First Page SEO Guarantee: Can You Guarantee My Business Ranks on the First Page of Google?

You’ve seen agencies with first-page SEO guarantees and it helps make you feel more confident in your own potential campaign, but you’re worried there’s a catch – and you’re right.

Ranking guarantees are GUARANTEED to fail. No one can predict rankings because Google’s algorithm and your competition’s SEO efforts are always changing. Instead of guaranteed rankings, we focus on guaranteed results – like an increase in leads. Here’s how we back it up.

It’s common for agencies to guarantee first page SEO rankings, often within 90-180 days.

“Guaranteed rankings on Google, that sounds like I can’t lose”

At some point, every contractor who’s serious about using SEO has had that thought.

You want to minimise risk as much as possible and seeing an SEO guarantee makes you feel comfortable. Especially when SEO agencies back up their “guarantee” with a money-back promise or other incentive.

Here’s the catch – they never told you WHAT they’d rank you on Google for. 

It’s common for trades business owners to sign up and find out they’re ranking for keywords NO ONE is searching for. This puts you thousands of dollars out of pocket, and with a website that will need to be completely re-optimised if you ever want to rank for keywords that people are actually searching for.

In this article we’ll explain why SEO guarantees are a marketing gimmick, explain what an SEO agency can promise, and what to do next if your SEO agency is guaranteeing results.

You can’t guarantee something that you can’t control.

A builder can’t guarantee the price of nails at the hardware store, no matter how much he knows about nails. He could have spent his life learning about box nails, finishing nails, and roofing nails. But if the hardware store decides to double their prices, there’s nothing the builder can do to control it.

SEO works the same way. Only, Google is in charge.

Google is constantly making changes to its ranking algorithm. What worked last year might not be as effective in 2022. And what worked 10 years ago is more likely to get you banned than improve your rankings. SEO agencies study Google’s algorithm and track every change, but it only takes one tweak to shake up the first page and leave egg on the face of anyone who “guarantees” results.

Google themselves mention you won’t see results for at least 4 months after making changes to your site, and possibly need to wait up to 12 months. Which makes any SEO agency that guarantees results within 90 days (or a similar promise) look silly.

There’s also the impact of your competition. SEO doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If your competition starts creating helpful, quality content and earning backlinks from trustworthy sites, their SEO results may improve. This also means the first page of Google is constantly being shaken up.

That means you can’t control:

· Google’s algorithm
· Your competition’s SEO

And when you can’t control those two crucial external influences, you can’t guarantee results – and neither can an SEO agency, even if they have a flashy website or ads that claim otherwise.

If guaranteeing SEO results isn’t possible, you’re probably wondering why agencies still do it.

You might even have seen agencies guaranteeing to put you on the first page of Google with the promise that you’ll STOP PAYING if they can’t get you ranking. That sounds like a perfect deal, but here’s the catch –  it’s easy to rank for keywords no one is searching for.

When you sign up with an SEO agency you’re thinking about your website appearing on Google when someone types ‘local Houston plumber’ or ‘local Florida landscaper’. Instead, your SEO agency ranks you for ‘local plumber in south florida offering cheap toilet unblocking services’.

No one is going to type that into Google. No one will type anything close to that in Google. They’ll use direct keywords like ‘blocked toilet plumber’. So while your competitors are getting site visitors who need help, you’re ranking in the #1 spot (which looks great) for a keyword that gets ZERO monthly searches (which is wasting your time and money).

SEO isn’t about rankings.

Let that sink in for a moment. Forget everything you’ve been told about SEO, because the end goal isn’t to rank #1 on Google. Rankings are meaningless if they don’t drive traffic to your site, and if that traffic doesn’t convert into leads.

SEO isn’t about rankings. It’s about revenue.

SEO agencies that guarantee results fall into two categories:

· They never deliver results and you end up paying for nothing
· They rank you on the first page of Google for keywords NO ONE is searching for

Neither of these outcomes will affect your bottom line. If an SEO agency promises to get you on Google, don’t get distracted by the talk about rankings. Ask them how they plan on improving your revenue.

At Tradie Digital we don’t pretend to be focused on rankings. We focus on website architecture, quality content, and trustworthy backlinks. Yes, these do impact rankings, but our primary concern is an increase in leads. The reason we want to put you on Google isn’t so you can show people you’re sitting in the top spot. It’s to show you that the keywords we target are sending people to your site, and that those people are becoming leads. How do we generate more leads for your business? First we focus on your customers psychology. You can learn more about our framework which has generated over $200m worth of leads to Home Improvement and contracting businesses here https://tradiedigital.co/what-is-pcd-framework/

That’s why we don’t guarantee rankings. Instead, we guarantee to give you more leads or give you $300 (no questions asked). Having generated over $200 million worth of leads for contractor and home improvement businesses, we don’t focus on rankings. We focus on your revenue by optimizing your site and content for keywords that drive traffic and increase leads.

No.

You’ve already heard horror stories about contractors signing up to “money-back SEO guarantees” and ending up thousands of dollars out of pocket when their new agency gets them on Google for keywords no one is using.

These trade business owners can’t get their money back (technically the SEO agency hasn’t broken their promise) and they’re stuck paying for a company who’s scamming them in plain sight. If you’re comparing SEO agencies and there’s talk of guaranteed rankings, RUN. On the flipside, it is possible to guarantee an increase in leads.

At Tradie Digital we can’t predict whether you’ll get to spot #1, #3 or #7. But we can guarantee our SEO campaigns are optimized to put you in front of new customers, and that will lead to more calls and inquiries. And we’re so confident in that promise we’ll cut a check for $300 for any client who doesn’t start seeing more leads.

Curious to learn more about our ‘Increase Your Leads’ Guarantee?

Book a free consultation with a Tradie Digital expert to find out if your business is eligible