Lots of search engine optimization firms will tout that they guarantee search engine rankings. The truth is no SEO firm should be making such a claim, and if you come across one that does, then you probably shouldn’t work with them. Working with a company that guarantees search engine rankings can lead to dire consequences, both short-term and long-term.

The very best and most reputable firms will only guarantee the quality of their work. Other than that, they will never guarantee your site will rank in a particular position in the search engines’ results pages. So with that said, why don’t reputable SEO firms guarantee search engine rankings? Although there are many, here are the top 12 reasons why they don’t:

SEO Guarantees Have A Bad History

Since the 90s, guaranteed search engine rankings scams have been a selling point from sketchy SEO companies. Unfortunately, many website owners and business owners have learned that they can’t guarantee rankings for specific keywords and maintain those rankings indefinitely. Such scams are still out there today, but they were far more common in the 90s and early 2000s.

They Can’t Rank For Highly Competitive Keywords

There are still search engine optimization companies that guarantee search engine rankings, but they don’t tell their clients that they will target extremely low competitive keywords. These types of keywords typically offer minimal search volume. Unfortunately, this means that many very low competitive keywords don’t have much value. This fact is another reason why honest SEO firms won’t guarantee rankings.

Even the best SEO firms with highly skilled SEO experts and marketers shy away from specific guarantees related to rankings. However, the truth is that well-established websites and businesses are already ranking highly searched keywords.

Search Engines Warn Against It

Honest SEO companies don’t guarantee search engine rankings because they are not supposed to. Sure, the shady companies will still make guarantees, but they are not allowed to. Furthermore, Google explicitly says that people can’t make such guarantees. 

Google has search marketing page ranking guidelines that are available for anyone to read. Within those guidelines, a line states that “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” There are no exceptions; nobody is supposed to be guaranteed first-page rankings. 

Be aware that some search engine optimization companies will claim that they have a special relationship with Google. They’ll claim that this is why they can guarantee first-page rankings on Google or high rankings in general. If an SEO firm makes such a claim, then you should avoid them at all costs.

Be aware that some search engine optimization companies will claim that they have a special relationship with Google. They’ll claim that this is why they can guarantee first-page rankings on Google or high rankings in general. If an SEO firm makes such a claim, then you should avoid them at all costs.

Rankings Are Dynamic

An SEO agency shouldn’t be making specific promises around keyword rankings because the research results are not static. For example, the results would be different if you were to Google “SEO company in Spokane, Washington” and then drove to Seattle and typed the exact phrase into Google. In many cases, the results will frequently change whether you remain in the same city or not. This shows how search results and rankings shift depending up on things like location.

Algorithm Changes

Every search engine has algorithms, and these algorithms undergo updates from time to time. However, Google is well-known for its algorithm updates, which take place regularly. Not only that but every so often, there are massive updates that take place that really shake up its search results. Two prime examples are the Google Panda update and the Google Penguin update. 

When Google updates its algorithms, websites’ rankings can either stay the same or drastically change. Unfortunately, what often happens is many websites will experience a significant drop in rankings. Sometimes websites can recover from Google’s algorithm updates, while other times, it’s nearly impossible.

Algorithm changes are another reason why SEO firms shouldn’t guarantee specific search engine rankings. They know that algorithm changes can easily alter the search results. It doesn’t matter how good an SEO company is, how well their clients’ websites rank, or how established they are; virtually no website is 100% safe from algorithm updates. 

Rankings Aren’t Good Metrics For Overall Performance

Too many people are under the impression that rankings mean traffic. If a keyword ranks in the search engines’ results pages, traffic will flow to their website, right? While some rankings indeed lead to more traffic, others may not. Worse is traffic that is not relevant to the website itself. This kind of traffic can end up hurting your SEO efforts.

When an SEO campaign launches, it should be measured by how much traffic is generated via the search engines. Additionally, the quality of the traffic should be considered as a part of your KPI assessment.

Most website owners want a desired action performed on their site. Therefore, how soon website visitors perform is a good measure of how well an SEO campaign works.

