Google SEO Starter Guide [pdf]
I would love it if Google published an official answer to the perennial client question: "Why can't you get my site to the top of the SERPs for [insert competitive keywords here]?"My answer is usually along these lines: "Your site is competing for placement with many other professionally-built sites. If I'm doing my job properly, and so are the other web developers, none of us is or should be entitled to top placement. Also, placement depends heavily on factors that are solely in your control as the site owner, such as the quality of the content."But when web devs say this, clients sometimes think we're just trying to shirk responsibility. So I would be really happy if I could point them to an official statement from Gogole that conveys roughly the same message.