My personal ending would be - to Improve the Industry's Professionalism. We're a young industry, which means opportunity, excitement and lots of fantastic entrepreneurs and personalities. Conversely, it also means a lot of unprofessional, immature behavior, even from those of us who should know better (and yes, I'm certainly including my own actions from time to time in that group). I wish we could:
- Argue and debate, both online and in-person, in more constructive ways
- Do more to reward those who contribute consistently positive, valuable material
- Do less to reward those who contribute personal attacks, overly sensitive egos & negativity
- Refrain from cliques and gossip
- As a group, apply more principles of the Scientific Method to our practices
- Think more holistically and long-term about SEO
To be honest, I think we've actually been moving in the right direction for the last few years (despite the occasional relapse). There's a long way to go, but I'm optimistic that 2009 can be our best year yet. Perhaps the world's economic turmoil will remind us to focus on what really matters.
Your turn. Go ahead and finish this sentence (or paragraph) in the comments:
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be...
I'm excited to hear what others want.
...to wipe all the outdated and unhelpful how-to information off the web, so we didn't have to re-educate newcomers to the industry.
.....that anyone claiming to be an SEO or providing SEO services would have to be certified by an independent organization. I know, I know, but you did say 'if'.
that there is less rip-off by so-called seos...
I hate to say it, but there will always be rip off people, the company will be accredited, but could still hire sleazy people
Yea people will always be looking to rip another off whether they are a construction contractor, lawyer, cars salesman, real estate angent, I even saw a Mary Kay lady ripping off a client and they are usually the sweetest ladies in the world! EVERY field has people like that does ours have more than average is the question>??
Good Concept! I like it!
yes thumbs up for that. I am based in India and we have thousands of SEO companies here and they know a damm shit about SEO. One of them even didnt knew that how code to content ration counts and why we use tableless designs.They have 10 good steps wriiten and they apply them to every website. bulding useless links is most common.
Imagine
Imagine there's no Search Cliques
It's easy if you try
No Newbies below us
Above us only Cutts & Sky
Imagine all the SEO’s
Living for the SERPS
Imagine there's no Paid Links
It isn't hard to do
No spammers to kill or wish death for
And no content thieves too
Imagine all the SEO’s
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the SEO world will be as one
Imagine no Black Hats
I wonder if you can
No need for auto-scripts or cloaking
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the SEO’s
Sharing all the SERPS
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the SEO world will live as one
Make it more welcoming to dummys like me.
Welcome Data Entry Services :)
I wish the liars and cheats would go away - I hear a rip off story every week.
OK we get a compalint because someone isn't ranking # 1 on Google but never for ripping anyone off - shameful theft no better than certain public figures....
Certification? Honestly I was going to take the UCSF Internet marketing course but what's the point when I could probably teach it?
I - personally - have been doing this since 97 (quite by chance) and would like to be certified in some manner - but what will I learn that's new and won't change tomorrow?
Methinks just stay as a one man band and be affordable is the route....
ONE THING RIP OFF MERCHANTS BE GONE
to Make Me the Supreme Emperor of SEO Who Has Ultimate Power Over the Souls of Mere SEO Mortals
What, you don't already? ;)
...turn all the overwheming SEO content into an easily digestible pill.
Even if you read just the good stuff, there's still a glut of information out there.
I'd reduce the number of cliques
I would like to see some deeper content (blogs/articles) being made.
The popularity of Social Media has started overshadowing the more meaty parts of the SEO discussion. Much of the content is starting to fall prey to the being to much marketing in the actual blogs and articles, and not enough information.
I also wish that there was more collaborative content being put out.
Certification.
It doesn't suddenly make all the problems go away - there are bad lawyers, doctors, etc and they are certified. The real issue is that there would be a lot more bad doctors, lawyers, etc if we didn't have it.
The intent of certification is not to control behavior, but rather to ensure that those certified have a basic level of skills, understanding and knowledge of expectations. Whether they live up to those expectations is about them as individuals, not the industry. That's part of the point.
