Oh, That’s Right, We Don’t Need SEO Standards

From my own experience I have found that people feel that they should get something commensurate to what they give. Most people have no idea how to properly perform and manage SEO on a website. They don’t want to know, they are content to say “You know how to do it? Then just make it happen.” People just don’t know the time, effort, or energy it takes to make it happen.

That being said, people want to see results from it. People want to be able to look at the information we provide them on their website and be able to see a definitive improvement. Whether or not they know what SEO is, how much it costs, or what it entails if they can see an improvement they will continue to engage in services to continue to see improvements and sustained excellence.

Selecting an SEO service is the difficult part. Always ask those who have already used some seo services.

So I still don’t know what the true value of SEO is?

I have a degree in computer science, but I’d never heard of SEO before I read this article. Interesting stuff. It makes me want to learn more, but I guess I won’t google it.

Good and informative post. Some set standards could have saved me a large amount of time an money

I cant imagine in a global market place such as IT that standards for this will be introduced when people compete in India, USA etc
I would assume that a free market would emerge (eventually). If someone wants to spend $20 a month and expects $1000′s in bonus revenue then more fool them. I think any expenditure on SEO is best left up to the marketing department who will develop an expected ROI on any marketing expense which is quantifiable.

Maybe there is money in setting up your own SEO web portal where every SEO business gets ranked like eBay?

Thanks for introducing this as a topic btw. Hope to hear more from you.

A good appreciation of the current state of knowledge about SEO.

I would also have like to have seen some ready reckoner approach to where you might find reputable, reasonably priced services as well.

gary a.

I found this post very interesting and informative, especially regarding the views of the study subjects. And it made it more clear to me what SEO is. Thanks!

Good article, is this why its so difficult to actually find “information” on the WWW as oposed to “Advermation”? Why arent “paid” SEO sites listed seperately and “best match” listed seperately, the difference would be amazing. Do we really need to know when we search say bycicle, that 29,750 are for sale on eBay righ now?? Well Done. David

Great article! I agree that the small sample size introduces uncertainty into the results, but as anecdotal evidence, the conclusions infered are interesting

It seems that the SEO industry is suffering from immaturity and a lack of quality information being easily available to those wishing to benefit from it. Compilation of a set of industry “best practices” as opposed to some kind of explicit regulation (as is done for engineering, doctors, lawyers etc) seems to be the best course of action to take, in my opinion.

I have no problem with the those offering unrealistic promises of service, but those who engage them should be able to do so from an informed position, as opposed to the position of ignorance which most seem to have at present.

Keep up the good work!

No doubt it is a very interesting article and the way you phrase it makes it lively too and plus with the analysis. Before reading here, i actually have no idea about SEO but this article was kinda interesting and makes me when to look up what is it!:)

Hi Marta,

Good article. It definitely opens the floor to customer satisfaction when doing searches. Search engine companies ultimately want their search engine to return relevant results increasing customer satisfaction and keeping them on top. Companies making use of search engines are looking for a good hit ratio translating into sales.

The problem from a search engine perspective is there are a lot of dirty tricks out there that increase the popularity of a website. These tricks don’t improve the quality of the search. Good search engine companies are geared for this and spend a lot of time and effort to ensuring that this ‘standard’ is kept up. Keeping this ‘standard’ up could easily mean changes to the search engine’s architecture.

Choosing a good SEO company in my opinion would mean protecting your website investment. This means going with a company that understands the technology it is leveraging. How much to spend? Well you would have to leave that up to an ROI investigation.

A few ways to tell if the SEO company is serious about your business would be:

Check their certification programs, are they up-to-date in Google’s, Yahoo’s and MSN opinion? You might say this means nothing as long as the results are top. But it really means that they are building your website presence in a manner that reduces the risk of loosing hits if the search engine changes its search strategy.

Check their references. Speak to their customers.

Ensure that they monitor the hit ratios of current customers. This shows active maintenance and that any reoccurring fees that you pay are going where it counts.

