Here are a list of four things that would make the life on an SEO infinitely easier and would help grow the industry at a faster rate than at present..
- No To Guaranteed Rankings
The scourge of the industry and possibly what causes more damage than anything else. This tactic is used by a minority agencies large and small, although has lost credence in more recent times as people become more savvy over what SEO is and how it works. Do a search for “SEO” and now and you are bound to find a PPC ad with someone offering “guaranteed rankings”. According to Google..
“Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google”
This falsehood leads to companies signing up for unachievable SEO campaigns, becoming disenchanted and then leaving feeling bewildered and having little confidence for the SEO process. Thus if everyone was honest with the punters, we would lessen the feeling of distrust that pervades the SEO industry. Unless of course, the people who think they can guarantee rankings actually believe their own propaganda!
- Google Spam Filtering
Google’s algorithm is advanced and way ahead of any other search platform, hence their deserved dominance and market share. However, at least once a week I get sent via Twitter an example of a spammy site that has some under hand blackhat SEO method that has slipped through the net, often ranking for competitive keyterms. Everyone in the Twittersphere who comments on the site in question does so with a slight sense of incredulity that such basic spam techniques still work. They make a mockery of Google’s index and penalise those who stick to accepted, white hat methods.
- Realistic Pricing
Although there is a Wikipedia definition of SEO, there is no real consensus over what SEO means in terms of service delivery as the boundaries are almost endless. From on page meta changes to managing multiple social networking profiles, there are two very polarised extremes of how much work can or should be done for a client. This leaves the consequential problem of pricing. Someone offering very basic, on page meta changes should make that abundantly clear when they proport to sell “SEO Services” for menial sums such as £99 per month. Because of this, companies selling a more holistic and transparent service get wrongly compared to companies selling a VERY limited service.
- More Competition
99% of SEO efforts are aimed at improving search presence in Google, as Yahoo and MSN become increasingly irrelevant. This means that Gooogle makes the rules which everyone else is forced to follow. The vast majority of these “rules” are beneficial, and the quality and variety of search results produced from Google would pay testament to that, However, monopolies are rarely a healthy thing, and surely it would better if people paid more attention to what was happening in other search platforms. For example Google places heavy emphasis on the age of a domain, sandboxing new sites for compeititve phrases even if that content is more relevant than established sites. With greater competition between platforms, surely Google’s indexing would be EVEN better, and not so heavily influenced by Google’s commercial objectives which has lead to a string of initiaitives aimed solely at increasing revenue rather than user experience.
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