Some SEO Companies Don't Have A Website That's W3C Compliant!!!

Experts is a bad term in completely SEO i agree, however it's not "guesses" it's years of work and thousands of hours trial and error. I don't fully understand how my car works, or the insides of my computer but i can operate both and make them do what i intend.

Same with Google, sure you have the odd BSOD or Car Smash that's out of your control but typically things work out exactly as you intend. It's roughly my 10th anniversary doing this, i started wondering why one of my pages ranked and the other didn't around Xmas 98 with AltaVista and i still wouldn't call myself an expert but it's far more than simply guesses.

As for promising rankings, no that's something i don't like to do either but you can predict how high and how soon fairly accurately with experience. For instance someone here from DP pushed me for a time frame for the keyword "ringtones" on his site that didn't rank anywhere for the term. I said 3 months, but in 7 weeks i had him ranked in #4 and above sites like About.com, Wiki, Apple.com, MTV.com etc.

So you can promise rankings, but the chance of things not going to plan is high so any decent SEO should avoid it and promise tangible things instead like more revenue, traffic etc.

 

Maybe I am, but from my understanding a validated page should load faster, because of less errors?
Ofcourse, you could make a very long page and have it be validated, but I feel that if you have a fast loading page with few errors, the bots will scan it quicker and more efficiently.
I've yet to read anything to disprove that, and I'll continue to suggest to any clients that it be something to consider cleaning up

 

Yes, you are right, I guess. If someone promises you a high ranking, its understandable that you may or may not achieve it. But if a SEO company guarantees you a top ten ranking, it sure raises some eyebrows.

I also agree that there exist some people and companies who have a proven record of success in SEO. But there are some kids who rip a template from template monster, set up a flashy website and pretend they are expert SEO's. These are the people who ruin the business of other legitimate companies.

Rule of thumb...Be your own SEO Expert....

 

Yes for sure, most these "Guaranteed top 10 rankings" sites are a sham and the rankings are "Some obscure long term nobody searches for" they guarantee which does nothing. I have met a couple of Guaranteed Rankings firms that were legitimate, if they failed you got $x back for every keyword they didn't achieve. Buy yes, generally guarantees = sham.

This completely gets under my skin, and the worst thing about it is to SEO's these people are painfully obvious but for customers they can't tell the difference until it's too late. Also it's ironic, these last few posts are nearly an exact replica of the beginning of my How to Choose an SEO thread i done.. Which i "have" to pull my finger out and finish soon.