Concisely put, Marta. I am one of those trogolodites who have no idea what SEO is, so in response to this article I can only provide the point of view of a ‘lay person’. I think that the industry needs to be put into the spotlight more in the lay person’s world (ie, not the buisness world), for it to be readily known and utilised, and a dollar-value-for-service figure placed on it. It’s almost as if it needs some serious PR in the consumer mainstream. Or maybe this article was over my head. These are simple thoughts from a primary school teacher.

Jason Cattach,

Since your summary of SEO services includes condemnation of those who guarantee their work, I resent the implication that The Visible Dentist may in some way be unscrupulous.

To the contrary, unlike most SEO services which fail to warranty anything, we instead guarantee that unless we deliver on our promise of ranking the website, the client pays nothing.

Would you buy a product, a TV, a car, or other tangible merchandise without assurance of getting your money’s worth? Do you seek to shop in stores that carry no guarantee of their wares?

FYI, our clients are VERY happy with the service we provide. No “pity” needed or wanted; especially since they recoup 500% – 1,000% of their SEO investment in the first year alone.

Please, before you expound on issues of which you know little, do some research in advance. Impressionable people might actually take you seriously.

John Barremore
Houston, TX

John: To the contrary, unlike most SEO services which fail to warranty anything, we instead guarantee that unless we deliver on our promise of ranking the website, the client pays nothing.

How can you absolutely promise that a 3rd party, unrelated to either yourself or your client, is going to behave in the fashion you expect or predict?

John: Would you buy a product, a TV, a car, or other tangible merchandise without assurance of getting your money’s worth? Do you seek to shop in stores that carry no guarantee of their wares?

Your analogy with consumer items is not a valid one, as those transactions seem to involve only interested parties. In SEO, Google et. al. couldn’t care less about the promises The Visible Dentist has made to its clients, nor whether you are able to deliver on them.

John: It truly escapes me how you cannot grasp the simple concept of someone guaranteeing their work.
Thanks for the condescending tone. I hope none of your prospective clients take note of it

In review:
- Jason takes a (well deserved in my opinion) jab at those SEO companies offering ridiculous guarantees and those who give money to them.
- You take offence at this, indicating (to me) that perhaps you offer such guarantees (and a brief look at your website seems to confirm this suspicion). You then offer some misguided analogy in your defence.
- I question your ability to meet these guarantees (an ability which you seem to assert with great confidence), given the large role 3rd parties would seem to play in this success.
- You offer a condescending response, basically confirming what had already been said (results are not assured, though clients don’t pay on failure)

Did I miss something obvious?

John, you seemed to agree with the blog post at first, a part of which cast the unrealistic guarantees made by some SEO providers in a negative light. When Jason agreed concerning these unrealistic promises, you mounted a defence, associating yourself (or at least showing yourself to be sympathetic) to these unscrupulous SEO operators. You display unflagging confidence regarding the ability of the “The Visible Dentist” to achieve promises such as these, while seeming to disregard the many factors beyond your control, which ought to serve to reign in that confidence, furthering your association with these people.

Instead of saying how great your company is, claiming that I’m spinning facts in some fashion, or how you should be trusted due to your claimed experience, perhaps you could point out where I’m mistaken, or what your original point might have been?

John, you specifically associated your company with the less scrupulous operators by saying “I resent the implication that The Visible Dentist may in some way be unscrupulous.” when no such implication had been made. This, coupled with your poor analogy about consumer goods, and figures quoted without context only reinforced this association.
You assumed from just 2 sentences that Jason was ignorant, and stated as much at the end of your response. When queried further, you again responded with condescension, when simple clarifications would have sufficed.

It seems you took Jason’s comment and my initial comment as attacks on yourself and/or your company, and have continued to do so.

Hi John,

No apology necessary, but thank you! I have watched with interest as this verbal debate has played out.

From an objective perspective, it appears that the debate has now been caught in the literal meaning of certain words, where a ‘pay on performance’ guarantee is being confused with a straight ‘give me your money, but we ‘guarantee’ we can do it’.

