Several years ago I hired an individual to be a copywriter for me. He’d never worked in the SEO industry before and we had to do quite a bit of training to get him to fully understand how SEO copywriting was different than traditional copywriting. Within three weeks I realized he just wasn’t working out and had to let him go. He wasn’t the first.
A few months later I noticed a new SEO company appear in our local area. After doing a bit of research I realized that this my former employee. What did he know about SEO? Well, not a whole heck of a lot. But who knows, maybe I was actually able to teach him a thing or two during his three week tenure.
His site offered an ebook he had written titled “19 days to #1”, for sale for only $195.95. Yes, that is the actual ad he used to promote the book on his site. I never bought the book though curiosity almost got the best of me once or twice. But I figure that any book promising rankings on AltaVista, Excite and Lycos, even back in 2005, wasn’t worth the digital paper it was written on.
But this was back when SEO “Guarantees” were quite commonplace. SEOs would offer ranking guarantees with tight controls to ensure that no matter what happens they can’t lose. The client’s rarely win, but that should never stand in the way of “success”.