We all want someone to give us guarantees, especially when those promises are about success. Unfortunately, some companies use all kinds of guaranteed language in their promotions, deliberately misleading potential customers.

 

In my opinion, in the SEO industry, many people take advantage of customers’ ignorance by promising results, portraying SEO as a cure-all. This ultimately drags the entire industry down to the unprofessional level of quack medicine. This article takes a different approach. It will analyze the mindset of someone who tries to deceive customers with false guarantees.

 

Sometimes, in order to fight against black-hat tactics and educate customers, we have to understand these methods.

 

I in no way condone these practices. Aside from a lack of ethics, the simple truth is that nearly all false guarantees sacrifice long-term results for short-term gains — often wasting both time and money.

 

In the end, these deceptive tricks or illusory results only last long enough to show the customer a “success” before fading away. The methods below are not instructions on what to do, but explanations of how scammers operate, so you can stay alert and avoid being fooled.

 

How do they “guarantee rankings”?

 

Few customers truly understand how complex Google is today. They just want to rank first, and they want it immediately! So why not give them what they want? Many companies promise top rankings on Google — here’s how they do it:

 

Exploiting Long-Tail Keywords

 

Everyone talks about “long-tail keywords,” and this concept easily excites customers. A customer might want to rank for a broad term like “molds,” but it’s easy to persuade them to target something like “cheap cake molds,” which promises more targeted traffic. Besides, it’s much faster to reach the top spot for such terms. It doesn’t matter if long-tail keywords only work well in bulk; let the purists argue about that.

 

For example, our site ranks first for “Get a Free $50 AdWords Credit” — admittedly an extremely long-tail phrase. Of course, it brings almost no real traffic, but it has minor value for people searching randomly for free offers.

 

Using PPC for Long-Tail Keywords

 

 

If your new client isn’t very sharp, they might not realize that results appearing in the colored top bar are not real organic search results, but well-performing PPC ads. Still, it’s a top position, right? This costs a little money, but it secures the project and buys time to eventually achieve real organic rankings. It’s also the fastest way to show “results.” (Pretty silly, but wait — there’s worse.)

 

PPC & Personalized Manipulation

 

If your new client is really gullible, why not log into their computer, enable Google SearchWiki, click the up arrow, and — presto — a ranking miracle happens. As a bonus, you even get a nice green arrow.

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