Guaranteed Front Page Listing in Google?

I’ve been reading a story about an SEO firm in California who guarantees front page listings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN for your website.  Needless to say, the reason they ended up as a news story came down to the fact that evidently one of the customer support reps called a client who wanted to cancel their account some not-so-nice names; and they did it on an answering machine which, in and of itself is a testament to their IQ.

Ever since, message boards have been ripe with complaints against this company.

First and foremost no company anywhere in the world at any time can guarantee you front page listings within any search engine much less Google.  No one.  That is unless they’re using black-hat techniques which may get you banned from search engines anyway.

What troubles me so much is that people are in fact hiring this company because they believe that this really can happen!

So let’s shed a little bit of light on this shall we?

1. First of all, as I’ve said in this post and repeatedly elsewhere, no one can guarantee listings in any search engine for a competitive keyword.  Unless they themselves run the search engine, you can’t guarantee that you’ll show at the top of Google, Yahoo! or MSN at least without using some illegal tactics.
2. Note the “competitive keyword” sentence above.  It is true that companies can get you number one listings but what’s more important is with what keywords? Shoot my 4-year-old could get you a number one listing in Google for “multi-colored square widgets in Arkansas” but really, who is searching on this term anyway?
3. Always, always ask when hiring a company how they can claim this to be true.  They should be able to flat-out tell you how they go about getting you this much-sought-after spot.  This brings to mind yet another SEO firm who began using illegal techniques to get their clients listed in top positions in Google.  Eventually their site, along with their clients sites were all banned in Google.  For the record, the previous CEO of this firm recently landed himself in jail over yet another fraud.
4. Check out the businesses page.  In the case of this company in particular, they’re entire site is in Flash format.  Don’t you think that an SEO firm would follow it’s own advice?  For the record, Google especially has a difficult time indexing Flash pages.  They’re getting better but ideally you want as text-based and easy-to-read a website as possible.
5. Have some kind of knowledge yourself when checking out an SEO firm.  That said, I’ve come across several posts about this company and am appalled at what people believe.  You simply cannot just visit various message boards about SEO and get the full picture.  Half of the time, these folks are trying to find out information just like you.  Granted, there are quite a few folks who do know their stuff, but unless you know who they are, be careful what advice you’re following.

And these are just a few tips to consider.

Have a budget for SEO if you don’t intend on doing it yourself.  While you absolutely can start work on your own SEO campaign, it will take time and effort on your part.  I’m currently constructing an entire course on how to do just that which will be available by the end of 2008.  If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, hire someone, hand them the course and pay them to do it.  You’ll find it will be much cheaper in the end and you’ll get above-board advice to boot.