Background
There has always been a lot of mystery surrounding the online marketing industry especially Search Engine Optimization. There are even some that consider the efforts of SEO as selling “snake oil” and even some discredit the industry as a whole because of perceived SEO practices that will get your website blacklisted.
Chris Boggs at Search Engine Watch wrote on the topic, called for standards to be adopted and outlined steps to build these standards based upon 1. definition, 2. risk and 3. education. I think that these are all valid and could be a useful tool for accountability for marketers.
The Heat of the Game
Recently, Jill Whalen sited her own feelings regarding the topic in an editorial at Search Engine Land and Lisa Barone from Bruce Clay fired back. Based upon the voting on Sphinn about each of these posts at the time of writing this post here are the breakdowns:
- No – 56 Sphinns
- Yes – 51 Sphinns
If you break this down a bit further, a realistic look at the online marketing community can be visualized:
(total unique voters are counted, votes for both are marked as undecided)
I think that the split within the industry is pretty consistent with these.
I know, many of you are probably saying “but you haven’t answered the question!”
OK! I hear you!
I have to be perfectly up front, I land right on the fence on this issue, but don’t get me wrong, I feel that there are compelling arguments on both sides. I think that there is a need for any business consulting to hold itself to specific standards that are above questionable practices, but in that same respect our industry is held to standards that are maintained by independent entities (search engines) that are not publishing the specific rules of engagement for optimal performance. In fact, each of the engines have differing views as to what is more important, so this makes it extremely difficult to lay out specific standards for everyone to subscribe to.
Similar to the medical industry, there are adopted principles and practices that are approved by industry resources like the American Medical Association. Even though all of the secrets of the human body have not been unlocked, they still have standard operating procedures for identifying and treating medical concerns.
Why we would want SEO standards
To be simplistic, the adoption of standards for SEO would simplify the process of selecting a comfort level for making adjustments to a website to improve performance. Similar to medicine, you can do things that are outside the acceptable practices to gain optimal performance. Example, using performance enhancing drugs in professional sports, might get you a record or give your team the little extra that will win a few extra games or even a championship. But, in the long-run it runs the risk of tarnishing your reputation and potentially can get you banned from the sport.
Is it worth it? That is a question that the individual athlete or website owner has to answer for themselves. In the eyes of professional sports, the excuse that you didn’t know what you were doing… will only get you so far.
Organizations, like SEMPO, have already adopted standards and best practices that are widely recognized as such, so some might argue that they are already in place.
Like the medical industry, without adopting specific practices and principles, the process of finding a reputable SEO might be difficult, however this is required no matter what the type of business. Know your partners. You wouldn’t want to jump right in without knowing the risks and rewards of any other business venture, why should it be different for your website?
Adopting standards would allow for more formal education and certifications, like the medical industry. However unlike medicine, we are working to perform in an environment that is governed by the search engines not trying to ward off infection and disease. We communicate at different levels, so the medical industry does not need to be worried about withholding information about what we are doing to fight and eliminate cancer, because cancer doesn’t read their research. The search engines, on the other hand, do study SEO either for warding off artificial inflating performance or performing better themselves.
Why we wouldn’t want SEO standards
Search Engine Optimization is not always cut and dry. Many practices that are beneficial to one website may not be helpful to another, however there are consistent behaviors and practices that every website should include in their strategy. Although these practices, strategies and behaviors might seem elusive, they are easy to grasp when you take a holistic view of web development and visibility by fully understanding all of the ingredients of a web page, what the search engines can and cannot see and other fundamental components of web design.
Many feel that businesses have to make ethical and moral business decisions on a regular basis, so what is the great concern with them doing the same thing when it comes to online visibility? Search engine performance is not purely a game of popularity, nor does it consider how profitable one company is over another (although it can help). Search engine performance is all about providing the user with a positive experience. Sure, Google wants to index all of the world’s information and make it easily accessible for everyone, but before they can do this, they have to provide consistent results to user’s requests that are what the user is seeking, otherwise there is no reason to index mass amounts of information if you can’t find what you are looking for!
Pressing on, many SEO professionals don’t want to level the playing field in regards to competition with other SEOs and leak their secrets to the general public because of a fear of higher expectations from clients or dissolution of the industry. If everyone knows how to do, what will they need me for? Really, there is great benefit for a company to know what the best practices for optimization are, even if they are not doing the work themselves. The website owner has the industry experience in their particular industry, just like a doctor/patient relationship, both parties need to be transparent in order for positive benefit for them both.
My thoughts
I think that the SEO industry could benefit from solidifying standards and defining much of our craft for the betterment of those seeking our employ. This would also give value towards more formal education and accreditation and level the playing field. However, with this, there will still be advanced techniques that could be employed (not black hat) to enhance, not inflate, performance but that can’t be taught.
Search Engine Optimization has many truths, even if they haven’t been outlined by the search engines themselves, self-evident things from a common sense approach, that could be outlined and adopted or subscribed to by industry professionals above board. Whether or not this would be beneficial for the industry, we will have to only guess, but the one thing that would be accomplished is the search engines would have more power over their results than ever before. SEO keeps the engines honest, and as much as I hate it when an adjustment is made to their algorithms to address black hat techniques, these adjustments are necessary because they highlighted an exposed part that was taken advantage of.
I don’t hate the search engines, they are the yin to my yang. They are trying to do the same thing that SEO professionals, like myself, are trying to do, provide the user what they seek so they will come back again. I know that there are many website owners and SEOs out there that are in for today and not concerned for the future, such is the cycle of business. As Chris noted:
Every marketer should have the ability to make search marketing decisions not based on ethical or moral considerations of using specific tactics, but on their own business model. If you’re a Super Bowl T-shirt salesman and need to sell a few million items around the time of the big game, you may be willing to use riskier tactics. That should be your choice.
So, whether there are strict guidelines, principles or accepted industry standards, I will still be here for the user, they dictate my behavior.
I have nothing to be defensive about, I’m legit!
In an effort to be totally transparent, I work with Chris Boggs and I respect both Jill Whalen and Lisa Barone.
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Firstly, apologises about following up on an old post.
Aren’t the Google/MSN/Yahoo webmaster guidelines in effect SEO guidelines? They list the different things designers should be doing to optimise the site for the crawlers. Obviously we can expect them to release the exact engine spec or else everyone would be finding ways to trick the results. Sorry if I’ve completely missed the point too, still quite new to all of this SEO business.
@Stephen Ryan: Stephan, thanks for the comment. Don’t mind that it is a little more dated than others, the comments are welcomed.
The webmaster guidelines published by the search engines aren’t really “SEO guidelines” in as much as political speeches and campaign promises from politicians are actualities. The engines say what they want, but the results don’t always back up the rhetoric. The most important thing is to see what they are doing and not to get stuck on what they are saying.
Yes, they wouldn’t want to be totally transparent, it wouldn’t be good for business, engine or optimizer. But, like the old adage, “It’s not what you say that matters, it’s what you do.” So, second guessing, looking at the results and figuring out how the result matches with the actions of another website is paramount. I hope this brought a little more light to the situation.
Feel free to ask more questions new post or not, you can even send me an email if you would like. I hope you don’t get a bad taste for the SEO business, it really is unique and always changing.