Are we ready to create SEO standards?

As always, I think that SE Roundtable has a great SMX West conference recap. Since I rarely attend conferences I tend to follow a few bloggers’ reports of what is happening at the conferences. I was particularly interested in the session on SEO Standards.

The majority of people in the SEO industry probably don’t feel a need for standards. Living in a vacuum tends to make you suspicious of an atmosphere. After all, who among us wants to drop down to the ocean floor and feel the crushing weight of all that water? It’s the same thing with emerging industries where everyone has their own way of doing stuff. When someone proposes standards, all the grandfather clauses start appearing in people’s resumes.

“I was doing this back in 1998, so I don’t need to comply with your standards.”

You know what? I would be willing to take an SEO certification test and parrot back the answers required to pass it if there were some real standards behind the test. I might not agree with all the answers but if we have a standard to work with we can work to improve it as well as to persuade people to adopt it.

I was surprised to see that SEMPO is reportedly not interested in becoming a standards body:

SEMPO has a metrics and standards task force to develop guidelines for search marketing. SEMPO states that they’re not a standards body, however.

IAB - online best practice resource which is supported by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft
- basic search engine policies
- checklists to help advertisers
- search marketing howtos
- etc…

Next steps: demand for standards by concerned individuals and search agencies by contacting SEMPO Task Force on Metrics and Standards. If SEMPO won’t take up the task, then talk to IAB and DMA. Standards are going to provide us with sustained growth.

I don’t think IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is really structured to provide suitable standards and guidelines for the SEO industry. Nor would I want to follow the lead of the Direct Marketing Association.

SEMPO still lacks universal credibility in the SEO industry. Some people just dismiss SEMPO out of hand; other people have turned their backs on SEMPO. Most people don’t use SEMPO as an authority by which to judge the quality of search engine optimization specialists. To be honest, though I have never seen or taken a SEMPO test, I am highly skeptical that their tests would represent advanced search optimization knowledge or techniques.

SEMPO provides this industry with a lowest common denominator for many different perspectives. It can grown and perhaps should be grown into a much larger, more comprehensive authority body simply because it grew out of SEO conferences and has the support of some large companies (including Hewlett-Packard, whose current SEO manager is a SEMPO member and was a candidate for a SEMPO board membership).

Most SEOs probably don’t feel a need for standards but, as was pointed out in the SMX West session, standards would have to begin with a glossary. If you search for “SEO glossary” now you’ll find absolutely no authoritative sites in the search results. You may find one or more of your favorite SEO pundits there but SEO glossaries are a dime a dozen. Even SEO Theory offers an SEO glossary although it’s not very extensive nor even widely acknowledged.

We all define these terms in whatever way we understand them, but if the SEMPO standards and guidelines committee were to take up the standards banner they could gather the authority to create the definitive SEO dictionary by inviting community input (ultimately the committee would have to make the choices we all have to live with).

SE Roundtable reports that Chris Boggs said “these standards must be committee driven rather than community driven because otherwise it will take forever.” I agree, but the committee must work with the community. They would have to hold equivalent of several town hall meetings, inviting public commentary on specific points in their proposals. Without providing the non-SEMPO industry members an opportunity for feedback any proposed standard put forth by SEMPO would be worthless.

Standards won’t make the controversial ideas and experiments go away. Standards won’t eliminate the conflict between search engines and optimizers. But standards will make it easier for everyone to figure out who really knows what they are talking about and who is blowing smoke in your face.

Standards would improve our ability as SEOs to deliver the services we provide because those standards would help shape client expectations. The standards cannot create the business services or write the contracts but they can explain at varying levels what we do and why we do it.

So, what’s the next step? The SMX West panelists suggest that we contact the SEMPO Metrics and Standards Task Force. Okay, they can expect to hear from me next week.

What about you?