Is It Time For A Set Of SEO Standards?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 15 of September , 2008 at 7:25 pm

Jill Whalen has written a post on SearchEngineLand calling for the correct use of SEO terms. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept behind her thoughts, however, until the SEO industry can agree on a set of standards, you will never get a common use of SEO terms.

The term SEO has so many different meanings these days. Is it search engine optimization (optimisation) or search engine optimizer (optimiser)? Does SEO include SEM, social marketing and/or web design?

Unfortunately we will never get everyone using the correct terminology until there is some agreement on what that terminology means. As an industry, search engine optimization has grown with no controls and certainly little in the way of common standards.

There are no official qualifications so anyone can hang an SEO shingle on their website and start taking money. A simple look at the fly-by-night problems is ample evidence of this. The industry has almost evolved into one which cannot be standardized. The first question that everyone will ask is who is going to set the standards? If you were to set up a standardizing committee, how would you assess the suitability of the members?

If we leave it to the search engines to collectively come to some agreement on a set of standards, they would be accused of self interest (and probably confuse things more). If Jill were asked to set up a committee, who would she select as members and on what basis would she select them? Again, the accusation of self interest and selecting like minded SEO experts would arise.

There is no doubt that a set of standards and a common glossary of terms are required. The big problem will be, who, in the SEO industry, should set those standards?

                      Category: SEO