Sphinn - The SEO Reputation Problem

37
Sphinn It!

The SEO Reputation Problem

Went Hot: September 20, 2007 - 6:37 am
Posted By: Cumbrowski 655 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginejournal.com)
Category: SEO

Search engine optimization professionals are often treated as if they have the plague and the misconception that SEOs do evil stuff and spam the search engines (e.g. optimization = spam) is wide spread like the misconception and prejudges that lawyers are liars and car sales-men crooks. What can we do about it?

11 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from emom 654 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

I have the same problem with the "home business" industry, which has just as much, if not more scammers preying on potential entrepreneurs. I don't have a lot of solutions beyond what you suggest, but most importantly, I believe that if you walk your talk as a trustworthy business, eventually, the cream rises to the top. :)

from g1smd 654 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

My thoughts on the matter were in: http://sphinn.com/story/5631

from planetc1 654 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Honestly, I don't think any skilled and professional SEO should buy into the idea of misconception. The industry is far too young to have such a reputation outside of the early adopters group. Think of all those entrepreneurs and small businesses that have yet to move online. You may likely be their first introduction to this industry. It will become what you collectively make of it.

from qwerty 654 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

This is on SEMPO's home page:

"SEMPO is an industry organization designed to promote search engine marketing in general, not an accreditation body for SEM firms. Membership in SEMPO is not a guarantee of a particular firm's capabilities, nor does it signify industry approval or disapproval of their practices."

That decision was made back when the organization was still a Yahoo group, and I don't expect it to change. It's certainly their right to set up the organization that way, but I think that because of that choice, it's important to remind people that SEMPO membership says absolutely nothing about the practices or ethics of any search marketer.

from Halfdeck 654 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Many SEOs engage in self-promotional tactics with no regard to their effects on the rest of the web.

Simply put, the rest of the web does not matter. Search results relevance does not matter, as long as my site ranks #1 in search results.

If you edit a Wikipedia page to include a link to a client's site, you are adding noise to a site other people use, yet that doesn't matter to you as long as your client pays you.

If you sell a link to a crappy poker site, you may be polluting search results, yet that matters less to you than getting 300 bucks a month for the link.

If you ring up your friends or ask people in IRC to digg a blog post, you might be adding noise to the Digg community, but who cares about the digg community when you have the chance to generate tens of thousands of uniques to your post and hundreds of backlinks?

90% of SEOs defend paid links. Why? Because paid links make the grass grow greener or stop people from cutting down trees in Brazil? No, simply for selfish reasons - just as Google is selfishly waging a war against paid links to increase its marketshare and adwords revenue.

All is fair in love and SEO.

That sociopathic mindset is not only necessary but critical to becoming an effective SEO. You can sugarcoat SEO as "effective advertising and marketing" if your conscience troubles you. I don't bother to justify my behavior; its just business. If it works, do it. And needless to say, not every working tactic is ethical, and not all tactics deemed ethical by the SEO community is ethical - if ethics is defined by the effects our actions have on the rest of the web.

SEOs' reputation will never be ivory white. That just goes with the territory.

from Cumbrowski 654 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Hi Bob,

I mentioned in the comments to my post that SEMPO membership and the specification of some ethical rules and guidelines are two separate things. I won't repeat everything again, please read my last comment :)

Tetsuto,

You must agree that there should be limits and those limits should be defined by the industry itself and not by the lawmakers who don't know nothing about this subject.

Somebody commented at the blog and brought the Google Webmaster Guidelines up. No, the set of rules and guidelines I was talking about do not have anything to do with that vague and ambiguous written Google guidelines.

We talked about that in the past already, Google has their own agenda with their guidelines and made them on purpose not clear to introduce the level of uncertainty that might discourage webmasters to do something that would be perfectly fine from a ethical point of view, but not liked by Google.

They also keep themselves a lot of doors open for interpretation of their own guidelines depending on the case at hand.

I hope that makes sense. Make a comparison will help.

Shooting somebody without being engaged in a military conflict was okay in this country, roughly just a bit over 100 years ago. In the wild west was a duel between two armed man not against the law and killing somebody during such a duel was not considered murder or even manslaughter. It was rough out there back in the old pioneer and frontier days, but once "civilization" catch ed up with those frontiers, the law changed. Going out on the street and kill somebody in a duel because of a dispute about something more or less important is against the law today. It is considered manslaughter and by the general population seen as unethical.

This change did not remove the people's right to defend themselves.

This can result in the death of the attacker and there are plenty of people who are against this, e.g. the radical groups that are against any form of private gun ownership. Let's say Google represents that group and puts in their guidelines that the ownership of guns is regarded as something negative. Lets say Google is in the home security business. ... of course would they be against the ownership of guns, because a number of people will buy themselves a gun rather than hiring Google to protect them. So Google does not just have an interest in abolishing gun ownership rights for ethical reasons, but economic ones as well (just as they do with what they state in their SEO guidelines)

Does this analogy makes any sense at all?

from Halfdeck 653 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

"You must agree that there should be limits"

No, I don't see any reason for limits. I say do whatever works, whether that be buying links, cloaking websites, or spamming Wikipedia. Google is responsible for setting limits through its algorithms by minimizing the effect of spam. Google is smart enough to know it cannot rely on webmasters to "play-nice"; when people compete for terms that generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, rules are there ain't no rules.

from g1smd 653 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

What if there were no rules in the B&M world?

It would be OK to park a truck across your competitors front door to prevent customers getting access.

It would be fine to run newspaper and radio adverts saying your competitor had closed down, or had moved to a new address... the one for YOUR business.

It would be OK to go into your competitors premises and herd all the shoppers out on to the street and across the road into your shop.

It would be fine to plant a team of bouncers outside the competitors shop and make customers pay you to gain access to that premises.

It would be fine to block off the end of the street and make the business owner pay you for every person you let into the street, whether they were shopping or not.

You know, those are real-world parallels of 302 hijacks, MFA sites, click-fraud, etc.

from Cumbrowski 653 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

Tetsuto,

"No, I don't see any reason for limits. I say do whatever works, whether that be buying links, cloaking websites, or spamming Wikipedia. Google is responsible for setting limits through its algorithms by minimizing the effect of spam"

Fine, but you would not get a certification for being a SEO who is following the best practices and specified rules. You would be (or could be) a spammer and if people call you that, you would not have a problem with it, because it is true (or could be true. or was true or will be true hehe).

There are people who don't and I believe that this is actually the majority. It also creates a separation and draws clear borders. You can ignore any guides and rules and do what you want and live with the consequences. The consequences come in different levels from penalties over law suits to prison. :)

from Halfdeck 653 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

"It would be OK to park a truck across your competitors front door to prevent customers getting access."

Great examples gs1md.

"You would be (or could be) a spammer"

To Google, most SEOs are potential spammers (just ask Aaron Wall). Matt Cutts will tell you SEOs are valuable to Google because they make sites more crawlable and help Google discover valuable content - but he also knows most SEOs' agendas aren't to improve Google's search results.

"There are people who don't and I believe that this is actually the majority."

The difference between the majority of SEOs and my position is that they justify their spam tactics as legitimate advertising while I label what I do honestly as search engine manipulation. That's it.

from Cumbrowski 653 days ago #

Votes: 0 | Vote:

+ -

So the idea is to provide the opportunity for people to put their money where their mouth is... litteraly. I like that.

As I said, it would separate the ones who mean it from those who do not and just pretend that they are for marketing and image purposes. If the second group is the largest then we know that this industry is even more crooked than the outside world ever claimed it to be. hehe

I like that too. hehe