SEO companies can be a real blessing when it comes to optimizing your business’s online presence, but only when you know who you are hiring. Unfortunately, there are a number of unscrupulous “gurus” out there who take advantage of their potential clients by making ridiculous claims and padding what it is that they can actually offer to you. Today, we want to talk a little bit about what it is that those “gurus” don’t want you to know because you deserve to know who you are trusting with your company’s reputation.
SEO Companies: What SEO Gurus Don’t Want You to Know
Much of SEO Work is Common Sense
One of the things that we often explain to our clients is that the “tricks” and “secret knowledge” that many of these gurus claim to have are nothing more than common sense. Does that mean that there aren’t “tricks” to good SEO work? Not at all, but we think it’s important for you to know that a lot of the “secrets” that you pay for with some of these companies are nothing more than common sense.
Here at Online Presence Manager, we have lower fees than most SEO companies because we don’t charge you for common sense. Your payments to us pay for the work that we put into your SEO presence and the time we spend implementing those “tricks” that we have come to master over the past few decades.
Your SEO “Guru” Has to Keep Going to “School”
Your SEO “guru” may try to convince you that they know everything there is to know about SEO, but the truth is that if they don’t continue learning throughout their career, they don’t.
SEO is somewhat unique when it comes to mastery of material because the material that you are mastering changes so very frequently. These regular changes aren’t just small tweaks here and there (although there are those too), they are often complete overhauls. These overhauls mean having to relearn the technical details of SEO algorithms and develop new approaches to SEO ranking techniques. This constantly changing landscape of things means that a “guru” who doesn’t continuously learn and adapt to changes isn’t a “guru” at all.
The “First Search Result” Guarantee Can Never Be Guaranteed
Here at Online Presence Manager, we will never promise you that we will get your company to the first ranking on a Google search result. Why? Because it’s just not something that can be guaranteed. A great SEO company will work hard to get the very best search results for your brand – for us, this almost always means first page rankings – but they won’t guarantee that they can get you on the very first search result.
There are many factors that go into where your website appears in search engine rankings and, like search engine algorithms, the weight of each of these factors can change. There are approximately 200 factors that go into how a page ranks on Google and as the weight of one of those factors shifts, so too do the search results that Google provides. This shifting means that no one can guarantee that your website reaches or maintains the first spot in search results.
Additionally, you must consider that there are paid search results also. You will notice these results appearing at the top and bottom of your Google search results and they will be tagged as “paid” or “sponsored” results. When appearing at the top of search results, paid search results will very likely push down your own link if you are not purchasing sponsored links through Google.
Now, this isn’t to say that you can’t get on the first page of Google search results or even appear as the first search result for a given search, but no one can guarantee that you will be the first search result and anyone who tries to give you this guarantee is much less educated in SEO than they claim to be.
SEO Isn’t Magic And Gurus Don’t Have Magic Wands
People hire “SEO gurus” because they want to achieve better search results. They believe that they are paying to have an expert work their “magic” on a website and on search engines to make this happen. However, as we mentioned above, much of what SEO work entails is less “magic” than it appears to be. Rather, those “gurus” that you are paying to boost your SEO presence are simply putting in the hard work that the average business owner doesn’t have time for using resources and education that that business owner does not have access to. It’s not so much “magic” as it is a lot of time and hard work.
It Takes Time
Many SEO “gurus” would have you believe (from their website copy) that they can get you instant results when you hire them. 99.9% of the time, this isn’t the case. Boosting your company’s online presence takes time and work…at least when that boost is done in a legitimate way that will not reflect poorly on your web presence in the future.
Think of your website as a house that you are building. Rush through the building process and your house (or your search engine presence) isn’t going to stand for long because you have built it on an unsteady foundation with concrete that didn’t have time to set. So, when a wind storm comes along (a change in Google’s algorithm) your house isn’t going to remain standing. However, taking your time to build the house correctly with a solid foundation means that when that windstorm comes along, your house has a reliable foundation that will keep it standing. Or – in search engine terms – your website will have a thorough SEO base to rely on so that even when algorithms update, your website will only experience minor shifts in position, if at all.
Tired of Searching Through Scamming SEO Companies?
If you’re tired of weeding through SEO companies making false promises, we’d love to have the opportunity to prove to you that SEO work can be done honestly and get results! To arrange for a free consultation to see how we can help you, just give us a call toll-free today at 727-475-6460.
