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The SEO community suffers from a lack of professionalism on many levels, the most important level being our inability to agree on standards. With yet another “certification” program being announced by people who are known to the community but who lack any credentials themselves, we have a growing credibility problem.

I’ve read articles on how to find “the right SEO”, “a professional SEO”, “a certified SEO”, etc. Search engine optimization is turning into another Internet gold rush — and in any gold rush the people who make the most money are the guys selling picks, pans, and shovels to the gold miners.

SEO tool providers and SEO certifiers are selling dreams. They are not selling either authority or reliability. They certainly don’t stand behind their tools or certifications with any guarantees that have meaning for the clients of the SEOs who buy those tools and certifications.

As the snake oil continues to leach out onto the Web, we have to be responsible to ourselves. We have to provide some measure of accountability to our clients through metrics that make sense outside the SEO mindset.

How to use ranking reports for good SEO
Ranking reports are the oldest metric our industry has used. They are largely scoffed at but people keep using them. We scoff at them because rankings don’t really mean anything, and those automated ranking reports inflate query statistics. We continue to use ranking reports because if we can show clients that we have improved their search visibility for relevant keywords, the clients can at least see something.

A good SEO should offer to take those ranking reports and compare them to search referral data. If the SEO is accomplishing anything, there should be a correlation between the ranking reports and the search referral data. If the correlation fails to appear in the data, then the SEO should understand that the wrong keywords are being targeted.

How to use competitive research for good SEO
The worst possible thing you can do for a client is find out where their competitors are getting links from and advise the client to get links from those same sources. Why? Because if the competitors are watching their link profiles they will see the clients coming and start getting more links. You cannot win in a competition where you keep handing your strategy to your opponents.

Most SEOs mistake competitive backlink research for true competitive intelligence. It’s nothing of the sort. If you’re going to spend time investigating a competitive site’s backlink profile, you should use that information as a blacklist — DO NOT get links from those sites. Stay off the competition’s radar for as long as possible.

Some SEOs will provide a detailed analysis of competitive sites’ structure and content — often resulting in their clients’ taking the “best” ideas from their competitors and improving on them. Again, this is the wrong thing to do because simply reusing “successful” ideas fails to distinguish your site from competitive sites.

If you’re going to analyze competitive site structures, use their best features as a blacklist for ideas. Then go looking outside the vertical for user-friendly ideas your competitors have NOT used in their site structures and designs. That way you’re bringing new ideas to the consumer and standing out from the crowd.

Be wary of SEO jargon and buzzwords
It’s easy to fall into the habit of using industry jargon and buzzwords when talking with clients and prospects. Some of them even know these terms. You really provide no value to the conversation — and in no way distinguish yourself — by talking like many other people in the industry. Avoid using terms like “link juice”, “domain authority”, PageRank, “link building”, etc. unless you can provide a list of authoritative sources that explain what these terms mean.

No SEO blog constitutes an authoritative source of information on these terms.

For that matter, no search engine Webmaster guidelines page provides any authoritative information on our lexicon, either.

Does anyone offer authoritative definitions? Remember, we’re an industry without standards. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that no standards = no authoritative definitions. Buzzwords may bamboozle clients but they don’t provide good SEO service.

Talk like a lay person. Think like a lay person. Stop trying to impress people with your fancy words and expressions.

How to establish your expertise in the field
You have to be credible. It’s incredible for anyone to claim they are an industry leader. We don’t have a leader but we do have a lot of people standing on soap-boxes trying to lead the mob. This industry is a mob, it runs mostly on mob-mentality, and you don’t want to be the leader of a mob.

Rather than pitch yourself as an expert, acknowledge that opinions vary on any major issue. It’s better to be up-front with the client and say, “There are opposing viewpoints on this matter. Our position is X. Another position is Y. We favor X because [list the strong points of X here].”

Don’t attack other people’s points of view unless you are forced to. The guy on the other side of the phone may have gotten his certification from the people you’re dissing. It’s better to work with the client to understand why you favor your techniques. They will be less likely to emotionally identify themselves with the ideas you don’t follow.

Be prepared to show clients data. You cannot violate client confidentiality but you can prepare case studies, lists of publicly accessible resources, and otherwise document the methods and processes you want to use for your client’s benefit.

Avoid controversy. Don’t be the person to propose a controversial technique. Even if it’s something you believe in, you have no business leading a client into the danger zone. If the client brings up a controversial process, you owe it to that client to discuss the pros and cons, the risks, and to share with them opposing points of view (in their own context) so the client can make an informed choice.

And you may want to get the client to sign a waiver of responsibility.

It’s one thing for you to do something with your own Web sites. It’s another for you to do something with someone else’s sites. Even just recommending a controversial practice places a moral liability on you, if not a legal one.

