The cartoon shows (click to enlarge) a "Doctor of Psychiatry" about to consult Google for answers. Both good Doctors and SEO's diagnose what is wrong with their patient (website), and try to "fix" and improve them. My last post shows how SEO sellers and buyers may have to use lawyers to evaluate contracts. This post will be about analogies of SEO to other professional careers. The goal is to bring enlightenment to both SEO buyer and seller.
I got the idea for this post from an April, 2004 post on SEO Chat Forum. The author meant well by trying to make himself, and other SEO's, feel better about how it is possible for an SEO client to lose money (or worse). He analogized an SEO Consultant to a Doctor or Stock Broker in the sense of "no guarantees". The big difference, though, is that there are no standards, government regulations, or oaths that an SEO has to abide by to keep doing SEO. This doesn't mean that all SEO's are Worthless, Shady Criminals. To the contrary, there are many professional, ethical, value driven SEO's with different levels of sophistication (personally, I dislike the word "sophistication" as it carries an implied, condescending elitism with it). But, let's get back to the analogies.
A different forum had a member comparing an SEO to a lawyer by saying "...we are in the lawyer game. Charge accordingly...". I understand both these SEO's points of view, but how could the client look at all these analogies? A client could say that a doctor takes the "Hippocratic Oath" and has duty to report unprofessional conduct of other doctors. A Stock Broker has, under federal law, NASD which "..writes rules to govern their behavior, examines them for compliance and disciplines those that fail to comply." A Lawyer has State Court "Rules Of Professional Conduct" that include competence, scope of representation, diligence, communication, fees, confidentiality, and conflict of interest.
In fairness to ethical, professional SEO's I have to address the lack of educational effort and cooperation that they get from many clients. I relate to this Search Engine Watch Forum entitled "What Are Your Favorite Client Lies?", because for 20 years I consulted with clients about online and offline directory advertising on an independent contractor, straight commission basis. My two favorite "lies" are "You'll have a direct line of communication to.." (meaning "I'm a powerful influencer who can get you connected to the final decision maker), and "I'll make that change today" (meaning getting required "follow through" was a challenge). In both cases, the buyer and seller lost a lot of valuable time.
OK, you say, why not have SEO-SEM industry standards, with someone governing them. Danny Sullivan ("Search Engine Guru") has tried since Feb. 1999, but the main problem is lack of Search Engine interest or cooperation. That is partially due to the fact that each different search engine has their own set of rules on what is bad SEO. This post of Danny's explains why SEM firms would probably never be "certified" by the search engines. Yet in a recent article on the WebmasterWorld PubCon Las Vegas Conference 2005, Matt Cutts (the "Google Guy") was quoted as saying: "The best thing Google can do is cooperate with webmasters. SEO is not spam (bad SEO). As long as people are doing good SEO and doing things right we want to work with them." Matt does a fine job of representing Google, and fielding tough questions. But, while Matt doesn't own Google, it almost seems like each search engine wants to let SEO's know what they consider to be "Bad SEO" tactics, but none of them want to put their "seal of approval" on any one SEO-SEM firm, much less cooperate with other search engines and search marketing industry leaders in developing a set of unified standards.
Where does this leave the buyer and seller of SEO services? They have to "make their own way". Maybe this is one reason why more dollars aren't put into natural, organic search engine optimization even when studies have proved that the consumer-user of online search prefers the natural, organic results over paid search results? So, this post is laying some more educational groundwork for my upcoming options that potential SEO buyers and sellers can choose from, depending on their unique circumstances and their personality's "buying and selling style", in an upcoming post.
Cartoon courtesy of "Microdoc News" (out of business) by way of Google Blogoscoped.
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