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Terry Howard started a thread on Sphinn asking members to SEO Ethics. He began:

The SEM/SEO industry seems to spend a lot of time taking abuse or having to defend itself from criticism of late. Even though even the blackest of hats do not technically break any laws (unless Google has finally filed to become an independent state) these activities get attributed to the industry as a whole and then painted with a corruption/criminal brush quite often.

This opened the topic for discussion. As someone outside the SEO industry, I’d like to ask this: Do members of the SEO industry deserve the abuse they get?

I believe the answer is no. And I think this can best be demonstrated by reviewing the sorts of accusations levied and then showing these accusations have no basis in fact.

Accusations: Jason Calcanis’s Theories on SEO’s

Let me begin by describing the sorts of accusations we read from a prominent detractor. I think it’s fair to say that Jason Calacanis, who is currently trying to get Mahalo, a human edited search engine, off the launch pad is a prominent detractor of SEO.

In fact, the premise for expending vast amounts of venture capital human energy to develop Mahalo rests on the premise that SEO is not only bad, but that it results in such poor search engine results that getting people to labor over link lists will improve search.

Clearly, Jason is a man who thinks SEO is bad. So, I think we can get a good idea what he thinks by finding his quotes:

In February, Jason said:

The SEO folks got really pissed off at me for saying “SEO is bulls@#t.” last year, but the truth is that 90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman. These are guys in really bad suits trying to get really naive people to sign long-term contracts. These clients typically make horrible products and don’t deserve traffic-that’s why they’re not getting it organically so they hire the slimebuckets to game the system for them.

So, 90% of SEO’s are poorly dressed slime-buckets who are trying to get rank for lame sites.

In comments posted at Sphinn., Jason said this:

VF: There are good SEOs for sure… but you have to admit that the bulk of the SEO work out there is by lame sites trying to get exceptional rankings.

And later:

Danny: I can only speak from my experience. I’ve only met SEOs who are trying to game the system. I’ve never met any of these SEOs who say “oh, let’s try and make your content better and build a service that is better for your users.” The people who do that brand themselves as website builder or digital agencies or something.

So, posting at Sphinn while having a conversation with a whole bunch of SEOs, including Danny Sullivan who blogs at Search Engine Land and founded Sphinn, Jason says he claims never met an SEO who is trying to help people build better content!

Not one Jason? Is Danny Sullivan a slime bucket? Should his avatar show a flaming red, horned, long tailed demon suitable for decorating a can of Underwood Red Devil Ham?

So, what do SEOs and SEM really do?

Let’s look at the reality, which is that those working in SEO and SEM are very focused on quality sites. Why? Well for one thing, it’s a heck of a lot easier to drive traffic to a good site than a bad site.

But that’s just my counter claim against Jason’s claim.

I’d like empirical evidence of what services SEO’s provide. I think it’s fair to say that we can figure out what those working in the search engine marketing industry offer by reading their blogs, and also discovering which blogs they like to read.

Now, if Jason and other SEO detractors are correct, we would expect to see SEO bloggers constantly discussing how to game the system and never discussing how to build a better service. Possibly, the SEO “slimebuckets” will plaster their blogs with ads requesting you to sign up for expensive contracts for their overpriced services. (With luck, we’ll see photos of the really bad suits that affront Jason’s tender fashion sensibilities.)

Interestingly, enough, Jason’s theory is something that can be tested empirically; I’ll show you how I did it. You can repeat my experiment. If you do, I believe you’ll find the topics SEO’s mostly discuss fall into these categories:

• How to build good content.
• How to organize your own web site so they don’t drop out of search engines. “Tricks” include things like, oh, not actually banning search engine spiders and/or making sure you have decent interal links to your important content.
• Pointing out that good content attracting traffic and helps you money on the web.
• Discussing how search engines work. This includes noticing both good, bad and newly introduced features of search engines and discussing new entrants into the market.
• What it’s like to work in SEO / SEM.