I'm certified in lots of ways. I have a drivers license. I'm a GAP, I have a pilots licence, radio operators licence, A+, MCSE and I'm currently working on my PADI open water scuba certification. Not to mention my university degrees, first aid certifications, and so on. I'm sure if you thought about it, you'd discover you are certified in lots of ways, too.
Does having a drivers licence suddenly make all the drivers on the road better? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that if you didn't need a drivers licence it would be a lot worse out there. And it's bad enough as it is.
I'm continually amazed that people will want to practice a profession and then not be interested in being certified that they are actually qualified to do so. What are they afraid of?
More importantly, how can you expect the public to take the industry seriously if you don't?
I'd like to see the independent SEO industry survive.
That is not a prediction. The industry will survive. At the same time I believe the number of independent consulting optimizers will decrease.
More and more advertising and PR agencies are incorporating SEO into their offerings. Social Media, which is used by advertisers, publicists and optimizers, may be accelerating this trend.
More and more companies are bringing SEO in-house. If you were at SMX Advanced in '07 and '08 you may remember the light show of hands in '07 and the huge show of hands in '08 when the crowd was asked how many of you are in-house SEOs. As the economy tightens and layoffs progress, companies will stop hiring outside SEO consultants and even merge in-house SEO into webmaster positions or tell their ad/PR agencies that they want them to do their SEO.
Each year some independent consulting SEOs stop consulting and become independent SEOs. That's because any smart SEO has a portfolio of domains and projects. When non-client income gets high enough people stop doing client gigs.
Website SEO is a shooting star. It is transforming now and that transformation will accelerate. Steamrollers and road graders look today pretty much the same as when I was a kid and the job of operating them has not changed. Since SEO began in 1994 it has dramatically changed several times over. I believe that it is the fate of SEO to be absorbed into traditional Ad/PR roles, both in-house and in agencies, or to disappear entirely when the post-web Internet arrives.
But as I said, do not worry this year. Mine is a long-term SEO life-cycle view and I still don't have a flying car or jet-pack.
As for being a mature, buttoned-collar, tie-wearing respectable industry... For all the nay-saying we really do get a lot of respect and admiration. They call lawyers snakes and they get respect. The only difference is that most people know what a lawyer is and does not know what an SEO is because there is no CSI SEO. Besides, I've worked in the starched collar economy. It's boring. It's stifling. I left it.
SEO CSI is very intriguing - let the evidence speak for itself why the client's site tanked overnight. What is the evidence saying to you? Whose DNA is on that last algorithm change? Might be very cool, indeed.
Not necessarily certification, but some sort of standard of education. As someone who is still fairly new to this industry, I've found it incredibly difficult to weed through the tonnes of information about there and try to decipher which information is good and bad, which bloggers to read and which to ignore, etc.
I'm not sure we need to go as far as certification, though. I'm not a certified "web designer", but I was able to take a college course that taught me how to slice up a design composite and write HTML and CSS, and I was fairly confident that my teacher was not leading me astray at the time. With the few online SEO "courses" that are out there now, I have really no way of knowing which are valuable and which are complete rip offs.
I'd have to agree with you on that. There need to be legitimate, affordable options for learning about SEO - not just how to do it, but why it's important, and they should be pretty much standard parts of marketing curriculum, etc. - from universities, including grad schools and community colleges alike.
If more reliable information about SEO and SEM (and related areas) were more widely available, more people would undestand how it works and why it's important and perhaps remove some of the "mysticism" of the industry.
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It would be to widen businesses understanding of the differences between SEO and PPC. They both have a place but conveying that message can be challenging.
Rationalisation of pricing and a realistic, objective measurement of results, both of which are probably going to be impossible. While I'm all in favour of the scientific method if we were able to take the mystique out of google this industry wouldn't exist anymore, because the solutions would be documented, duplicatable, and well understood. Instead of art it would become craft.