Perhaps if anyone was confused about the two concepts, the dialogue above can help straighten it out!

I think this is one of the best things about blogging – seeing other opinions play out in an open forum of discussion.

Marta Turek

Marta Turek’s last blog post..The New Divide: Sales vs. Web Team

Marta, this is a very good article. I’d like to say so much more but am suffering from the dreaded “I feel compelled to comment on a post but others have already covered everything you thought of while reading the article” syndrome… The pleasures of getting on board too late!

I will add that this information has come at a perfect time with our own website going live soon. My graphic designer passed on to me an appalling e-book entitled “Search Engines Revealed” written in 2006 by a company that for some reason no longer exists (hmmm…). I respect this designer so much in his ability to “create” but due to the amount of confusing trash written about such a young unregulated industry we find intelligent people potentially following poor advice.

I’m a computer consultant and systems engineer. Our side of the IT Industry is relatively ancient compared to this field but consider just how long it took for decent certifications and standards such as ITIL to appear? Ho hum…

Oh, and more dialog from John and Rian! Perhaps with kit gloves this time? It’s been educational and disturbingly entertaining (I’m already ducking!)

Thanks again, Marta. Bravo!

I concur with Zo: Great article and great discussion in the feedback section. It took a while to read the whole thing, but at this point my understanding of SEO and the intricacies around its offering is much clearer now. Looking forward to reading a follow up.

A.R.

Marta, fantastic article! Very informative and a real eye-opener. Good luck with the scholarship, and hope to hear more from you within this industry in the near future.

Great post! This really highlights and goes quite a way to explain the extreme confusion, trepidation and frustrations many people experience when signing up with any seo company.

The “smokes and mirrors” around results and proposed services, the guarantees on a third party service (google) that we don’t actually have control over and can only do our best to intelligently manipulate is definitely having a much larger impact on the industry than it was 2-3 years ago.

I found your article extremely interesting – the way most seo companies work is the more they can keep the client in the dark as to what they’re actually delivering the longer they’ll get away with doing pretty much nothing – I would argue the opposite – perhaps if todays SEO companies concentrated more on reporting on the benefits and becoming much more accountable for the traffic – and conversions – that they deliver it’s much easier to justify a larger spend for your client to invest in more expensive SEO services once you are delivering results. I personally wonder how long it will take these companies with their guarantees etc to figure that one out?

Great Article… I guess SEO is still really new to people as a form of advertising compared to Print ads and the like, especially as a lot of people still see it as a fair game system. So, I think it’s safe to say the industry and google are still finding their feet in regards to what’s allowed and how far they can push or allow the boundaries to be pushed. thanks.

Hey John,

I’m not sure I agree with you 100% on the SEO and conversion side of things – your SEO needs to be positioned correctly to obtain the visitors that would convert the best for your website/the product you are selling.

Yes the landing page is very important obviously but I would say that also the approach, how you optimise, what you optimise (pages and or keywords ) and where you optimise has a big impact on conversion rate/bounce rate as well.

My main point I was trying to make is that most SEO companies only talk about rankings – why not have this as the secondary measure and lets talk about the traffic and the conversions and subsequent sales/ROI the customer is receiving?

Most SEO companies are reluctant to put the focus on this area because they become a hell of a lot more accountable for their work and the results.

Hey John,

With my comment I meant that the SEO decisions and focus that you decide on directly effect the conversions and sales to your website.

So for example the strategy around what phrases you choose to optimise for and target and very important depending on what target market you are trying to get to visit your site.

Also the other SEO decision that directly effects the conversions and sales is what page you choose to optimise for what search term. Getting this right and choosing the correct landing page for maximum conversion of visitors also directly impacts conversion rate. For example targeting everything on the home page isn’t going to get as great a result as successfully optimising an inner page that gives the searcher exactly what they are looking for.

