Google search engine

If you’ve been around online marketing for long enough it’s highly likely you’ll hear somebody make the claim, ‘I can guarantee you number 1 position on Google natural listing!’ Obviously this is a fantastic claim but can it be true, is it possible to guarantee it?

Achieving a number 1 position on Google can be very difficult but it can also be relatively straight forward. The main factor to account for is competition. If the chosen search term is a long multi-word string with only a few other sites ranked for that term, none of which are focused on that term then it should be quite simple. However if your chosen search term is a single word with a huge amount of competition, with a great deal of this competition focused on that term then it is going to be a lot more difficult, however it is certainly not impossible.

I had the opportunity to work with one client where part of the strategy was to focus on a single word search term which was the most generic one for their market where this term was highly competitive, having around 85 million results on Google. Well we did achieve the number 1 natural ranking,  but this was at the cost of other parts of the strategy. Subsequently we found that the competition, some of whom were much bigger than my client with much deeper pockets didn’t want to be pushed down the rankings and reinvested heavily in regaining the position. We also found out that the word we had chased so hard wasn’t particularly good in terms of return for our extra investment. An interesting learning curve knowing that we could achieve number 1 position for a highly competitive search term and equally interesting to know it didn’t necessarily give us the edge in our strategy. It should be noted the cost of achieving this was significant and the resources at hand where not just those of the client. I have to say I gave far more than I had to myself as I was keen to see what we could achieve given the opportunity. This was a definitely one-off, if I had had multiple clients at the same time with the same requirement I certainly wouldn’t of been able to do the same for them all.

The answer to the question whether you can guarantee number 1 position on Google is yes, in theory you can achieve a number 1 position for anything. However to do this you will have to have the appropriate resources. If the term you are chasing is highly competitive these resources are going to have to be significant. Of course it helps if you know what you are doing so that you might be able to limit the splurge of resources to the minimum required but this could still be considerable. If someone tells you they can guarantee you a number 1 natural position on Google then you need to tread very cautiously. Of course for any term it’s possible as there is always a number 1 position on Google but if it is being guaranteed then I would be highly suspicious.