occassionally you find a new and good seo or a more developed one that buys lots of links, but most guarantees are a waste of money.
It's impossible to guarantee anything in this life, let alone what search engines are going to do in the future. I agree that profitable PPC is always part of a successful marketing campaign. Isn't that sort of like a maintenance fee?
Agree, I think it's unethical. I think the best they can promise is based on client's keywords / keyphrases and their current position; how much better can they make the SERP. But that's not as exciting as the top position.
Traffic Power has got to be about one of the worst companies.. Our company has caller ID on our phones, and they cold called like 12 times yesterday and today. Finally I had enough and picked up the phone to see what they wanted. To sell some crappy marketing was my guess, when I told him we weren't interested, he said "Have a nice day, LADY" really snotty and hung up. What an arsehole. After the clusterf***s they have created for unknowing 'clients' I find it to be pretty ballsy of them to be rude when THEY CALL YOU! :evil: Pathetic.
Some do guarentee a placement - a trick i have seen is for them to target businesses saying they will get them to the top, then they do get them to the top for a whole heap of money. The trick is - they get them to the top for uncompetitive search terms - things that nobody would search for - but to someone who doesn't know the internet or seo - they are happy because they are number 1 in google.
I would never trust an SEO company that make absolute claims.