excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14513
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Posted: 2003-Aug-20 09:55
I am wondering if anyone would know or would like to hazard a guess at the ratio between SEO/SEM firms that adhere to Industry "best practices" and Search Engine Guidelines VS those that do not(that use known spam techniques)?
It's my feeling that it is a low ratio and increasingly so, but I wonder if anyone has done some type of study or written an article about this?
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nickn0783
Joined: Mar 26, 2002
# Posts: 1371
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Posted: 2003-Aug-21 09:41
You have got to remember though excell there will be lots of 'bedroom pirates' who pretend to know what they are doing and don't have a clue. The type that just like the idea of making money on the internet doing as little real work as possible whilst eating pizza. Do you count them? There must be a lot of them out there and I bet there will be a few spammers there. 
They usually use their SEO skills to complement their "Super Special Web Design" from what I've seen.
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Teresha Aird
Joined: Feb 14, 2000
# Posts: 595
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 11:12
hehe, well said! I know a few of them  Just lazy really, looking for a quick buck with no actual business plan or long term strategy so they don't care if the site's banned tomorrow, they made $5 today. Time to buy another domain and throw up another site.
Regarding a study about who does what, I haven't seen any other than Marketing Sherpa's attempts which was good but included so very few firms (and no independent consultants) that I don't think it could actually count.
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 16:44
I'd hazard a guess that there are more SEO/SEMs out there that do not adhere to established "best practice" than there are SEO/SEMs who DO follow "best practice."
I could be wrong, but from what I've seen in search results and from my personal experience talking to clients who have used SEOs in the past, that's just my personal guess.
I doubt that there would really be a way to measure for certain what percentage of SEOs adhere to best practice and which ones don't. After all, how many SEOs will freely admit that they spam or break search engine guidelines?
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14513
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 16:49
Thanks for your input, I went with something general in the long run. Very much based on my experience and research.
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yellowwing
Joined: May 21, 2002
# Posts: 2526
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 17:15
Try a baseline approach. Select some popular and competive keywords and see how many of the top results are spam. 'mortgage loans', 'new york hotels', 'buy viagra', 'online casinos', would give you a good cross section.
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philh
Joined: Sep 14, 2001
# Posts: 3050
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 18:50
<'mortgage loans', 'new york hotels', 'buy viagra', 'online casinos',>
IMHO trying to get top 10 for these terms is impossible using the best practice approach.
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 18:59
See, but even there, you are looking only at keywords that are most likely to have spam tactics associated with them because they are the most difficult to rank for. (chicken or the egg issue on that one)
I just don't see how you could possibly determine any kind of legitimate numbers on this question without going into the office of every single SEO and watching them work.
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philh
Joined: Sep 14, 2001
# Posts: 3050
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 19:00
Agree
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crash
Staff
Joined: Dec 02, 2003
# Posts: 10626
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 19:03
without going into the office of every single SEO and watching them work
I agree, I certainly wouldn't take their word for it 
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14513
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 19:05
LOL
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yellowwing
Joined: May 21, 2002
# Posts: 2526
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 19:18
On sampling the top 5 results of:
mortgage loans - lots of keyword stuffing, though relevant keywords. 1 instance that could be cloaking.
'new york hotels' - 1 instance of keyword stuffing. the rest is good links and content.
buy viagra - all straight forward
online casinos - lots of keyword stuffing, though relevant
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St0n3y
Joined: May 01, 2002
# Posts: 1620
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Posted: 2003-Aug-27 22:34
without going into the office of every single SEO and watching them work
I certainly wouldn't take their word for it
ok... but then by whose standards are we measuring? Google? Inktomi? SEMPO? SEO Consultants?
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dpeddle
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 269
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Posted: 2003-Sep-29 21:51
Well..... perhaps the best way to get a rough idea would be to get a random sampling of businesses who have used seo services and get some info on how their expeirences went.
One could argue that many companies would say their experience is great (even though the seo firm they hired is using bad tactics) .
But that could potentially be circumvented by asking questions like.... Has your seo firm consulted with you and explained their optimization process? Does your seo firm keep you updated on the progrees of your campaign? How familiar are you with the process of seo? Does your seo firm 'guarantee' top ten rankings on all the search engines?
I just thought quicky off the top of my head there... but the point being .. by conducting a survey like that... perhaps we can begin to understand..
a) how much do our clients know about what we do.
b) Are they confident in what we do.
c) We can learn how to better develop the seo industry and how to properly inform potential clients of what they can expect.
d) Perhaps we can link the seo knowledge of the client to their seo experience..ie: do uninformed clients experience a higher rate of 'unethical seo' by being duped, or is 'bad seo' a difficult problem to detect?
There are number of ways a properly researched 'study' could identify key trends and relationships between the seo community and its clients.
So........ how should we get this done?? Mr. Sullivan.....how about it?
Sorry... i have a ton of ideas suddenly flowing through my mind.
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philh
Joined: Sep 14, 2001
# Posts: 3050
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Posted: 2003-Sep-29 23:06
<Sorry... i have a ton of ideas suddenly flowing through my mind>
Dont appologise for that..
We need more of that round these 'ere parts...
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dpeddle
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 269
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Posted: 2003-Sep-30 15:01
I would like your opinions .... after reading this thread i got the idea and actually bought a domain for it.... but i am wondering how feasible the idea actually is.
i got seoexperience.com .
My idea... is to provide a non-branded site.... no self promotions or anything of the sort. The site will be strictly for seo industry research and development.
In particualr.. and again.. this is just in the idea phase.....we could put together a comprehensive survey that all seo companies and clients could use at the end of a campaign.
For instance.. when you finish off a campaign and send a thank you email ... or an invoice... or whatever... you can include a link to the survey. The survey can give the option to the client to be anonymous, or to include the company name they were working with..... but more importantly..... they will provide insight as to what their experience was like.
Also.. company names will always remain confidential as will clients (unless a client specifies otherwise) .
We can post comments on the site (anonymous if need be) in a good vs evil type chart... positive vs Negative Trends.... Growth areas vs non growth areas.... Cost Ranges....
Then....Every quarter... or 6 months or a year... (depending on turn out) ... the results of the survey will be mailed out to all clients and companies who participated (if they decide they want the results) . No fees... no crap... just thorough, quality research and analysis.
In addition to the survey... an seo directory can always be included.... articles.... etc.....
The ultimate goal howveer... is to build a site that is unbiased, non promotional (with the exception of promoting our industry), and acts as a research tool for seo consultants.
before the survey/site would go up the key will be getting enough input from the seo community to determine what should be included in the questions.
What do you think..... in my head its seems great.... how unrealistic is it?
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excell
Staff
Joined: Mar 19, 2001
# Posts: 14513
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Posted: 2003-Sep-30 17:25
I can see where you are going and you are in the right direction.
Client experience and expectation to begin with, needs to be addressed accurately and with so much noise and confusion a site that the client or potential client could visit would be great.
It is very similar to the current sherpamarketing report method, but more interactive as you are describing it.
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Oct-07 18:05
I like this idea, but there are obviously some issues in how you would promote it to get people to actually fill out the surveys.
For example, an SEO that knows they are doing their client no favors is certainly not going to suggest that they go fill out a survey after the fact. I think that this would make your results skewed toward the "safe" SEOs. I could be wrong...
You'd have to get some nice publicity behind the effort so that folks knew to sign up and share their results. Promotion via forums, not just SEO forums, but Webmaster forums and small business owner forums. I'm not a statistician, so I don't know all the little nuances that would be involved...
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