4eyes - 8:47 pm on Feb 12, 2002 (gmt 0)

We explain that the purpose of the exercise is to get more traffic, and that can be achieved without necessarily getting a 'top ranking'.

We explain the relevance of chosing the correct keywords and making sure that your site has content enough to cover all those keywords.

We show them an example of one of our customers whose traffic increased by 5 fold despite the fact that his positions for his 'chosen' keywords did not improve significantly (he now gets found for many more keywords).

In the 'nicest possible way' we explain to the customer that we can put our energy into getting more traffic for him, or we can focus on one keyphrase because he wants a guarantee of a top ten ranking.

If it was crucial to a deal we could find a suitable risk sharing formula based on increased traffic, but so far we haven't had to.

On a personal level, 'money back' guarantees tend to scare me off more than attract me - too many scam artists offering bogus guarantees means it has lost its value for me.