SEO companies know that traffic is the primary metric for determining whether or not an SEO campaign is doing its job. However, it’s not just the amount of traffic being sent to a website; it is also the quality of traffic.

Guarantees Can Create Ethical Problems

Making any guarantee in the SEO industry doesn’t make sense. If something goes wrong, then the SEO company that made the guarantee will eventually take a hit on its reputation. It’s way too easy for an SEO company to make promises that they know they can’t deliver on to win a deal, but eventually, that will backfire.

Another reason established SEO companies don’t make guarantees is because they don’t control what shows up in the results pages and what doesn’t. It is Google that has the final decision regarding what ranks and what doesn’t rank.

SEO Is Not A Short-Term Strategy

Search engine optimization isn’t a short-term strategy. The SEO companies that promise rankings are also claiming they can do it quickly. This is entirely unrealistic because it takes time to get results from SEO efforts. It doesn’t matter what type of SEO methods are being used or how ethical a strategy is; it is impossible to get extremely high rankings in the search results within a brief period of time. 

The best SEO companies know SEO takes a good amount of time to see results. Sometimes SEO strategies need to undergo several tweaks before results start to trickle in. It can take months before any traffic begins to come in. 

The Risks Of Black Hat SEO Increases

Black hat SEO involves using tactics that Google and other search engines look down on. These types of tactics are often used by companies guaranteeing fast results. However, such tactics can eventually do far more harm than good. If you hire an SEO company that performs black hat tactics, then your brand’s reputation could become severely damaged, and your website may even get sandboxed by Google.

If your site is sandboxed, then it means it will likely not appear in the search results at all. It can be challenging getting out of Google’s sandbox once you are there. Whether it’s your fault or not, if your site has been found to be using black hat SEO methods, then there’s a chance it will be penalized.

Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines want all websites to play by the rules, which means no shady SEO methods should be used. Keyword stuffing, doorway pages, and invisible text are a few methods that the search engines aren’t fans of. Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before they will determine if your SEO company has used such techniques.

Any reputable SEO firm knows black hat SEO methods are risky. They will not do anything to put their clients’ websites at risk. If a company doesn’t disclose what tactics they use, then be wary of hiring them. There’s a good chance they incorporate black hat SEO methods.

No One Size Fits All Strategy

Let’s not forget to mention that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to SEO. Search engine optimization firms realize this; therefore, they don’t make any guarantees. In addition, different websites require different SEO strategies, even if websites are in the same industry. For example, a dozen websites that offer construction services will likely require slightly different SEO strategies.

An SEO firm can’t guarantee that a single strategy will work for their clients’ construction websites (sticking to the above example). This is because different websites have different goals, and the branding can be other. If one single strategy worked every single time, then making guaranteed search engine rankings may very well be possible. In reality, this is far from being the case.

What Works Today Might Not Tomorrow

As previously mentioned, algorithm updates are a regular thing. When the algorithm changes, the strategies that worked before the updates may not be as effective or may not work. SEO firms don’t guarantee search engine rankings because they know what works today may not work tomorrow.

If an SEO firm implements a strategy that ends up helping a client land their site high in the results, then that’s great. However, there is no guarantee that the same strategies that helped that site rank will work a second time or later on in the future. In some cases, a new ethical strategy could be working just fine, but all of a sudden, within a few weeks, that same strategy won’t be worth using any longer. This is why it’s common to hear the adage that “SEO never sleeps.”

Competition

The best SEO firms never promise guaranteed search engine rankings because thousands upon thousands of other firms are trying to rank sites for their clients. Let’s not forget to mention that many website owners aren’t using an SEO firm but are still trying to rank their websites. As a result, SEO firms face a tremendous amount of competition.

Any reputable search engine optimization firm knows that it is impossible to guarantee search engine rankings for any keyword because there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of firms and/or sites competing for the exact keywords or variations of keywords. This also means there’s a good chance that some of the competition is using shady SEO tactics to get rankings. This can reduce the chances of reputable firms ranking their clients’ sites in the search engines’ results pages.

