Is Google Anyone’s Trained Monkey?
This is something of a companion post to the article I just published on the Horizon Web Marketing blog.
The subject of that post was whether or not any SEO professional could legitimately offer a guarantee of a number 1 listing.
I made the case that they could. Provided of course that they guaranteed the ranking for a unique, and typically worthless, keyword phrase that nobody in their right mind would search for.
Another Way to Fulfill the SEO Guarantee: Buy an Ad
Of course there are other ways that scummy organizations (and occasionally that includes big companies like Dex) can offer a top ranking guarantee: they buy up keywords in bulk using Google paid search advertising (in other words, Google Adwords). Then they rotate those ads for a whole group of their clients, giving everyone a quick, brief chance at good visibility. However that’s for paid search, quite a different animal than what most people have in mind when they ask the inevitable question: “Can you make me #1 on Google?”
Bottom Line: A Real Guarantee Relies on Controlling Google
The fact is that no company controls Google, or even knows Google, to such a degree that they can manipulate your company to a high visibility place with a few tweaks of your website. (By “high visibility,” I mean top 3 ranking for a search term that is a) relevant to your business and b) gets a lot of search activity.) If Google could so easily be manipulated they would not be the number one search engine.
Google realizes that the only way to retain their dominant position in the world of search is to aggressively resist the efforts of any SEO/SEM who tries to turn them into their own trained monkey.
