Every client wants a 30 day guarantee until they actually read the fine print

A prospect in Austin told me they only sign with agencies that promise rankings in a month, so I put that in writing and we both learned what happens when Google's core update hits week 3, has anyone else had to walk back a timeline they knew was unrealistic from the start?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray_mitchell1mo ago

Learned that lesson the hard way with a local plumber client a couple years back. I put a 45 day ranking promise in the contract just to close the deal, and sure enough their service area got hit by a spam update that wiped out half the pages. Ended up rewriting the whole pitch to focus on traffic and leads instead of exact rankings, and now every contract has language about algorithm changes being out of our control. Those core updates don't care about what you signed, and the client eventually got it once they saw the rankings come back stronger another month later. Now I tell people up front that any agency guaranteeing a specific position in a set timeframe is either lying or getting lucky.

kim_hart71mo ago

That "lying or getting lucky" line hit me hard because I used to think SEO was just a math problem you could solve. Then I watched a client tank overnight for no reason I could control, and suddenly all my guarantees felt stupid.