Be thorough in your presentations
The problem with reporting things to clients is that you want to be complete without being complex. They want the birds’ eye view that gives them enough information to justify placing their trust in you. Burying the client with data is not a good idea, but providing the client with enough information to show you’re doing your job and providing them with a return on their investment is a great idea.

Executing great ideas is not so easy. You want every metric, every chart to make sense to the lay person. If you cannot condense what you do to easily comprehensible “Start at A get to B” discussion points, your clients probably have no idea of what they are paying for.

The Bottom Line
The SEO industry does not support us with any credibility, authority, or accountability. No one goes to jail, pays a fine, or loses any credentials if they step across lines — in fact, our industry has no power or mechanism for drawing lines, much less any power or authority for enforcing boundaries.

It therefore falls to each of us to be accountable to ourselves and our clients because we can only offer personal professionalism. There are 100 definitions of “good SEO”, “best practices SEO”, “proper SEO”, etc. None of those definitions is any better than the others, even if most of us could easily agree on one or two of them.

Method – Method may be defined as “a manner or mode of procedure, esp. an orderly, logical, or systematic way of instruction, inquiry, investigation, experiment, presentation, etc.: the empirical method of inquiry.”

Methodology – Methodology may be defined as “a set or system of methods, principles, and rules for regulating a given discipline, as in the arts or sciences.”

Stratagem – Stratagem may be defined as “any artifice, ruse, or trick devised or used to attain a goal or to gain an advantage over an adversary or competitor: business stratagems.”

Strategy – Strategy may be defined as “a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result: a strategy for getting ahead in the world.”

Tactic – Tactic may be defined as “a plan, procedure, or expedient for promoting a desired end or result.”

Technique – Technique may be defined as “the manner and ability with which an artist, writer, dancer, athlete, or the like employs the technical skills of a particular art or field of endeavor.”

Method, Methodology, Stratagem, Strategy, Tactic, Technique — we use them all, both in our professional lexicons and in our daily work as SEOs. If you’re like me, you’ve probably used these expressions loosely in conversations and formal writing. Frankly, I rarely stop to look up the proper meaning and use of a word in a credible dictionary.

But I think that when people want to talk about “best SEO practices” they need to be consistent in what they are saying. You have to work with a single vocabulary, an authoritative lexicon, consistent jargon, one body of language, a standard idiom — honestly, is there any other way to say it? In English, there is always another way to say something, anything, just about everything. If you get my meaning (but I drift off onto a tangent, here).

What is the difference between an SEO tactic and an SEO Strategy? Does anyone have an SEO Stratagem? Does anyone actually use the expression “SEO stratagem” when searching for the Best SEO advice they can get?

I’ve always thought of a stratagem as a piece of strategy, a tactic, a technique that you use as part of a larger plan to achieve a specific goal. I was wrong, apparently. Stratagems are ruses — deception.

Truth be told, I use deception in search optimization every day — I just try to make sure I don’t violate search engine guidelines with it. And, yes, I do believe deception can stay within the guidelines established by search engines. After all, search engines are only concerned about whether you’re deceiving them or their users. They care nothing about whether you pull the wool over your competitors’ eyes.

However, deceptive SEO tactics make up only a small part of my repertoire of SEO techniques — the inventory of ideas, methods, schemes, and processes or procedures I work with, use, and utilize is not only quite large, it grows on an almost daily basis.

Maybe this post would be more appropriate for SEO Theory but I put it on Best SEO Blog because there isn’t much theory to share. I mean, here at Best SEO Blog I try to be concise and direct, to the point. I suppose you could say I strive to be pithy on Best SEO Blog and I indulge in word-wallowing on SEO Theory.

It’s easy to be pithy — just say something concise that is rich with meaning.

You could therefore say that I strive to develop the technique of pithy SEO here on Best SEO Blog so that I can be sure I have an SEO tactic that is both ethical and easy to implement.

The pithiness of a Best SEO Blog article might be measured by something we could call PithyRank, in which the most pithy article is concisely linked to with meaningful anchor text by the remaining most pithy articles. It’s a pithy we cannot have a Toolbar to measure pithy.

I take pithy on you by not wasting words. Words are a beautiful thing to waste, but not on the Best SEO Blog, because being the Best SEO Blog means that one’s words are too important to be wasted. The human word, what a terrible wasteline.

This article really had nothing to do with strategy, tactics, methods, and stratagems — or did it? Did I just use the Best SEO Blog to deceive you, or was I being honest (and somewhat pithy)? That’s almost like saying “this sentence is a lie”, is it not? Is this question correct?

Frankly, I think you can say that the Best SEO Blog is honestly trying to show how deception is ethically acceptable so long as the deception harms only a competitor and not the consumer. But what if your consumer IS your competitor? Then can the most harm accomplish the most good, or is the least harm better than the least good?

How one must wonder what conundrums we contrive when we seek to help those who most seek to harm our own best interests.

As William Shakespeare might have said, “Pithy is the virtue of search engine optimization, and none but spammers use it cruelly.”