• Register
• Log in

SEO Theory - SEO Theory and Analysis Blog

Algorithm analysis, Web community relationship analysis, SEO practices and techniques, industry news, etc.

• Home
• About SEO Theory
• SEO Glossary

Standards for SEO - Can optimization be standardized?

Posted by Michael Martinez on December 14, 2007 in Advanced SEO

There was some interest in my proposed Journal of Case Studies in SEO Theory but not enough, I think, to justify going forward with the project. It would be asking too much of too few people to take on such a project. I may feel people out next year to see if interest has grown.

In the mean time, this morning I updated our internal standards for optimizing Web sites again and as I handed out the new document to my staff someone asked, “Are we giving this to clients?”

I hadn’t really thought about that, but I suppose that at some time we may offer clients a basic SEO standards document. We provide clients with SEO tip sheets, consulting, special reports, etc. — things custom-tailored to their specific situations. But I don’t think we’ve ever actually published minimum standards for our on-page search engine optimization.

Standards should not need to be updated very often. In fact, if they are “standard” they should regarded as the foundation or guiding principles of the work being done on all projects. The standards I talk about this year should be the same standards I talk about next year and the year after, only changing to reflect necessary shifts in search technology.

Most of my internal updates have really been attempts to reduce the amount of documentation people have to read. I usually update our training materials as we bring on new people. But I’ve also received numerous requests for concise check lists and task lists.

Search engine optimization is too robust for a simple check list but you could certainly break down everything that is done into a series of check lists: keyword research, competitive analysis, page design, copy development, and reporting. Every SEO campaign has to include those functions, but search engine optimization is not a do-it-by-the-numbers discipline.

That is, every campaign can potentially use every available technique right up until your client digs his feet into the ground and says, “I’m not going to do that.” Those words ring out across the halls of SEOdom on an all too frequent basis. I’ve learned to be flexible and not argue with the clients. There is always another way to get the job done without agonizing over why a client thinks I shouldn’t change his page titles, copy, or whatever.

But there is a plethora of tools to choose from for keyword research, competitive analysis, and rank reporting. We can each develop our own comfortable style of doing things and — as long as the basic tasks are done — we’re delivering the service we need to deliver.

A real standard cannot be based on a tool, a method, or an opinion. It has to be based on a function and what results the function is expected to achieve. It’s easy enough to say you have to do keyword research, but what should the standard for keyword research be?

There are no standards in our industry. I and many other people have complained about that often through the years. In fact, though several organizations offer “SEO certification” I put absolutely no stock in SEO training courses. I’ve had resumes come across my desk where the strongest qualification for SEO boiled down to “I took so-and-so’s SEO course”.

While so-and-so may be doing pretty well for him or herself, that doesn’t mean his or her training course teaches you everything that I think you should know. SEO certificates are a waste of paper simply because we have no industry standards. SEO training is not necessarily a waste of your time — at least you’re learning what someone is willing to share. But we’re still very much in the “either you can do it or you can’t” phase of building our industry.

There are things done in search engine optimization that no one ever talks about. They are not necessarily bad things. They don’t have to violate any search engine’s guidelines. But some people would look at those ideas and say, “Hey, why didn’t I think of that?” and some people would look at them and say, “Well, I would never do that.”

There are things done in search engine optimization that your basic, average, everyday SEO guru no longer talks about — or maybe your average know-it-all SEO expert says things like, “This really doesn’t matter much.” Because we have no industry standards anyone can say, “This really doesn’t matter much.”

And because we have no industry standards anyone can say, “Links are all you need” or “links are the most important factor in SEO”.

A real set of standards would force you to look at everything critically. Standards set the minimum threshold for quality. You cannot build standards on the philosophy of building links. You cannot build standards on the philosophy of “just write more copy”.

Standards have to serve a purpose. They have to deliver a real benefit when implemented. They have to serve as an objective measure of quality, competence, and functionality.

Standards have to be open (to all who are subject to them or use them) and standards have to be uniformly applied. You can have an internal standard — many companies do, actually, implement internal production, design, coding, and service standards. They measure employee productivity and evaluate core competence in part on the basis of those standards.

If you’re going to judge someone’s competence as an SEO, I hope you’re not swayed by how many people trash that person in their blogs and forums. I hope you’re not swayed by how many blog or forum posts they make. Competent SEO is not demonstrated by how many top ten tip lists a person generates. Competent SEO is not expressed through unprofessional, disparaging remarks. Competent SEO is not expressed through bragging and pretentious demands for support.