The initial point in my first point that I was trying to get across is that most SEO companies report on SERP but this in itself actually doesn’t mean anything. My point was if you focus on the actual conversions and sales that you are helping to deliver to a clients site via an increased amount of qualified traffic – which you can track and report on via an analytics program – than it’s much easier and a simple matter for your clients then to justify their spend with you – and easier for them to see the benefits and increase this amount.

The second point I was trying to make is that it’s a little ironic that many companies keep their clients in the dark by not providing them this data – which may mean less work and accountability but it also means much less growth within your existing client base and harder work to get new clients on board. After all word of mouth is effortless sales and if you educate your clients as to what benefits they are receiving you can justify a bigger spend.

Marta,

I liked your clear presentation of the topic. For me, it was an informative introduction to the SEO world.

All the best!

The above study as well as subsequent discussions have been very insightful about a topic that I did not have any understanding of prior to reading these posts.

@Tim Hill

And everyone else who got involved in the discussion, I wanted to say a big thank you. There has been some great debate among commenters as well as some insightful observations as to how the article could be extended upon.

Tim, you have managed very eloquently to present points that attribute to each side of the coin in the standards argument. Of course in this complex issue there is no right or wrong. Certainly, I do not advocate a stranglehold on SEO creativity, but think that at the moment there are perhaps a tad many loopholes in the system that are being exploited.

Looks like your boat stirring was to no avail… perhaps the combatants are all debated out.

Marta, there’s plenty of wind left in my sail — though as Rian Douglas, the sh*t stirrer points out, the “debate” was going nowhere, especially since the concept of guaranteeing one’s work was an elusive notion.

Allow me to reiterate…

Regardless of our inability to control the search engines, if the application of our SEO fails to meet specific keyword goals for the client, there is no charge. We invoice only after positions have been achieved.

If you’re looking for a common safeguard to protect the client and keep the SEO service straight and valuable, a performance warranty seems to be the best choice.

Cheers!

John Barremore
Houston, TX

Rian, you really are the “sensitive” sort of guy. Sorry if your feelings got bruised; didn’t mean to offend you; hope you can forgive me. From now on I’ll be careful to speak with tender, delicate inflection. Again, I’m sorry; you were right and I was a callous ruffian. Hey what’s your favorite color?

John Barremore
Houston, TX

LOL! Let me guess — your favorite color is pink!

John Barremore
Houston, TX

Just for the record, Rian, you never answered my questions; e.g. what are your qualifications to “critique” anyone’s webmaster or SEO skills or their business model? What are your accomplishments on the Web? Have you conducted many (or any) SEO campaigns?

If you have zero successful SEO campaigns nor any satisfied clients to your credit, if you have no abilities in the SEO industry whatsoever, how can you expect your analysis to be well received by anyone?

How do you justify your dialog to be constructive and valid if you have no professional hands-on experience? I mean hey, no offense pal, but to me you’re just blowing smoke. As the saying goes, either put up or shut up.

John Barremore
Houston, TX

Finally some clearness — all this time and at last you reveal that you have no experience in search engine optimization. Everything you’ve said is purely speculation and opinion. Other than wearing your feelings on your shirt sleeve and finding fault with my every word, just what in the hell are you talking about?

What is your point; do you have a perspective on SEO standards, or are you campaigning for Ms Manners or Mr Blog Cop?

John Barremore
Houston, TX

I might as well waste more of everyone’s time answering your “he said she said” BS.

Your post do indeed purport some degree of “authority” as the following assertions suggest:

Being such a new service, it (SEO) probably shouldn’t be too surprising that there is such ignorance from “clients” as regards payment and services provided when compared with what a reputable firm offering SEO can realistically offer, leaving plenty of room for the less desirables to ply their trade.

This (SEO) is how you get your site to be returned in search results, and basically involves changes to the HTML etc of the site to make it friendlier to the web crawlers used by search engines to index the internet.

However it’s obvious you’re clueless since SEO has been around for more than a decade.

So that is that — and now I will leave it, for you to argue with yourself, or have the last word, or whatever it is you wish to accomplish. Again, no one seems to know your purpose, but you.

John Barremore
Houston, TX