Brokering search engine optimization

There is a certain irony in the etymology of the word “broker” when one combines it with search engine optimization. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces broker back to medieval French, Portuguese, and English idiom for wine merchants.

A broker is a reseller, a middleman. He brings the buyer and the seller together, often helping one or both parties to negotiate the terms of an agreement. Many of us have used brokers in various capacities through our adult lives: real estate agents, insurance agents, stock brokers, et. al.

Besides acting as negotiating middlemen, those three classes of brokers have one other thing in common: they all need professional licenses in order to do business (at least, they do here in the United States). The licensing tests are designed to ensure thath practitioners have at least an acceptable knowledge and understanding of industry jargon, practices, and legal requirements.

Volumes of case law and legislation have been enacted through the centuries to regulate the practices of brokers in real estate, insurance, and stock management. Their licenses reflect the standards that their industries have been required to adopt as a result of disputes, innovations, and lobbying.

Licensing doesn’t just priotect you from case-book flim-flammery. It ensures that you can expect a minimum competency from any licensed broker who helps you buy or sell within the restricted trades that require licensing for brokers. Minimum competency means — among other things — that when your broker tells you to initial a dozen clauses in a contract he has some idea of what you are committing to.

Search engine optimization is less than 15 years old and most of us can probably count the number of major SEO-related lawsuits on one hand. There have been many such lawsuits, however, if you consider that the most disreputable agencies have found themselves in court more than once.

The recent settlement with Internet Advancement forbids the company from ever again attempting to sell search engine optimization services. Although this case is not likely to establish any significant case law precedent, it does provide some guidelines to the SEO industry on what not to do:

1. Don’t make unauthorized charges on customer credit cards
2. Don’t ignore guarantees you make to clients
3. Don’t withhold refunds clients should receive
4. Don’t misrepresent your ability to deliver a service
5. Don’t misrepresent your relationship with the Better Business Bureau (or other consumer and fair business advocates)
6. Don’t write cancellation policies that are unfair

Best (SEO) Practices have been promoting lists of things you can and should do for clients to provide transparency, and the search engines provide lists of things you can do (to help your search rankings) and things they don’t want you to do (to influence their indexes in ways they consider to be unfair).

Between the lawyers, the Best Practices advocates, and the search engine guidelines some people ask if there is any room left for innovation. I think innovation is a pretty broad term. Most SEOs who object to adopting standards (but not all) seem to be confounded by the idea that there is more to search engine optimization than acquiring links, and the link building SEO community is inherently obsessed with obtaining links in ways that search engines don’t like.

The overemphasis that SEOs placed on links through the years has become more of a necessity over the past two years because of Google’s reingineering. Nonetheless, there are some linking practices that many people within the SEO community (I would guess most) object to: link drops in forums and blog comments being the most obvious.

On the other hand, most SEOs still confuse link faking through social media sites with link baiting. If you’re creating your own links (or you have an army of linkers with social media profiles) you’re link faking, not link baiting. by definition, link bait doesn’t require fakery (and that includes fakery disguised as “seeding”).

Although we still have some gray areas where there is no real consensus on what is good search optimization, I think enough lines have been drawn that people are now better able to create some guidelines for themselves. In fact, I know of at least two well-known “recommnded SEO firm” directories: SEOmoz and IHelpYou.

I’ve also found a couple of sites whose owners call themselves “SEO brokers” because they offer to help connect people with search optimizers whom they know. In my opinion these links and so-called brokers are not really adequate for consideration as true brokerage resource for two reasons.

First, none of these folks are earning commissions by brokering contracts. In fact, a lot of SEO contracts are still being negotiated by friends with contacts in the industry, and the friends generally don’t take any commissions.

Secondly, while it’s nice to be included in one or more “recommended SEO firm” lists, someone else’s recommendation doesn’t really protect the consumer or qualify the service provider. If all it takes to get on a “recommended SEO firm” list is that you’ve shared a few beers with some guy at a convention, what does that tell potential customers about the quality of our industry?

The SEO conferences are notorious party magnets and most conference insiders willingly admit that you get more and “better” information after the panels have ended for the day. What does it say about our industry that people are getting the best technical advice from other folks with drinks or drugs in their hands? Alcohol-based SEO instruction is not optimal, so there is considerable irony in the notion that you’re learning how to optimize from someone who may be three sheets to the wind and is willing to mumble something about how to steal links from Web sites.

If that is the best this industry has to offer, I can almost guarantee you that government mandated licensing, certification, and regulation are only a few years away. All the professional organizations and training programs in the world won’t stop the lawsuits, coinsumer complaints, and search engine penalties.

If we’re going to see true SEO brokers, we’ll have to demand of them that they establish rigorous criteria for determining whom they do business with. They need to charge honest commissions so that people know where their interests lie. And they need to provide contractual guarantees against certain types of conflicts of interest so that people can expect a fair representation process.

The consuming public still has unreasonable expectations: they want to know what the timetables for success are (no timetables are realistic). I’ve had that discussion with the sales staff many times and every timeline I deliver is accompanied by language similar to what you’ll find a financial or insurance disclosure; “Past performance is not an indicator of future success, blah, blah, blah”.

I hate timelines but sales people love them because timelines “set customer expectations”. The only problem with setting customer expectations, however, is that you cannot guarantee anything but that you’ll make the effort to do the work and that — based on past performance which is not an indication of future performance — you think you can reasonably expect to see some sort of results within 3, 6, or 12 months.