Those are the top 12 reasons why no reputable SEO company will guarantee search engine rankings. Companies that are experienced and truly care about their clients will not make guarantees that they know are impossible to achieve because they are putting their reputation online. If an SEO company’s reputation takes a hit due to making unrealistic promises, it could potentially lose business.

Remember, ranking takes time and patience. You cannot expect to do a few SEO-related tasks and rank the following day or even the next week. All of the top SEO agencies know SEO takes time to generate results.

A good SEO firm will never promise you that your site will rank, nor will they give you unrealistic expectations. Before you hire an SEO company, make sure you take the time to learn more about them and their track record. The last thing you want is for your website’s reputation to be tarnished due to an SEO website promising to rank your site and/or using SEO methods that aren’t ethical. Finding the right SEO firm to work with can be a bit of a challenge, but it is worth taking the time to find and choose one.

The post 12 Reasons Honest SEO Firms Don’t Promise Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings appeared first on Enleaf.

What is Presearch?

Over the past several decades, the Internet has grown to become a platform and tool that consistently pushes innovation boundaries.

The Internet is now so much part of our everyday lives that it is almost impossible to imagine life without it. It is a news source, a way to connect with family and friends, great for entertainment, and now many people use it to make a living.

The Google Effect

Google’s success has fueled the growth of the Internet when it comes to mainstream use. The search engine’s legendary search algorithms have been the backbone of a multi-billion-dollar industry and company.

Google might currently be the most popular search engine, but it is not the only one. Alternatives such as Baidu, Yandex, and Bing are direct competitors, while other platforms such as Imgur, Amazon, IMDB, and many others have a stake in search relative to their platform-specific search capabilities.

Google is undoubtedly the largest search engine in existence and serves as the gateway to most users’ Internet. It successfully managed to become the filter in which everyone passes. Since it provides a free service, it has built up one of the most accurate and complex data warehousing programs ever seen in the world.

Google became extremely wealthy by centralizing the behavior of users online and selling it to the highest bidder. Selling off its users’ privacy for a service that makes Internet use easier might seem like a small price to pay, but this might not be the only option available for much longer.

Blockchain has started sneaking its way into virtually all facets of the Internet, so it should come as no surprise that it would eventually make its way into search. One of the first in the space, Presearch, is an ambitious blockchain-based project that seeks to grab a piece of the search market by offering a different take on search.

Presearch a Blockchain-Based Approach to Search

Presearch is a blockchain-based search engine that’s described as an open, decentralized platform that rewards users with Presearch Tokens based on their usage, promotion of, and contribution to the platform. On November 15, 2017, it was launched as a closed beta with limited membership and opened up for the public beta on April 9, 2018. The closed beta had about 15,000 users join by word of mouth, while the open beta targeted 100,000 by the end of May 2018.

The Presearch Difference

Presearch is the first decentralized search engine that compensates its users with a cryptocurrency known as PRE Token. Click here get started.

The search engine was created in response to the prevailing state of search engines where Google and Bing are particularly dominant.

In a world where 77 percent of all searches are controlled by a single entity, influencing trillions of dollars in expenditure, shaping people’s perceptions, and essentially being the primary gatekeeper to the Internet, a new, community-driven, and open search engine is a necessity.

Unlike the existing search engines, Presearch is taking the non-traditional route using an open-source, decentralized blockchain index curated primarily by the community just like Reddit and backed up by machine learning algorithms.

What Does Presearch Offer?

Presearch offers transparent and open ranking factors that allow content creators to choose which data sources to make use of. The decision-making process is community-driven to ensure that only the best content is displayed.

Presearch users can vote on and fund development projects that can influence and improve the platform while also earning tokens for their contribution. Early adopters were issued with tokens as a reward for using and promoting the platforms. Presearch token holders can vote on decisions and fund/suggest development projects.

Advertisers, on the other hand, can purchase targeted and non-intrusive keyword sponsorships.

Presearch Tenets 

• Search shall be open
• Search results shall involve people
• Ranking data shall not be kept secret
• Web data shall be readily available
• There is no one-size-fits-all for search
• Advanced search shall be accessible
• Search engine tools shall be open to all
• Search and community go hand-in-hand
• Spam does not belong in search results
• Privacy of searchers shall not be violated

How Does a Decentralized Search Engine Work?

