Read page three of what our SEO Consultants Directory Membership have to say...

  1. 2004-12-09 - I think I mentioned that you'd be in a better position than SEMPO to do something like this when we talked initially. I think it's a great idea! But you are putting yourself in the firing line a bit.

    I think the main takeaway from this is that clients feel like they can't trust SEO people. At times, for example, members of the board will seek external evaluation of SEO recommendations. What kind of employee in their right mind would feel confident going to an SEO - the industry is seen as a minefield for anybody outside (and many on the inside).

    I think that some kind of standards organisation would be a good idea - just make sure that the SEMPO mistakes aren't repeated. Remember that the one thing SEMPO did right was get a lot of powerful people in this industry together on one board - they all got burnt, in a mud fight everybody gets dirty - and it will be hard to get people to put their necks (and professional reputations) on the line again.

    We need a broad member base - SEO Consultants would be a really good start I think. That's just some off the cuff thoughts from my own personal perspective - I'll be happy to help out in any way I can.

  2. 2004-12-17 - Standards to me suggests a readily referable set of documents that were created by a respected body and accepted by the majority of the user population. For this reason, International "standards" are usually deployed as "recommendations" and national bodies "adopt" such recommendations as national "standards".

    In other cases, governments often issue standards for electrical fittings, safety, plumbing, quality procedures, and so on. This ensures that products are built to minimum specifications or that an organisation meets ISO9000 specs.

    Then there are "Industry Standards", which are sometimes written by a cartel and sometimes by a bunch of competing companies. Rival bodies then create a rival set of "industry standards" if they cannot gain acceptance by the first group.

    Given that SEM is a branch of marketing, for which there are no standards, I see SEM standards as Industry Standards and fairly tenuous ones at that. Before someone says there "are" marketing standards, you will find that they are usually association codes of conduct or ethical guidelines, but not a checklist of tasks that need to be followed in order to "meet" such standards.

    While we do have W3C "standards", they are really "W3C Recommendations", but if we are to form a body, "we" can adopt them and others as our standards, plus some more of our own.

    The next task would be to educate the target audience about our standards and why they are the best. I have some ideas about that, but I will mention it in an appropriate forum.

    If we had a forum to discuss this, we'd have a more dynamic interchange.

  3. 2005-02-14 - I agree to setting up standards with regards to SEM as there are many cowboys out there who are guaranteeing top placements in search engines and using methods of tricking search engines, and this hurts the genuine SEOs who go about optimising sites in the proper manner which is not only done for search engines but also for visitors to the site who ultimately are interested in getting value for money and will eventually result in return visitors and be converted to customers.

Comments and/or Questions?

If you've read this far, that probably means you have interest in what we are proposing. If that is the case, send us an email (to the address you have on file for us, or use our contact form) letting us know your thoughts on the issues we've addressed in this section and any others you feel are pertinent. We would first like to get a feel from our membership as to whether or not we are barking up the wrong tree as they say. Is it time? Or, should we let it go? Are we (the SEO Consultants Directory Membership) the right people to start the ball rolling?

Last modified: 2008-02-03T10:05:57-0800

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