Question

Hi guys, a SEO agency claims that they can help me rank my shopify website on page 1 for guaranteed at least 70% of the main keywords I provide them with. This is a combination of techniques they use - mostly traditional ones - in the course of 6 months. Is that claim possible? My products are niche - alcohol accessories . But I'd like to know what you guys think. Issue is quality of traffic and long term success of the ranking. Thanks!  

Answer 1

Any time you are getting solid performance guarantees, unless you have some kind of cost per lead deal set up, it is a huge red flag. SEO guarantees are B. S. IF they actually can guarantee you ranking on page 1, then they probably are ok with black hat techniques, which can/will get you blacklisted eventually.  

Answer 2

Run from anyone who guarantees rankings using SEO. They are either lying or like @penicillin says, they are using black hat techniques.  

Answer 3

Well sometimes sales managers in seo agencies guarantee whatever, it doesn't mean their tech specialists can do that in practice. In reality they guarantee what is written in their seo contract. I mean do they refund money if your keywords aren't there in time? That is a guarantee. ))) If not these guarantee talks are just talks - maybe they just lie or maybe cheat little bit to get a client. Or maybe they actually can do that. No one knows. It is your choice to work with them or no anyway.  

Answer 4

Depends how difficult your niche is. GIve us some of your keywords to see.  

Answer 5

You can review G search console to review if the impressions are improving for the relevant keywords. If everything looks believable at first sight, why not test for two months to see if they are so good at their craft and make such a big difference.  

Answer 6

Despite the fact that you are in a niche market (which can make it possible to reach top positions using SEO), there are big sharks out there selling alcohol accessories (Walmart, IKEA, Etsy, etc) and this makes it harder to compete. If they are promising these results only using SEO without any pay per click efforts I suggest you ask the following questions: 1- What percentage of the total traffic will it be relevant? (You can view this through Analytics search terms) 2- What kind of tactics will you be using? 3- Will this ranking be nationwide or local? (It is possible to get you that ranking in your local area) And remember, SEO is directly linked to your website’s content despite what many can say. If they won’t be updating or adding content then it can only mean they will be putting you out there in irrelevant places just to reach traffic goals. By doing so, your site may lose quality and take a big toll on your rankings in the long run. To ensure performance and relevance, I suggest setting up a contract using a % as collateral if they can’t meet their promise. Also, have an extension of up to 1yr of warranty in case your site gets suspended to get a full refund (this will blow away black hat practitioners).  

Comments

Thanks for that. My keyword volume tho is 11k average / month , so despite big sharks around, it's still not that big of a category/keyword I think. What would you do to rank , what's the n1 thing you think has an impact on a website?  

Answer 7

I'd be concerned with anyone offering "guaranteed" anything in the SEO space. to me that's a real warning sign. What happens if they don't hit their guarantee, do they work free?  

Comments

And would you want their work even if it was free?  

Answer 8

I’ve been in the SEO game for 3 years and I do 50% keywords guaranteed on page within 12 months as KPI or else we work for free. Been using this and my client are happy with our guarantee.  

Answer 9

Perhaps you can guarantee you will pay them for their services once they've ranked 70% of said keywords on page 1! Unfortunately, there's lots of charlatans in the industry throwing around claims of guaranteed rankings and then massively under-delivering on that promise. Personally, I'd say it's a massive red flag. Just how niche are your target keywords? Seeing as you're posting in a Google Ads group, I'll assume you're running ads. How's that working out for you so far?  

Comments

Hey Aron, thanks for your comment. I did run google ads, perhaps didn't run them long enough or my website wasn't optimised but something like 150 clicks, no sales. Margins don't let me justify the cost of the ads so i stopped. However, my niche is whiskey accessories, so it's very niche and I believe I can achieve page 1 . I need to post blog content and have the website more active tho I guess.  

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There aren't many reputable companies who will work for free until xyz happens.  

Answer 10

These are worthless if you really care about quality. people still think digital marketing cheap and easy work !  

Answer 11

They maybe confident, but wont be able to guarantee. If they do 100% then they might be scammers or blackhat

Answer 12

If you are not providing value, I mean like thorough articles, that are relevant and thorough. they will most probably buy links and some blackhat tactics. for thoroughness you need time (6 month) and it will be expensive usually

Answer 13

Never seen anyone actually make this happen. Unless it was a handful of keywords that had lower volume.  

Answer 14

As the other question was already covered, I never heard that you can actually rank well with Shopify as its a Saas platform.  

Comments

That's strange tho. some huge companies are running on shopify

Answer 15

Thanks everyone for the answers. If I can just follow up with 1 question : Ranking is not easy, takes time and can be expensive. However, this is all relevant to the searches per month and how competitive a niche is. Would you consider hard to rank for a keyword with 10-15k searches a month - no big big leader on page 1 . And, what is the n1 impactful action to take to impact ranking on google? Blog posts or? Thanks.  

Comments

@hypnotic in my experience, the one that could impact the ranking would be the user experience in the website, the structure and the way you do your mapping of the keywords, on page optimisation, then follow by the content/blog post. You have to research on the topic of the blog post, not just come up with a blog post and expect it to get rank. How you structure the blogposts will also affect the ranking.  

Answer 16

You can rank fine on Shopify - been there, done that. Monthly search volume has nothing to do with competitiveness. It all has to do with the sorts of pages that are ranking for the term. The questions you're asking show a fundamental misunderstanding of SEO. It comes down to: Decide what keywords you want to rank for, then deliberately make a strategy to rank for them according to the ranking signals google shows preference for on page 1.  

Comments

Interesting, thanks for sharing. As a shopify user, did you yourself focus on blog posts or what was the one direction you chose for your business to focus on in order to raise SEO rankings? thanks

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I optimized the product pages to rank for their search terms, like "Buy [product], [product reviews], and then I use blog posts (less important) to rank for other relevant search terms in the niche, which goes back to my product pages.  

Answer 17

70% of keywords doesn't mean 70% of search volume. If 3 keywords of 10 have 90% of te volume you don't get much results even they deliver the promise. More over Google is making more algorithm changes than never before ( been on SEO for more than 8 years). Hire the team, their workflow, the interest they show on your business goal. NOT vanity metrics or promises.  

Answer 18

Top 10 doesn't say that much. If half your keywords are stuck fluctuating between 9-10, then you won't get much traffic. Tthey can, however, claim that they have delivered. There are a loads of other positions to consider. Position zero, "People also ask", images, videos, whatnot, all taking up valuable screen real estate on the first page, seriously deminshing the value of position 5 to 10. Hell sometimes even position 2 and 3. I'll join the chorus by saying you shouldn't hire based on promises. Not a specific one and definitely not one so vague. Top 10 is rarely difficult, even on quite competitive queries.  

Answer 19

Whenever someone in digital marketing, not just in SEO field, is garanting you something so desperatelly I would say just run man :) Beleive me ;)

Answer 20

Shopify? Lol. If they are able to there is clearly no competition as the code on those sites is rubbish

Answer 21

I guarantee you they going to use view bots. Stay away.  

Answer 22

I can do that too

Answer 23

They will be using PBN, you can get short term gains with them. But if PBNs aren't managed carefully then you will get slapped in next google update. Best would be to get backlinks through outreach campaigns. Hire an agency that does that. Quality and research matters in this. Some people in the industry calls it as Niche edit links. Don't go with a package from agency. You want to see each stage of it from links research (pages strength) to outreach mails.