Be wary of “guaranteed” search engine placements

"We guarantee No. 1 placement on search engines – or your money back!"

That may sound like music to your ears but in reality, website hosting companies who make this claim are selling you an empty promise. The truth is that there's no way for a website company to guarantee a No. 1 placement on a search engine. What can be guaranteed are the company's best efforts to get you to the top, but the results can't be guaranteed. Why? Search engines and their indexes are proprietary and no one other than the search engine has control over them. Plus, most search engines' algorithms are closely-guarded trade secrets that tend to change often just so other companies can't figure them out.

So how do these guarantees work if the company has no control over the search engine? Many search engine optimization (SEO) experts will say that these types of companies guarantee a No.1 position for a keyword on search engines by purchasing the No.1 keyword on a paid search service like Overture. However, the website's rank would drop as soon as the customer stopped paying for that keyword. And because the company never indicated how long the customer's site would be ranked No. 1 – the terms of the guarantee were fulfilled.

Of course, you can be guaranteed a top spot on a search engine by using a pay per click service where you pay for each visitor the service sends to your site. However, these services can become quite costly and you can pay anywhere from $50 to $100,000 for specific search terms that will get you a top spot. But if a competitor outbids you for a keyword, you'll likely have to pay more to regain it – not always a feasible expense for an independent agent. Further, your site will likely be featured in a "sponsored links" section, not in the general or "organic" results.

On top of promising you something they can't really deliver, these companies distract you from the things you really can do to improve your site's search engine results. One of the most surefire ways to rank high – without digging into your wallet – is to increase your site's "link popularity" by acquiring quality, relevant links that point to your website (For tips on how to do this, see the April 13 Agent e-newsletter here). Most search engines, like Google, interpret a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google also analyzes the quality of the page that casts the vote. As Google puts it: "Votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.'"

To learn even more ways to drive traffic to your XSite, attend one of our Web Marketing Strategies Seminars for agents at our new Orlando training center. The seminar teaches you what search engines look for on your site and how to build content that will improve your rankings. Plus, you'll learn valuable techniques for turning site visitors into qualified leads – which is what you're really after!

The next Web Marketing Strategies Seminar will be held May 11 from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Subsequent seminars will be held May 25, June 15 and June 29. For more information and to register online click here.