Unlike the mainstream centralized search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask, decentralized search engines don’t have any central control and are instead distributed across networks.

A decentralized search engine ensures that no single company owns your data or accesses your search information. All the data is encrypted and stored on the blockchain. Instead of a search engine provider such as Google  or Microsoft owning your data, you own it and control access to it with a private key.

Decentralized search engines not based on the blockchain have been around for a while but struggle to scale. Blockchain-based search engines, on the other hand, utilize decentralization for scalability and growth.

If you enter a search term and press ‘enter’, the search engine looks for it within its distributed ledger and lists the results. Specifics of the search are encrypted and then stored in a distributed ledger. The distributed ledger is then compiled from a peer-to-peer network’s collective effort. Each node (computer) on the network acts as a potential source of searching and updating the distributed ledger.

What Are Key Features of Decentralized Search Engines?

Privacy: 

The search engine does not record your search profile secretly for the purpose of eavesdropping or targeted advertising.

Community Driven: 

Unlike the centralized search platforms that are mostly driven by companies with vested interests, distributed search engines are operated with the community’s interests at heart.

Neutrality:

Decentralized search engines don’t distort search results based on corporate policy, paid advertisements, or even government policy.

Shared Resources: 

The public ledger is owned and distributed by anybody on the network.

Transparency: 

The search ledger is publicly available to all, which means that there’s no secrecy, only the searcher’s identity is withheld.

What are PRE tokens?

A Presearch token is a unit of account within the Presearch ecosystem that represents rewards earned, advertising staked or purchased, and, in general, value created. There will only ever be 500 million PRE. The PRE tokens are hosted on the Ethereum platform as standard ERC20 blockchain tokens.

That means that PRE can be transferred to any wallet that’s compatible with Ethereum and recognizes ERC20 tokens. Token holders can sell their PRE directly to any individual or business interested in generating Presearch results at whatever price the seller can get for their token inventory.

How Do You Earn Presearch Tokens?

Presearch tokens are offered by the Presearch search engine to reward those that search using the platform. The tokens have intrinsic value as they can be leveraged for advertising on the Presearch platform.

The amount currently offered to searchers is 0.5 PRE if they search via a search engine known as ‘Dsearch’ and 0.25 PRE if they search through any of the over 100 other resources offered on Presearch.org.

What Are the Reward Rates?

Users can earn anywhere from 0.25 to 0.5 PRE per search and up to 8 PRE tokens every 24 hours. Once you hit the 8 PRE threshold, searches won’t be rewarded until the 24-hour period has reset at 12:00 a.m. midnight, UTC. You can earn 25 PRE tokens when you use your referral account to refer a new user.

What Is Keyword Staking?

The innovative use of staking on Presearch, specifically within the Keyword Staking platform, allows for discovering the value in ways not possible previously. The project has pioneered an entirely new way of launching token-based ecosystems that will have a lasting impact on both token values and adoption curves.

Keyword Staking refers to committing your PRE tokens to a specific term or word. If you stake the most tokens on a particular keyword, your advertisement will appear when somebody searches for that term on Presearch.

You still have ownership over your PRE while they are staked, but if you decide to ‘unstake’ them from a certain term or if another user stakes more than you, then your ad won’t be shown anymore.

Is Presearch Capable of Competing with Google?

Rather than building a search engine aimed at taking Google head-on, the objective with Presearch is to create a strong cadre of users interested in building out their ‘own corner of the web.’ As such, the strategy wouldn’t require billions of users to be a viable business.

The world can’t and shouldn’t continue relying on Google exclusively for most of its information, particularly when Google has so many other vested interests likely to conflict with providing objective answers.

For those who have worked with Google for a long time and have learned its algorithms and how to manipulate them along with the company’s monetization strategies, it is evident that there’s a clear and present need for an open, decentralized search platform.

Give Presearch for a test drive, and discover a new way to search privately.

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