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mcanerin
In any case, any published SEO standards will be esentially worthless for ranking in a competitive market anyway, so who cares??
I disagree. This is assuming that the only way to "win" is to not follow agreed upon rules and guidelines. It's also assuming that "standards" are the same as cookie cutter SEO. It's not.
To use gaming as an analogy, this is akin to those kids and lamers that can't handle playing a game without cheat codes. Even in those games, the most successful gamers don't use cheat codes.
Real gamers know and follow the rules, and win anyway due to skill. The rules in chess are always the same for both sides, but it's still possible and even routine for one side to win. SEO is far more complicated, and thus more interesting.
Winning and losing is not based on obeying or disobeying the rules, it's about being better than your opponent.
Skill counts.
Story: We Don't Need SEO Standards!
I completely disagree. Standards are to protect the public (and SEO's from the public), not to protect SEO's from other SEO's or search engines.
Point by Point Rebuttal:
http://mcanerin.blogspot.com/2008/03/search-standards.html
Ian
Story: We Don't Need SEO Standards!
"In regards to the definitions, it would seem to me that if a client isn't sure what the SEO person means by something in their contract, that they should ask for it to be better defined in the contract, no? "
Jill, the problem comes in when the client IS sure what the terms mean, but in fact their definition is different from the SEO's. Why would they feel a need to ask for specific clarification if they feel they already know what you mean?
That's a serious issue. You yourself acknowledge in your article that your definition of "SEO" is very different from what other SEO's use. Is it so hard to believe that a client may also have a different definition, and therefore not bother or know enough to ask for clarification?
You can't ask for clarification of every word in the English language, just in case the other fellow defines them differently. Nothing would ever get accomplished. That's why dictionaries exist. They are a standard for the language. We need standards in order to communicate effectively.
Ian
Story: We Don't Need SEO Standards!
"P.S. I was hoping that my posting this on the HR forum would get you to see it and respond!"
*grin* It did!
The article you wrote was such a succinct and well written description of the most common objections to standards that it was the first time in a long time that I've been able to respond with my own views properly.
As for a plan, I'll put some thought into it and post a proposed roadmap to standards later today. No sense having an opinion if you can't back it up with an action plan. :)
Ian
Story: Are SEOmoz losing the plot?
"In fact, I rarely post my real views or opinions. Sometimes I will post controversial opinions, but sometimes they are just that and aren't always mine."
That stood out for me too. So my understanding is that this is a fake story about a fake issue just for traffic and controversy.
And some people wonder why others don't vote for their posts. It's called credibility. You've lost it by posting a transparent negative spin marketing tactic that wasn't even written well enough to get anyone to post that they agreed with it - which is a feat in itself, admittedly.
As a matter of fact, it's only redeeming value (if it could be called that) is that it's a classic example of the stuff people DON'T vote for, and why, thus supporting Rebeccas post far better than your own.
Rebecca wins (not that it was much of a contest) by being honest and upfront. That still counts, you know - as old fashioned and analog as it may sound.
Ian
Actually, I've talked to both Google and Yahoo engineers about geolocation issues for quite some time (it's my specialty) and they indicated very clearly that this type of approach is acceptable.
For example, the Akamai server (which Yahoo and Google both use) uses a similar system for providing content to local visitors, it just does so in a very search UN-friendly method. You end up with the opposite issue - one website appearing to be hosted on multiple IP's all over the world. As a matter of fact, working on the Akamai issue on behalf of the Canadian government was one of the things that led me to the current system.
The bottom line is that you are allowed to host anywhere you want. You can also set up your servers anywhere you want. All I'm providing is a way to your your preferred servers to host in your preferred location - the best of both worlds.
The only way this could be seen as spam is if you were using it to try to change your Class "C" IP in order to have related sites appear from different owners, and people are doing that now just by asking their ISP's for a different Class "C". But by itself a Class C is not spam - it's how you use it.
Google *wants* to know where you are targeting. If they actually cared about where you hosted they would not assign geolocation to ccTLD's, allowing you to host in the US (for example) but to be seen as a UK site (with a .co.uk) If that's not considered spam (and it's not) then this system isn't either.
If anything, trying to target a UK audience without any attempt to tell Google that you are relevant to the UK is what would be considered misleading, but it's not - lots of companies hosted in the US with .coms do it all the time.
It would be very useful to me to see what you felt was "misleading" about any of this, so I could address it directly. It's easy to suggest that anything anyone does to a website to rank better is misleading or spam (there are many people who argue all SEO is by definition misleading and therefore spam) but honestly it needs to be more than that. You can't possibly be suggesting that changing hosts (which is the net effect of this) is misleading to anyone.
Do you have a specific scenario in mind that would potentially confuse Google as to the content or targeting of the site? There certainly is no duplication issue, and human visitors see everything about the site exactly how the search engines see it.
Ian
That's a good point, of course. It's not related directly to this technology because of course those same 1001 sits could all just as easily buy .us domains or host .coms' at cheap (or even free) hosting services in the US and accomplish the same goal. As a matter of fact they could probably do it cheaper.
My system is really aimed at the serious international businesses that find themselves stuck for one reason or another (could be internal politics, could be CMS issues, etc) with a generic TLD and don't want to host in other countries for whatever reasons. Sometimes it's as simple as them not wanting their credit card or user profile database physically located in a country where they may not have the same privacy laws, for example. EU users would be a classic example of this. These are the4 firms that would be best helped by this technology. Because I have to pay for Tier 1 hosting in a LOT of different countries, provide unique IP's bandwidth, etc, this will not be a free service. But it will be cheaper than companies like those could do themselves. So I suspect this would not be the most popular choice for would-be spammers - it's really aimed at my clients (who I developed the system for) and other businesses and organizations with their needs.
More to your point, I agree that in theory you may want to divide your results from"targeting my country" and "from my country" but in general I don't think the average searcher would (in my opinion).
The reason is, for example, what is a better result to a UK user looking for shoes - a UK based company that primarily sells to China, or a Chinese company that specifically targets and ships to the UK? I think most users looking for shoes in the UK would say the later. This might sound odd but in reality most exporters are by definition more appropriate results outside their own country than inside it.
I've noticed that Google seems to be addressing your issue, however. In the last 6 months or so, I've seen a trend towards needing a geotargetted site AND geotargetted links. The idea is that if a site has a lot of links from the UK, then it's probably relevant to people from the UK.
This is an idea borrowed from Yahoo and Ask, who have been doing this for quite a while, and I think it's going to continue, as it would make sense that a site that is geotargetted to an area and has geotargetted links is a better result than simply a geotargetted site. Many sites are accidentally geotargetted. It's often a huge surprise to some people when you tell them that their .cc domain is geotargetting them to the CoCos' Islands, and therefore they can't geotarget the US or any other country as well as a result. Heck, many people don't even know you can geotarget in the first place! Adding links into the equation could help with this.
Basically, I'm offering one important piece of the puzzle, but links still matter :)
Ian
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Story: Learning SEO - Do We Need Standards?