I think customer education is a better route than certification; because the only way we'll get "legit" certification is if Google takes over the market so completely that they're the only expertise vendor (much like MCSE's value to Microsoft products). Customer Education is better I think because it implies that the customer themselves will seek a better grade of service, instead of looking for initials after someone's name. How will they recognize that better grade of service? Well as the industry evolves reputation and portfolio will become more important, much like the web design and ASP industry have already evolved.
Consider getting an enterprise domain colocated 5 years ago. There was a bewildering array of choices, none of them very reassuring when it comes to history or reputation, most of them competing on lowest possible price. Look at it now; you've got the specialists like Rackspace, or "old school" like major telephony companies, or even the budget/consumer VM places like Dreamhost. The marketplace has essentially provided survivors for us to choose from instead of an array of identically new, identically unknown vendors who only seem to differentiate on price or outrageous claims. A similar (though more subjective) evolution occurred in the web design business.
I think one reason that this is a community I choose to participate in is because of the level of professionalism. Both online and offline SeoMoz staff and members have always had the "right" idea. Just my 2 cents after not participating for a few months, been too busy.
I would like to see the general buisness worls more educated on seo and the benifits, this would then hopefully get rid of the rip off artists as it wouldnt be as easy to scam people
I agree with you to a certain extent James, but isn't it also our responsible as SEO practioners to educate our clients and potential clients?
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be...
To stop the bitchyness and have an open forum that has a good signal/noise ratio :)
To be honest I think you hit the nail on the head Rand, and reading a number of comments above, a lot of the comments mention aspects of the professionalism.
SEO is stil very much an immature market compared to many. I still remember talking to you on the Cre8asite forums around six years ago, and you don't appear to have changed much (well your avatar is slightly better :)).
I think that many of us have to remember, what we do online leaves a trace, something that can be often traced back and does leave a trail. Something which potentially impact client wise (albeit small) - and whilst such 'bitchfests' are few and far between - there are a smattering of them around, and given many the development of social media (and Twitter (and even Sphinn - lets not mention the 'secret links post') in particular), any such instances are often viral in nature and picked up within minutes.
As you say search has come along way and SEO in particular. Given the interest from 2008 as well as a more 'professional' outlook on accountability, one can only assume 2009 will see SEO move further forward.
I would have to agree with both Dave T and Dudibob, for what I would like to change in the industry. A qualification standard plus a better educated market. To know it is more than adding a few keywords and title tags. And that it is a full time comitment and on going process that never ends. As for the hacks and bantering back and forth I would love to come up with a way or invest in the person or company that does to prevent it, that would be priceless.
....To provide more education on the justification of SEO cost in the small to mid size business world. I still think only 1 out of 5 people i talk to "get it".
I totally agree with you Gabe, it seems that the SEO has a perception of being a 'dark art' but in reality it is a set of guidelines to create great, relevant and useful sites for users.
Due to the fact that there is so much information to read it can seem very daunting to alot of people.
My experience is put in the time yourself and transfer your knowledge internally, as external SEO companies don't tend to put in much effort to ensure that you get the results you need.
Anyway that my 2 pennies worth!
Andrew
www.AppliancesOnline.co.uk
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be our generic brand and public image. The "masses" still see us as silvery tongued double crossing money scavaging lying opportunists. Mainly because on mainstream blogs SEO is more often related to SEO spam and blackhat techniques rather than the positive values that optimization can bring to a site or business.
Perhaps it's a problem with any consultancy field, not just SEO, but being a new industry definitely doesn't help our overall image either. And for every whitehat seomoz-type blog out there that tries to do some good there are 5 niche blogs using SEO as a cover for their despicable spam.
And don't even get me started on search engines and their spam teams, who seem very keen in openly crucifying serious businesses doing grayhat as an example, but seem blind to the wave of blackhat "wow gold"-type spammer seen in many industries.
Whine over :D
I hate the egos ...
more awareness about the importance of search engine marketing, more clients already educated on SEO/SEM, and their potential as a powerful marketing tool.... I guess this will come with time.