Would you like me to back my claim up?

Well, I’ll do it by highlighting today’s top 11 Sphinned articles on the first “Hot Topics” page on Sphinn. I picked this page to pull up the fairly recent articles, and chose those with the most Sphinns to highlight which topics actually interest the SEO community. I could use other methods of sampling blogs, but I think using the top up and coming at Sphinn is a good way to avoid cherry picking data to confirm any pre-existing biases on my part.

So now for Today’s Top Hot Topics on Sphinn

1. Tamar Weinberg’s SES San Jose 2007 Recap (36 Sphinns): Tamar Weinberg describes enjoying the Search Engine Strategies conference. Topic: Life as an in the Search business!
2. Social Media’s Direct Influence on Search Engine Ranking (33 Sphinns) Loren Baker discusses how both Yahoo and Google are incorporating the votes cast at social media sites into their ranking schemes. (And without mentioning Robert Scoble’s 3 video.) Topic? New search engine features.
3. Top Ten Organic SEO Myths(32 Sphinns): Jill Whalen explains myths about how to tweak your pages to improve search engine rank. What this about? How to organize our individual pages to communicate with spiders.
4. Link bombing still works. Even by accident. (28 Sphinns) Discusses an amusing case of accidental link bombing that propelled the “Outdoor Women of South Dakota” to the top of the search ranks for “OSWD”. What’s this? How search engines work (or don’t as the case may be.)
5. Sphinn Facebook Gadget(28 Sphinns): SEOish describes a new gadget that lets you show top Sphinn stories at your blog. What’s this? Good content for your blog.
6. What Does SEM Mean To You? (27 Sphinns): Vanessa Fox discusses how the terms “SEO” and “SEM” are used in the industry.
7. A Look Back at SES (Through a Conference Newcomer’s Eyes) Chris suggests we read his wife, Daniel’s reaction to a search engine conference. Topic? Life in the search industry.
8. Case Study of a Teenage Millionaire (26 Sphinns): Chris Winfield suggests we read Dosh Dosh’s article about how a teen enterpreneur is making money by writing great content that appeals to a specific niche, using savvy SEO when organizing her site and monetizing. Topics? Make money by building great niche content.
9. SEO Dream Team (26 Sphinns): Rhea Drysdale proposes a blog tag game suitiable to the SEO niche. Once again: Life in the search industry.
10. Top 10 Sphinn Avatars, and why.( 24 Sphinns): Eloi Casali discusses the importance of avatars to branding. Topic: Actually key content (i.e. the avatar) that helps people remember your brand.
11. 23 Great Ideas For Blog Posts (24 Sphinns): Pat Doyle suggests ideas for great blog posts. Topic: Build good content.

Oh, and guess what? All this advise is available to small business people, bloggers and even Jason Calacanis for free! No expensive long term contract for worthless services found on any blog or in any Sphinn post.

Go figure!

So Jason, if Danny’s skin every looks devilishly red you, that probably means the fair haired Irish last named SEO expert forgot his sunscreen and got a burn!

Conclusion: SEO’s care about quality!

So, we see: SEO’s do care about building quality sites. The like to read tips on how to build good quality, how to highlight good quality and they even like to explain how building good quality can generate wealth for their client.

What don’t we see? Posts about how to hide paid links, stuff key words, or game the system to promote poor web sites or product. You also won’t find these sites filled with blinking buttons asking you to hock your fillings to pay them for their services.

What you will see is a group of people willing to share information on how to write good content and also help make your good content site visible to search engines. And yes, if you have a business and need help, you can hire specialists to help you build a great site. And guess what? You can also hire a house keeping service, accountant for their services, and if you are a millionaire venture capitalist, you pay people $10-$15 to write lists of human generated search results instead of doing it yourself.

SEO’s provide a valuable quality service for people creating web sites. The business is as ethical as any other.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 11:01 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.