Timelines may become the reason why this industry finds itself regulated. If you sell timelines you should pray I am never asked to speak before Congress because I promise you I won’t lie and I won’t pull any punches. As far as I am concerned, timelines have no place in this business. They are as reliable as predictions about the next big quake to hit California.

Nonetheless, if you’re doing work over an extended period of time you should be able to document something about that work, explain what it is expected to accomplish, and explain the pros and cons, the risks and rewards. And if you’re offering your services through an intermediary, that intermediary should be able to explain everything as well as you.

That is, if you’re on someone’s “recommended SEO firms” list neither you nor the person recommending you has to explain a thing, but if you sell your services to someone through a broker, both you and the broker should be ready and able to provide a detailed explanation of what service is being sold.

There are already many SEO firms acting in a brokering capacity. Take pay-per-click management services, for example. You don’t actually run the advertisements on any Web sites. Instead, you fill out some forms in a network interface, let the network figure out where and when to show the ads, and you charge your client a cost+plus compensation fee (some people take a flat service fee and some people charge a percentage commission).

That pretty much makes you a broker. It’s just like when you walk into an insurance agent’s office and say, “I need $5 million in liability insurance and I’d like to place it with XYZ Liability Insurance Company. Can you get me a good rate?”

The agent will do his best to negotiate a great rate for you with XYZ Liability Insurance and if you buy the insurance through him he’ll charge either a commission or a placement fee (and that should be all he charges). He doesn’t actually rate the insurance risks for you; nor does he manage the premiums you pay; nor does he pay your claims coverage. That’s all done by the XYZ Liability Insurance Company.

Still, a good insurance agent will strive to work only with financially stable insurance companies capable of delivering reasonable customer service. In the United States there are rating services that grade insurance companies (A.M. Best is the most well-known). Any carrier with an A+ rating from A.M. Best is considered to be very good, very stable.

Moody’s provides similar ratings for investment funds, and investment fund managers strive to place their clients with the most appropriate stocks so as to keep those good ratings.

We have no rating services in the search engine optimization industry so the problem for SEO brokers is that they are only cutting deals on the basis of their personal experience and recommendations. In insurance, real estate, and finance that would be a huge assumption of liability. There are many PPC advertising networks but most PPC service providers (I believe) play it safe and stick with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!.

When it comes to “organic” search engine optimization the services are not dominated by many brands. Some services are still being resold, however. Link placement is the most commonly resold service. SEO firms that manage paid links for their clients either work with a handful of secretive networks (they used to advertise openly but someone snitched to Google) or they set up their own networks.

Procuring paid links for your clients is a service brokerage, and it’s one that the search engines object to. If search engine guidelines are ever given the weight of law, the link brokering industry will face a tough test.

Of course, some people are developing innovative methods for brokering links without actually buying or selling links. The money is being exchange for services rather than for direct link placements. Will these models pass the time of time? It will be interesting to find out.

But for now we have a lot to think about. Organic search engine optimization is not so simple that anyone can do it but the basic skills are easily obtained. The reams of bad advice that continue to flood forums, blogs, and tutorials (via old posts as well as new posts recapitulating old, bad ideas) all but guarantee that most people will start off on the wrong foot. But the lack of standards in our industry means that the many conflicting opinions will continue to send people reeling down awkward paths.

The real challenge for people just entering this industry is that they will read a lot of nonsense from so-called “A List” blogs and forums. They will attend conferences and listen to watered-down mush presentations. They will go to parties and get drunk with “the right people” and hear — whatever it is that drunks share at SEO parties. They will sign up for online courses, pick out their favorite blogs, and pay t hrough the nose for unaccredited SEO training classes, seminars, books, manuals, and tutorials.

When someone like Ian McAnerin explains the benefits of adopting SEO standards, we all should listen. More importantly, as your SEO practice grows and you call upon other SEO firms to help you deliver service to your client, you’ll be joining the growing ranks of SEO brokerages.

As a broker you have a responsibility to yourself to know something more about the people whose services you’re selling than that they know how to get drunk and tell funny stories. You need to know that they will come through for your clients when those clients are expecting their help. You need to know what it is your service providers do, how well they do it compared to other service providers, and what they will do for you when things tank.

Many SEO copywriters struggle to find enough business for themselves so they are constantly seeking referrals from other people in the industry. There are now some SEO firms that do almost nothing but write copy for other SEO firms’ clients. There are PPC firms that manage PPC contracts for other SEO firms. There are link brokers who work closely with SEO firms to place links on prestigious Web sites.

As the industry develops specialties the specialists will build their businesses on the basis of brokers and referrals. In time we may end up with a pool of companies that only work through brokers. The most successful brokers will keep copious notes and they’ll perform trends analysis on their service providers.

If we don’t come together as an industry to create standards we can all respect and adhere to the brokers will each create their own standards, and when you’re an independent contractor you’ll be expected to conform to everyone’s standards but your own.

If you don’t think you’ll ever need an SEO license, you may be right. It could take another 100 years of lawsuits and complaints to legislative bodies before someone does something. Then again, we’re living in the Internet Age. It may not take as long for our industry as it did for the stock, real estate, and insurance industries.

And if that’s the case then where do you want to be when they start scheduling state-mandated licensing tests? At the top of your game, hopefully, but also hopefully primed and ready to roll with a firm knowledge and understanding of what everyone expects from an SEO services provider.