...I'd like to see more cowbell please.
Oh, and it would be nice to be able to afford to attend some of the major conferences without having to take out a second mortgage when sending more then one person.
I'd also like to see more of an integration with the marketing industry as a whole. It still seems as though there are the "marketers" and the "SEO and online marketers". It is getting better, but not quite there yet.
I completely agree.
I would love love love to attend a conference, however, seeing as we're small and growing it is way out of budget for me personally, and for my company as a whole.
I like Sitemost's idea but we all ought to volunteer and help our favorite organization. Pick a local charity that has no website and help them out!
Not to proof something, not mandatory, just because we are good professional people that got a lot to give to a non profit with no funds to hire us.
I'd agree. How about someone make a place where everyone can 'rate an seo' work? Not only that discuss each site that is under scrutiny.
Just an idea but I'm not sure everyone wants to talk. But without those people I'm sure we could get a good following...
I'd like to see more respect and understanding from the rest of the industry e.g. web developers, software developers, designers etc.
Instead of certification, I think that all SEOs should be made to donate their skills to a charity or non-profit organisation before being allowed to sell their services to the broader business community.
This would not only create a great testimonial or case-study to demonstrate your abilities to potential new clients, but would also go a long way in bettering the web and world as a whole.
I like your idea. Wanna make like a site with badges and case-studies (free links too for those who do it). I think it would be awesome.
Is it a cheat to ask for some halfway credible alternative to Google to work with?
I see Google sucking the hell out of the value of both SEO as a discipline and search as a route to market and I expect its attempts to monetise its properties through the recession to only make things worse.
...we'd call it SCO (Search Content Optimization). That, to me, is more indicative to what we do (yes, I consider meta data content -- so the traditional definition of 'content' would have to be re-eavluated).
Even when it comes to social media, we are creating useful, valuable (hopefully) content.
Better yet, let's keep it as SEO, but an octopus leg of the tools and techniques would be SCO -- seems easier to digest to those who haven't a clue. Besides, when I say I am an SEO (notice how verb turns to noun), people say, "CEO?"
Okay, crappy post, but I have had too many long days in a row. Now get back to work! (Me, not you)
I forgot to mention how SCO and SEO sound exaclty the same -- is that a homophone or something of the like?
Your list is pretty much the same as mine. But if I'm going to pick a single goal to rule them all, it's to quantify the effectiveness of SEO. That is no easy task, but it is one to which we should all aspire.
I wish the industry did a better job of education clients about SEO.
A client that really understands what we do can separate the wheat from the chaff and those that really are professionals in what they do would benefit, but not as much as the clients.
If I could improve something in the SEO industry.
It would be creating an Omerta code.
"Refrain from cliques and gossip".
Definitely the one that I would say. But such is the case with any community, online and offline. Though in terms of SEO I've found it to be even more-so clique-ish online with certain people acting as if they're some sort of SEO God/Dictator that all should listen to.
SeoMoz does a good job of -not- doing that and it helps because it also has YouMoz which encourages SEO community participation.
If there's anything else I could change about the industry it would be "Honesty and Integrity", there just isn't enough.
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be that people would realize how important this industry is and realize that you can't buy yourself to the top or guarantee yourself top position.
-Brenelz
Unfortunately, I think there's very little clue beyond us and some marketing folks that SEO is as important as it is. I wrote here in my blog about how the top Marketing programs in the country have no clue about the importance of SEO & I even wrote marketing prof at one of the programs to ask what he thought & they basically don't seem to care. I'd think the Internet as a medium including the mobile platforms moving forward deserve a bit of attention.
Greetings.
Now i feel like the article i have been working on regarding applying the Scientific Method to SEO will be perceived as a spin-off from your post. However, your post has substance, and is true. So, perhaps the potential mis-perception would not be a bad thing.
If i could change one thing about the SEO industry, it would be through a better application of the Scientific Method, and would come with a higher level of integrity which would allow for greater trust and sharing of information.
