Seth Godin interrogates SEO Options

[peter_d]

So white hat has nothing to do with technique, then?

Glad we've cleared that up....

[bwelford]

If your heart is true, then all is well ...

[medkraft]

Despite our obvious concerns with Seth's comments, it may actually be the kick in the pants this industry needs. It clarifies what I've said for years: very few understand SEO, especially the people who pay the checks. At the very least his commetns force us to look for better ways to get the message across.

[Advisor]

On a related note, I was thinking about the different organizations that have been formed over the years and remembered about aim-pro. I looked it up, and there was our very own Ammon discussing ethics!

But then I got confused. All the great stuff about needing standards and no spamming, but with a whole pile of articles on how to spam the engines. If I thought I was confused before by your post, Ammon, I'm doubly confused after reading that site!

I guess it never quite got off the ground? It appears to be copyrighted 2000.

[Black_Knight]

AIM-pro (Association of Internet Marketing Professionals) was something that began as an upswell of pressure to unite in the (sadly missed) MarketPositionTalk forums of 1999. It therefore predates WAIM somewhat, though I believe that too began from a pressure to unite in a forum.

AIM-pro was sadly rather a reaction to the drive to unite, rather than a proactively preconceived and planned response to the demand. At first, volunteers to help were many. A core group formed to oversee this thing that was springing up, but that core group had many differences to argue and attempt to find compromise between. That took quite a lot of work.

In the end, it was the need to work so hard at it that caused the offers for help to dry up, I think. With arguments among the core group sapping away at the commitment of even the central people involved, and with some of the other volunteers suddenly disappearing once their offers of assistance were actually accepted, it needed to be more than a part-time effort by people already working hard as individuals in their own business. It folded early in 2000, having never been stable enough for us to accept any of the many membership applications.

There were some good ideas involved, but not enough commitment available to make the ideas into realities. Ah well.

[bwelford]

Despite our obvious concerns with Seth's comments, it may actually be the kick in the pants this industry needs.

I'm not sure Seth Godin has the stature to get the whole industry to react. However, I think the ground swell of opinion in this thread by some of the worthies in the industry shows the need for action. Given that, I thought it might be appropriate to throw out a way that the Search Engines might become part of the solution.

I think any attempt to define a set of Guidelines or Standards for acceptable "white hat" practices and some appropriate policing body with teeth is doomed to failure. It's attempting to create a whole para-legal system to ensure that a little corner of the universe behaves itself.

Sometimes I despair of the human race in its attempts to regulate its affairs. Just think of Enron, current world conflicts, current world refugee disasters, there's an awfully long list. Should we really be putting a huge amount of energy into trying to get a "workable white hat/black hat" solution to SEO?

Despite what Winston Churchill said ("Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried"), I've always had a warm feeling about benevolent dictators or incorruptible judges. The problem is that a search engine like Google is trying to get a solution by algorithm, where human judgement does not need to play a part.

Rather than trying to develop a wall around acceptable SEO practices and then trying to "weight out" or "filter out" those using practices outside the wall, I would propose the following. The approach could be used by any search engine but to shorten the text, I will use Google as an example of such a search engine in what follows.

Google should have, as it does, a short document of Best Principles and Practices. For guidance, it would also add a section of practices that are clearly, without exception, not acceptable. Google should have a "Best Practices Judge" who is available to review URL's that seem to be operating flagrantly in breach of the Best Principles and Practices. If the Judge decides that a URL is in breach then the URL would be removed from the index. The owner of the URL would be informed of the removal but not of the reason(s). There would be no right of appeal to the Judge.

To ensure "fairness" there should also be a Best Practices Ombudsman. Anyone whose URL has been removed would have the right to contact the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman could be a Google employee or be set up in an independent company as may be preferred. An appeal to the Ombudsman should include a short description of the practices involved in the said URL that may have triggered the removal. The Ombudsman could either reject the appeal outright (and so inform the appealer) or review the Judge's decision in the light of the information in the appeal.

Perhaps this is enough to give the flavour of the approach. The aim is to encourage everyone to use Best Practices. It would involve Google in extra costs, but possibly less than any other approach to try to clear up the mess. Most URL owners probably want to follow Best Practices. Any owner who uses a less-than-reputable SEO would get a very clear message when his or her URL is deleted from the index. This rapid visibility is the key to shining a search light on those SEO's who are not following Best Practices. It shouldn't need discussions in Forums as the only way to pinpoint the bad actors.

[steelseth]

Rules are made to be broken.
And the one that makes the rules is the first one to break them.
There was a saying among an ancient greek tribe (Spartiates) before even the concept of democracy was created, it goes something like this " Its OK to do anything as long as you do dont get caught doing it."

[bwelford]

I like that other quote, "May the force be with you."

[steelseth]

Maybe you are right ..............

Why not just ask Google to through his hole algorithm away and built just a human edited directory.....

With Editor "Judges" making all the decisions...........

[bwelford]

On the whole, I think the Google algorithm is probably pretty good. I suggested the Best Practices Judge with the thought that he or she would only intervene when clearly the URL was not following the spirit of those Best Practices. Of course, it would only be necessary where the algorithm could not catch that particular "Worst Practice". If the judges did the job well they would eventually rarely need to intervene. Folk would know that there's no point in trying to use Worst Practices since you then get banned from the most important search engine.

The people who will keep all this honest are the SEO clients. Just think. Suppose you're a business man with a website and you hire an SEO who says they only use Best Practices. After a few months you receive a message from Google saying your website has been removed from the index immediately it happened. You're going to be pretty vocal in your discontent. This is the most rapid way in which a search light can be shone on the bad actors.

There is a parallel with the Moderator process on a Forum. You would be surprised how much effort goes on behind the scenes in the Cre8asite Forums to ensure the public forums have the character we want - there can be dissension but always with a spirit of mutual respect, like guests in someone's home. With the years that the Cre8asite Forums have been running, this Cre8asite culture is pretty well known by now. So most people do not try to get into discussions that would be in breach of that culture. They know that it will be headed off, not by automatic deletion, but by a behind-the-scenes discussion via Private Messages, to try to conserve what is good in a thread and remove the irrelevant conflict. ... and it works pretty well.

It's interesting to watch the evolution of Danny Sullivan's new Search Engine Watch Forum, as it tries to establish its own culture. A recent thread was characterized by one participant as a Public Moderation process, with the implication that this should have gone on behind closed doors. Well perhaps. However it was a very quick way of making the point of what goes and what does not go.

To summarize, what I was proposing in my Best Practices Judge notion for Google was the exact equivalent of the Moderator role in a Forum. They're there but you hardly notice them.

[steelseth]

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