SEMPO :: Industry Standards for Search Optimization Best Practices

I found a link in a LinkedIn Q&A section to a SEMPO (search engine marketing professionals organization) 2008 Survey.  The survey closed on the 31st December 08.  Even though I was a few days late I decided to complete the survey anyway.  Survey questions always gives you insight into what an organization is thinking or what is important to them at the time.

One of the questions asked was:

Do you agree or disagree with the following statements concerning industry standards for “search optimization” best practices?

• “There is a need for industry standards to guide “best practices” for search engine optimization practices.”
• “There should be laws passed to mandate some “best practices” for search engine optimization.”
• “An industry body should issue “best practice” standards for search optimization and penalize companies that do not abide by them, such as by publishing a list of names of companies to avoid.  Abuse of search optimization practices is a major problem.”

The first statement is fair enough.  Like most industries, there is a body or association that represents the practice as a whole and to have SEMPO being that representative to guide best practices for SEO is a good idea.  But how far do they go?

The second statement suggests that they are in favor of having laws passed to ensure that SEO best practices are followed.  I can understand with the email marketing industry the necessity of the CAN-SPAM Act due to spam causing so much havoc around the world and it severely costing the global economy as a whole.

With search engine spam, can you really say that it causes the same amount of damage or it is at the same annoyance level as electronic message spam that requires militant action such as passing laws with the attempt of stamping it out?  I certainly do not feel much anger towards search engine spam because I do not experience it on a daily basis as I have done in the past with email spam.  When I search on Google, I pretty much find what I am looking for most of the time.  The results are usually relevant to my search query.

I strongly disagreed with the second statement above.  There is SEO best practice which most white hat SEO professionals follow.  Then there is black hat methods that certainly go against best practice.  It is easy to distinguish between black and white.  However, what about grey hat practices where a method is bordering on slightly dodgy, but is not so bad that it deserves to be called black hat?

In many cases, what constitutes being grey hat is a matter of opinion.  For example, Google states in their Webmaster Guidelines: “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.  In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

On the whole, I agree with this guideline and believe strongly that the best way to generate links is through creating buzz online.  However if I found a relevant site to the one I am optimizing, I wrote an article to be placed onto their site with a single outbound link to my site and to incentivize the site owner  I gave a gift, I do not see any problem with doing this.  It is my opinion that if my content and link is relevant and adds true value to the user and I paid for the privilege of the content and link placement, this should not be seen as black hat or SEO spam.  Hopefully you do not see me as a bad person as I am really a law abiding citizen… really.

I know for a fact that the most goody-two-shoes of organic search agencies and SEO consultants will still at some point (if they haven’t already) buy text links without “no follow” tags in order to send spiders from a relevant site to the website they are optimizing.  The purchasing of links is not always about passing PageRank from one site to another, but rather providing relevance by including the site within a related link cluster neighborhood.

However, in the eyes of Google this is a big no-no and by SEMPO standards would go against SEO best practice.  The third statement implies that SEMPO would have to publish a list of the majority of their members as being SEO-Spammers as most of them at some stage have bought text links in order to train engine spider behavior.

If SEMPO were to control the industry with a large stick, resentment would arise from the SEO community.  This would certainly go against their original objective of supporting and guiding the industry with SEO best practice.