Thank you for the observant and timely post.
...the interest in the technologies of search engines and the world of searc. I think we can draw a lot of professionalism from a higher level of SEO.
https://www.huomah.com/Search-Engines/Algorithm-Matters/SEO-Higher-learning.html
I also wrote about accreditation, professionalism, industry regulation a while back on Dave Nalyors blog.
https://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/the-seo-industry-regulator-ofgoog-by-ben-mckay-guest-poster.html
That's my sphin on things anyway...quite similar to your's I'm guessing Rand.
Interesting propmt though!
Dittos. I immediately thought about TheGypsy's post on SEO Higher Learning as well. It fits with Rand's discussion about the need for scientific method.
Holistically, refraining from cliques and gossip fits as well. No industry is pure "anything," and personalities play a huge part. Heck, attitude is often a determining factor when companies look at job candidates. It's been shown that many will choose the person who "plays well with others" over one who doesn't. So, rewarding those who exhibit negative behavior less goes hand-in-hand.
Regarding accredidation, you can't force ethical behavior. Nice post, Ben.
Thanks, Rand, for the philosophical pensiveness.
Not sure I know what scientific SEO is so I'll leave that to others. As to certification/best practices I agree with Ian that certification just sets the bar for who should be able to call themselves a professional. The toughest part about certification is it is actually certifying many skills and not all are neccessary to charge for your services. For instance a person could be able to optimize sites but be clueless about link building (likely because link building isn't SEO it's promotion). IMO, any real certification will break it down into certification of the different skillsets. Analytics, link development, keyword research, optimizing html elements and business practices to name just a few
Any certification that is part of a course is almost always pure horseshit and a course shouldn't be part of the process. The certification should be managed by a separate entity from the teaching side with standard testing managed by a body that includes teachers, practioners and to some degree the SE's.
Also, while this is too specific to be my #1 concern, it would be nice to see SEO used in more constructive applications than ripping off authors and publishers. More details at https://thenoisychannel.com/2008/12/20/fair-use-and-seo/.
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be to make educating clients in best practice a much bigger part of what we do. As the industry matures, the more people there are that are savvy to best practice and why it is in their best interest to follow it the better it will be for all of u.
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be...
ending the practice of using people. The desire for power, rank, fame, position, and top money has created a vindictive industry. As Rand said, reward the positive contributions. I second that.
I think the industry should have these eventual issues
-certificates for students
-standards for SE
-ethics for SEO professionals/companies
Some of these are covered above, but I’ll add mine - the one thing is to change all of the following:
1) Move to defined processes.
a) At a macro level this would include moving practices from ad hoc, to defined, to repeatable, to measured, to optimized.
b) At a more micro level, it includes having repeatable and defined processes for keyword research, defining and prioritizing on and off-site changes, and standard measurement reports to track results.
c) Crease's posting heads in the right direction - 90% of SEO is craft and can be handled by the above steps. And only a minority of sites have completed the craft part. The remaining 10% is creative and sexy, but possibly overkill for the many sites that still have to get the craft part right.
2) More and better education (well defined processes is a pre-requisite for education). I've seen step-by-step guides allow newbies to make valuable observations about what changes to make on a site within weeks. This skips the trial and error of seeing what works, and allows new folks to get confident quickly. Generating these guides (moderated wiki, like knol) and keeping them updated is a challenge.
3) Better sharing of information and results. We need to complement the very subjective experiential results with much more objective test results. The SEO scammers claim subjective experiential results that uneducated marketing managers can't see through (yet) because they don't have access to objective test results about what does and doesn’t work.
4) More professionalism (already said above). There is a post we share with potential SEO consultants at https://www.globalsources.com/ST/SEO-consultant. Fortunately, it scares many of them away and they stop wasting our time. Unfortunately, it may scare some of the good ones as well.
