Should you trust a company that offers guaranteed SEO results?

Should you trust a company that offers guaranteed SEO results?
by Benjamin Farlong
Search engine optimisation is a huge sector with a lot of competition between numerous agencies. Because of this there is always a certain amount of opportunistic and ambitious advertising promising everything to people looking to have some SEO done. One advertising tactic which has become very common is the guarantee of good SEO results and even guarantees to be at the top of Google's search results. While this will obviously seem attractive to anyone looking for SEO, are these companies really to be trusted?
The general consensus in the SEO industry is that agencies offering such guarantees can't be trusted for many reasons. These agencies target people who have little or no knowledge or previous experience of SEO and so are unaware of the complexity or length of the process involved. Most of these businesses are also based only online with limited contact methods and like with any other type of business, this is slightly suspicious.
In reality it is easy to see that these companies can't be trusted with a very simple example. If one organisation pays one of these companies a certain amount to get them to the top of the search results, what happens when another company comes along and pays more for the same thing to a better SEO company? While it is unlikely that this will happen, there is always the possibility and this brings the guarantee immediately into question.
Google itself also quashes this idea of guarantees in one single line on its SEO advice pages. Google says that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google and so it is really illogical for small online agencies to contradict Google.
In very niche markets, there is a possibility that one of these companies might produce the results which they guarantee though. The way they do it however is not the way it should be done and can have significant adverse effects in the long term. Many of these agencies are suspected of using methods which are black-hat which means they break search engine rules and are unethical. Once they have their money and are long gone, it is likely that these methods will be discovered by search engines and the website will be severely penalised or even emitted from search engine results.
Speak to a company that provides <a href='http://www.tecmark.co.uk/search/seo'>SEO</a> services you can trust.