which no one on the planet is searching and, therefore, the competition for those terms is basically nil. Or they might get your site ranking for some more competitive terms by using what are called “black-hat techniques”. Those spammy techniques can get you great rankings for a month or two – until the Search Engine catches on. Then, your site begins to drop like a stone or it gets banned from the index altogether.

In the end, there are no such things as guaranteed top-ten placements. Good Search Engine optimization (SEO) is a marathon, not a sprint. A good SEO firm knows how to position your web site, but it is the Search Engines themselves that make the final decision as to exactly where you are placed.

Make no mistake, some SEO firms are certainly better than others and making the wrong decision can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars. However, make your decision based on, among other things, the live results that they can show you These results should also be for competitive keywords and phrases. Don’t take the promise of top-ten results is completely accurate. Rand Fishkin at Moz wrote a great article about this many years ago and it’s still accurate today.

If a firm could guarantee, I mean really guarantee a specific spot on the Search Engine indexes, they certainly would not have to advertise because they would have more business than they could handle.

For more tips on selecting an SEO firm, check out Mark’s article on Search Engine Watch. If you want, let us complete a thorough survey of your web site and present you with a comprehensive report of our findings and how to make improvements.