» Should SEO be Standardized? Cutting through the Bullshit

In the past I have written about how SEO is Bullshit. More accurately my distrust of the SEO profession, which is mostly based on the increase in unethical individuals seeking to profiteer off of an uneducated client base and a lack of definitive knowledge on the inner workings of search engines. That being said, I recently came across an interesting article on the blog Epicenter titled “Time to Standardize SEO?” Essentially the article states that there are two sides of the argument for standardization in search engine optimization.

Side 1 – The Argument for SEO Standardization:
The first side of the argument was started by Chris Boggs in his article “SEO Standards Signal the Maturing of Our Industry” Which states that steps should be taken to standardize SEO before the unethical SEO firms ruin the business for everyone.

Side 2 – Arguing Against SEO Standardization:
The second side of the argument is generally focused around the idea that the profession has been fine so far without standards and that the net changes too quickly to create an adequate set of them.

Both sides of the argument have their own strengths and weaknesses however I tend to disagree with any argument that uses “we have always done it that way” as a key point. Being afraid of change is something that I have found in most situations to accompany a weak stance in an argument.

Standards could help create better search results.
Any designer who has dabbled in SEO knows that it can be a very long and aggravating process. It can be very annoying to have your site achieve good results in one search engine only to have nominal results in another. The length of time it takes to see results leads to sites that are typically optimized for one search engine, usually google. Standardization could create a set of criteria that would allow a complying site to receive at least average results across all search engines. This not only would be good for the web professionals, but also search engines and users. Search engines would benefit from more accurate indexing, while users can expect to receive better more relevant searches no matter which search engine they use.

The situation from a designers view.
Personally I think that having at least a loose set of standards would be a good thing for the web as a whole. It would give clients a way to judge the reputability of a potential firm and it would help sort the unethical companies from the ethical ones. I think part of the reason that many SEO firms are so afraid of a set of standards is that it would lower the barriers of entry for the profession. With a defined set of standards, designers could easily offer standards compliant SEO services just like the many who offer standards compliant xHTML and CSS services. Additionally, so called “proprietary” SEO services will be seen for what they really are, bullshit. Designers will be able to compete on an equal playing field because the false promises made by unethical SEO professionals will be easier to spot by clients.

Designers benefit from standards every day.
Just think about the standards that effect designers in every day practice. Without standards like SWOP we would have nothing to judge the quality and accuracy of 4-color offset printing. Without web standards, most sites would still mix presentation with structure. Standards such as these grant the ability to judge a services offering, something that is extremely hard to do for SEO right now.

So don’t be afraid of standards in SEO, they would create a way to judge the effectiveness of a SEO firm’s abilities and help create more accurate search results amongst all the different search engines. Obviously my view is not the only one on the issue, so if you have something to add please let me know in the comments below.

04/16

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10 Responses to “Should SEO be Standardized? Cutting through the Bullshit”

Auron
April 16th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

If enough people do something incorrectly it will be looked upon as the correct way to do something.

So unless these standards can somehow get over 50% of the designers to adopt them they are next to useless imo.

For a historic example, look at how long the CSS verse Table war lasted in web development all due to the majority of people using tables.

Thanks for the read!
cjung
April 16th, 2008 at 11:59 pm

It’s not the Websitecreator, who is always to blame, it’s the searchengines, that permanently change their search standards. How do you define the standard for SEO when the Searchengines don’t know, if their algorythms will be the same next year?

If you standardise SEO in the production of Webcontent you standardise Serchengines too. I think that’s not the thing we all want. There’s more than just google. I like to have different kind of searchengines with different ways to collect informations because of their different results.
Barney
April 17th, 2008 at 1:23 am

You give a healthy vista onto the debate, however I believe an open standardisation of search algorithms would leave the web more open to abuse by the technically-minded, would decrease the open-ended value of search, and create a virus/anti-virus kind of business model that would not only fail to resolve the problem of SEO crooks, but would crucially reduce the openness of the Internet for its audience.

Am I being paranoid? I feel the secretivenesses of Google’s algorithm is a fantastic device that enables genuinely useful sites to emerge in the environment of multi-million funded PR-driven constructs. At the end of the day, the mystery of how it establishes value is of great use to the average Jo on the net.

On the other hand, I have no sympathy with companies that treat their web team with contempt and shell out thousands on SEO teams. They deserve everything they get and I don’t think this kind of evitable ignorance and gullibility need special legislation to change the nature of the net for their benefit alone.
Barney
April 17th, 2008 at 1:26 am

Sorry for not getting it all in one, I just hit on the perfect argument: Whereas right now gullible businesses shell out ludicrous money for the mystical/mythical expertise of SEO ‘professionals’, what you’re suggesting would make genuine SEO professionals indispensable. Look at the commercial implications of this, there would be less hocus-pocus, but a lot more money to lose by everyone (or made by a new class of professionals, depending on how you look at it).
Zinni
April 17th, 2008 at 5:58 am

I just wanted to clarify that I am not suggesting a complete set of rigid standards that must be followed. If a content creator would choose not to follow the standards then so be it, however their results may vary.

I am proposing that a set of loose standards are developed. Search engines would have the flexibility to go above and beyond yet still agree to accept a set of minimum standards that would lead to better indexing. Creativity and expansion are still possible in this situation. As designers our creativity comes from finding ways to work within constraints, something SEO professionals would still be able to do with a set of minimum standards.

Thank you everyone for your comments, they bring great insight to the discussion.
Dave
April 17th, 2008 at 11:38 am

Ummm. Google’s algorithms are not super secret or hocus pocus; yes I know that the public PageRank algorithms are just part of a larger picture, but that picture is pretty clear: Google’s goal is to catalog information in a very logical and academic way, focusing on the expected experience of a typical user and believing the web to be a large set of documents. With that in mind, and assuming Google’s algorithms to be high-quality and improving with each iteration, here is what you should do as an “SEO”:

- improve content (for actual users)
- code pages in semantic HTML

optional steps would be

- enact a marketing plan that includes communicating with other sites such that they are aware of you and link to you
- use meta information and tools (not META tags, meta like the prefix): submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster tools, etc.

There are three common problems:

- web developers/SEOs don’t or can’t improve content.
- web developers/SEOs think the content is good (and the code semantic) when it isn’t
- web developers/SEOs setup success criteria wrong. (You’re focusing hard on returning high for specific phrases, when your focus is actually a step back: getting people to the site and achieving high conversion rates once they do.)

So, when you talk about standardizing SEO, I think what you might be looking for is supporting semantic code and quality content.
Zinni
April 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Dave, I agree with everything you have said, in my opinion you have given some very good advice, which is pretty much in line with what I personally try to follow. Great comment!
web pixy
April 18th, 2008 at 3:06 am

I think that in most cases standards are a good thing. So it would be nice if there were some SEO standards but as you say, the industry develops quickly and these standards should always follow it on the way.
Simon
April 20th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

I agree too, SEO is all about content. If you don’t have the content people won’t want to visit your site and it is impossible to SEO. Having said that, should SEO be standardised specifically to stop the bad SEO agencies?
SEO Bedrijven
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:10 am

As long as we have Google you can not standardize SEO ;-)