I’m occasionally asked why I do not offer guaranteed first page results. There are many reasons which I’ll explain below, but if you see a first page guarantee, you’re not getting the whole truth.
1. Competition
SEO is a competition and like any competition no one can guarantee what your competitor is going to do. The competitors are the other website that rank for the keywords that you want to be ranked well for. For your website to rank well, other website have to go down in the ranks. The owners of these other websites are not going to want to see their website drop and employ their own strategies. It’s like putting a guarantee on a particular football team making it to the Superbowl.
2. Search Engines
We SEO practitioners have no control over the search engines, what they do, how they work, or when they change their policies and algorithms. Despite what some may have claimed. While Google is constantly changing how their system works, the changes are subtle enough that the SEO community can keep up with it. While it is unlikely to occur, because something radical enough to throw off the SEO community would most likely hurt Google themselves even worse, we can’t guarantee that Google isn’t going to change something big.
3. First Page for who?
The search engines are getting better and better at giving results that are customized for the user. The results that one person might see may be different than another person when searching for the same keyword. Google does this in a number of ways and continually adds more ways to personalize the search results. If the user is logged in, Google keeps track of what you have search for before and alters your results accordingly. Also, Google may alter your search results based on where you live. This is determined by your IP address. Google has been improving on delivering personalized results at a rapid pace recently so when someone guarantees you site will be on the first page of Google, for who are they referring? You, themselves, the customer and which customers?