5) Focus on ROI. Stop telling people what is wrong with their sites. All sites have problems. I can tell you our sites have 100 things wrong with them. 97 of them don't matter. Instead, start telling people the first three things they should change and the business impact these changes are expected to generate. Focus more on the language of ROI rather than the language of title tags, link bait, redirects and site maps.
6) Recognize that SEO is a subset of marketing and a subset of marketing spend. It should get a lot of budget now because of its good ROI, but will likely be superseded by something else in 10 years. In 2040 you'll be telling your grand kids "back in the days when SEO was important, we..."
7) Include stronger SEO in all CMS systems out of the box. Nobody should have to add modules or do custom coding to fulfill basic SEO requirements.
This was a very informative article. I will read your blog often.
"Refrain from cliques and gossip"
Near impossible, but wouldn't that be nice :)
If Google (et al) would be less cryptic... But they won't. They're a publicly held corporation and need to bring revenue back to shareholders. The science of SEO is built around guessing (extrapolating) what they're doing and we minions have to react accordingly. If Google decides to introduce an 'improvement', it takes awhile for everyone to know about it and what to do about it.
With all the free information strewn all over the digisphere, is there still a need for certificate courses and accreditation as verification of credentials as a credible SEO agency?
It's not entirely a waste of money, but the need for it is diminishing as companies like Hubspot continues to educate the masses.
So I would scrap certification altogether.
If I Could Change One Thing About the SEO Industry, It Would Be Google's Search Algorithms...
But seriously, I would like to see more original ideas, I would like to open up my reader and say "wow, thats something i have never thought/heard of" it doesn't have to be a technique or a method, theories are good too.
It seems like all the new ideas in the search industry are coming from search engines. Which is good because it means that they are innovating, but in the end if we want to stay a competitive and viable industry we need to innovate at the same pace.
i would have to agree with david about the certification process. I have noticed some recent posts have included an element of research and testing, such as the recent YOUmoz post on Sitemaps & Spiders by Chenry. These are great and i think that if people are thinking along these lines then an expansion of these kinds of tests with multiple locations, servers, websites can almost move towards university style peer-reviewed systems.
About the certification side
Google Offers GAAC, GAP
Omniture, WebTrends....
Web Analytics Association offers Courses
Bruce Clay offers SEO Toolkit
SEMPO offers SEMPO Institute
SEOmoz offers Onsite Training & Video
The problem is that each seems to sit in its own silo, im sure larger SEO firms also offer inhouse certification but you seem to get SEO, SEM, Links or Analytics in different doses. The biggest issue is that we cannot be expected to be experts in everything and i dont think we want to be, do most programmers want to be graphic designers or graphic designers want to be call center operators in a adwords firm?
If i could change one thing that would possibly be the solution to certification/training, i love web analytics, and link building is something i avoid so do i need to be certified in link building to do my job?
Here is a plug on my site, from someone who couldnt care less about the element of Google PageRank, ive moved above many of my competitors to PR#4. Does that make me an expert in my industry or just lucky...
ps Rand i would have to say that Ego's are the first thing in any humble pie, wait for my next PR update :)
I agree wholeheartedly about the need for more constructive conversations in the online/SEO/SEM universe!
My philosophy towards driving traffic to my blog relies heavily upon thoughtful conversation, in addition to being generous with sharing direct links to relevant information.
Post: How I Drive Traffic to My Site
Loving how you follow up an appeal to scientific thinking with the term holistic.
Loving that completely unqualified statement.
There is nothing about considering the whole of the SEO industry and it's practices which implies it cannot be developed scientifically. I think you will find that science is a holistic practice in itself.
I agree entirely Rand, I think that some of the prejudice against the SEO industry comes from it's youth, and the lack of an identifiable criteria or qualifications (as mentioned above) to re-assure clients that we are not all black hats.
The one thing I think that needs changing that is certainly starting to happen in the UK is the distrust of SEO - at our agency we don't want our clients to see it as a a bolt on we are trying to sell them, it is integral to any web development project, and any existing website.