Many search engine optimization companies, like Pro Dental, offer search engine placement guarantees. With a search engine optimization guarantee your website is guaranteed to be placed within a certain position on search engines, such as Google, prior to collecting any monthly fees for their services. Here we will try to clarify what to look out for within these guarantees to make sure that you’re covered when choosing a SEO company for your dental practice.

Guaranteeing “First Page” Placement

SEO companies offering guaranteed #1 placement are actually a little bit harder to find nowadays, especially within the dental community. This is due to the fact that most of these companies have essentially been “run out of town” due to their unethical business practices. Though you will still find some, primarily offshore companies, that will offer this kind of service.

In general, guaranteed #1 placement is seen as an unethical scam by most of the online marketing community, including all of the top search engines.  Google especially can view the tactics used by these SEO firms as violating their terms of service and they can and will respond by penalizing or even banning your website. This means that these SEO companies are using spam tactics such as triangle exchanges, splogs (spam blogs), and more, in an attempt to rank your website. To put it simply no one, but Google, could ever guarantee a #1 placement on their search engine and outside of Pay Per Click they don’t offer this as a service.

Note: This type of guarantee should not be confused with “top ten” placement guarantees which are two VERY different animals all together.

Official Name Ranking

This is where an SEO Company, in order to fill their contractual agreement with you, will only place your name, or the official name of your website, in a top position. Since no other dentist will be actively attempting to place themselves on top of the search engines utilizing your name, getting you there takes little to no effort at all.

Also ranking for your name, or company name, will deliver no “new” traffic to your website — a search engine user who came to your website using your name as the keyword must have already known of you in order to initiate that original Google search. Thus this “guarantee” simply negates the point of hiring a search engine optimization specialist, since it brings in no new patients to your dental practice.

Non Competitive Search Term Placement

There are essentially two types of keywords and keyphrases online: those that deliver traffic and those that don’t. The keywords that deliver traffic are called certified traffic bearing keywords and they deliver real search engine users (I.E. your new patients) directly to your website. The keywords that don’t deliver traffic are called non competitive keywords and essentially are any keyphrase that can be put together but WON’T deliver new patients to your website.

An analogy we use, about non competitive keywords, is that being #1 on a keyword that no one is using is like being the largest billboard 50 miles up a dirt road. Sure your sign’s the biggest and if anyone happens down that road you’re going to be seen, but the problem is that road is closed and no one’s coming to open it.

This is typically what is used by most dental seo companies (NOT Pro Dental) to fill their contractual obligations. Even Google specifically warns against this kind of “guarantee” since the keywords that they will rank you on have no competition and will, like official name ranking, leave you with no viable traffic (I.E. new patients).

The No Guarantee Dental SEO Companies

In today’s market any SEO that doesn’t offer a guarantee for dental keywords shouldn’t be called an SEO. Simply put, for local dentist terms, (I.E. Miami Dentist, Los Angeles Orthodontist, etc…) a competent ethical SEO, following all search engine approved guidelines, should know exactly how to build the authority needed for your website to obtain top placement. Local dental keywords are not competitive juggernauts, even though they do provide enough competition to make achieving ranking challenging, it should still be a very obtainable task for a skilled optimization specialist.

Solutions – Checking The Contract:

Make sure that any Dental SEO company that you select offers you a no pay guarantee that includes ranking on MULTIPLE Google certified traffic bearing keywords. This insures that they see results, when you see results, I.E. they place your website on page one of Google on multiple keywords and phrases that are producing you new patient traffic.

Always make sure that any contract or agreement you sign includes ranking on traffic bearing keywords and make sure you get the SEO company to prove it!