Competent SEO shows up in one place and only one place: the search results. But competent SEO is not just about placement in search results — it’s also about attracting and converting qualified visitors. Competent SEO is about driving traffic to Web sites that offers a high probability of taking some desired action.

If your only objective is to get people to click on one link in the middle of your page, you’re an incompetent SEO if you fail to bring people to your page who actually click on the link. You may be the greatest, sweetest, most personable and lovable person on Earth. You may be the meanest, pettiest, most belligerent and abusive person on the Web. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t get people to click on that link (conversions), you suck as an SEO.

Good SEO means putting the right content in front of the right people. You cannot force them to take the desired action, but you can certainly give them every reason to do so. As long as you get SOME conversions, at least you’re doing something right. Maybe you can do something better, but you’re at least doing something right.

Standards help ensure you do something right. SEO standards, if they were to exist, would call for attention to every aspect of a Web site. Every component of the search optimization experience would have to be formally stated and explained.

Take title tags. It’s almost an industry-accepted standard that you need unique, compelling title tags for every page on a site. But a standard cannot be expressed in those terms. A standard for titles has to be more objective. “Page titles should be unique, concise, and relevant” would be a better standard for optimization. You’re not getting bogged down in the “brand first or keyword first” argument.

Standards don’t settle all arguments. Standards simply show you what the basic skills are. If you master the basic skills you can comply with the standards.

Standards don’t document creativity or stifle creativity. Standards simply establish what really needs to be done.

We can almost say the SEO industry has established the creation of unique, concise, and relevant titles as a standard. Almost.

The description meta tag is another topic where we could almost say a standard has been set. I think most people now understand the value of using a meta description to influence what text the search engines show to their users for a page. Like page titles, meta descriptions should be unique, concise (but not as short as titles), and relevant. And yet, we’re still not there yet. Too many page-spitting tools still leave the meta descriptions empty or filled with duplicate crap.

The keywords meta tag still works for Ask and Yahoo!. Your opinion of how much or how little it helps is irrelevant. The tag works and you cannot change the fact that it works because that is up to the search engines. That said, people who still use this tag are all over the map with it. We have not even come close to figuring out what we ought to be doing with it. We are hopelessly deadlocked on establishing any sort of standard for optimizing with keywords.

The robots meta tag is useful but in so many different ways that people have not really gravitated toward a typical effective usage. Even I advocate using the tag for redundant documentation. I mean, it’s not like the search engines really care if I embed “index,follow,archive” or not — they’re going to do that anyway. But if the day ever comes when search engines are forced to use opt-in indexing (which I would not mind at all), I’m set. I’m ready for it. Still, we’ve got no standards for robots.

Hx headers, images, alt= text, in-site navigation and architecture — there is plenty of opinion that has been shared through the years on these topics. And believe it or not there is actually some consensus on a couple of them.

Everything should be relevant. Relevance is crucial to good Web page design. Irrelevant content is acceptable if it’s embedded tastefully or functionally (all advertising, for example, is irrelevant content regardless of contextually sensitive it may be).

Nothing should be deceptive. Deception helps the bad guys as long as it isn’t detected. Bad guys work in volume. If you’re trying to get a Web site to rank for the long term, you don’t need to be doing anything deceptive. Hiding text, hiding links, hiding stuff in general is counterproductive for search engine optimization because good SEO is not just about how to get rankings this month, but how to be ranking well in five years.

SEO standards would make SEO tools more meaningful. Most SEO tools are really worthless pieces of nonsense. They always have been and they always will be. People who load their browsers with SEO tools had better be using those tools to supplement their intuitive knowledge rather than to substitute for it. I don’t forbid my staff from using SEO tools. But I expect them to be able to explain to me (without looking at an SEO tool) whether a site should be ranking well, whether it is well-designed, whether it has obtained value, whether it can pass value.

You would be far better off never to look at another SEO tool in your life than to keep hoping you’re going to find a better SEO tool than whatever crap you’ve installed in your browser.

Unless we can agree on some standards. If we had SEO industry standards, the quality, usefulness, and value of SEO tools would skyrocket. Right now all SEO tools are virtually worthless simply because there are no industry standards.

A blind-folded kid throwing darts at the wall has as good a chance of telling you how well-optimized a site is as your favorite SEO tools do.

We don’t have to agree on a lot of standards to begin with. But I think it’s time people began agreeing on something as standards. If we engage in enough dialogue on the topic of standards we may be able to create a collective SEO community wisdom that really does reflect more wisdom than nonsense.