One thing you’ll notice about my website copywriter portfolio is that I don’t mention any #1 or page 1 Google rankings for any of the pages I wrote for my clients. The simple fact is, even if my content did get my client a page 1 or even a #1 ranking, that ranking would almost always naturally fluctuate over time. I’d be foolish to say, and even more foolish to promote, specific results gained by my content.
Beyond that, I would never make the claim that my content would create such a situation prior to starting a web copy project.
So why do some SEO people promote their #1 ranked clients knowing full-well that they could be dead wrong the next day?
Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know that I got a new follower tonight on Twitter who does exactly that – promote their client’s #1 ranking on Google for the term Raleigh Fences.
The trouble starts when you click the link in the table that leads you to believe that raleighfences.com will be #1 for the organic results.
But that domain is not #1. There goes your credibility. Behold (you can click the image to see it full-size):
Not only is this Raleigh SEO company’s client NOT #1 in the organic results like they claim the client is, they aren’t #2, OR #3. They aren’t even in the local results – which is an even bigger failure if you ask me. (The site wasn’t anywhere on page 1 when I checked – I just didn’t want to bore you with the biggest screen capture of all-time)
So why do SEO companies and consultants (and website copywriters for that matter) hype this stuff? I think there are some SEO companies out there that just aren’t refined enough to know how to promote their results in a way that builds credibility. In other words, they don’t know how to create the content that promotes their services (and results) properly. If the SEO company had just said “We got client XYZ to page on for their important keywords and continue to build their organic presence with content creating and natural link building,” I would have been sold. But when you choose to set yourself up for almost certain contradiction, you’re going to lose trust. Maybe not from the search engines in this case, but certainly from anyone savvy enough to know better.
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