No one can promise you the first position on Google

Every so often an SEO proposal arrives with a number in it: first position, page one, top three. It is the easiest promise to write and the hardest to keep, and Google has said so directly.

What Google says

Google's guidance on hiring an SEO states that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. The same page warns about providers who claim a special relationship with Google or offer what they call a priority submission. Google Search Central also says that if an SEO promises first place in search results, you should look for a different provider.

Timing is a separate problem. Google's starter guide says some changes might take effect within hours and others could take several months. It suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change helped, and it notes that Google gives no guarantee that any particular site will be added to its index. Those points are in the SEO Starter Guide.

What that means for a proposal

A provider who knows the limits will talk about the work they will do, the timeframe in which they expect to see movement, and how they will measure it. A provider who does not will talk about positions. I would treat the second kind of proposal as unanswered on every question that matters, however good the rest of the document looks.

This does not mean a provider cannot be confident. It means confidence should attach to things they control: the audit, the fixes, the content, the reporting. Results depend on those things and on factors nobody outside Google controls.

What to ask instead

Replace "will you get me to first position?" with questions that have honest answers:

• What will you do in the first three months, and what will I receive each month?
• What do you expect to see, when, and what will you do if it does not happen?
• How will you and I agree whether this has worked, using data from accounts my business owns?

The full list of questions, with what a sound answer looks like, is in what an SEO proposal should contain. You can put the answers into the SEO proposal scorecard, where a guarantee of a ranking is treated as a deal-breaker.

A disclosure

This site is published by Web Marketing International FZCO, which sells SEO. I do not guarantee rankings, and I would ask you to hold me to the same standard as everyone else. If you want something concrete to compare proposals against, I offer a free SEO audit on my own site.

The wider method for choosing a provider is in how to choose an SEO agency in Dubai.