Routing Out the SEO Snake-Oil Salesmen
Over the past couple of days I’ve seen several questions asked on LinkedIn along the lines of “What questions should I ask a potential SEO provider?”, which prompted me to pose a different question to the Ottawa SEO discussion group:
In what ways might the SEO industry (as a whole) respond to issues of fear and lack of trust in selecting an SEO provider?
The many responses to the first question vary, but the one consistency is that there is always an underlying tone of negativity in the answers due to an obvious huge lack of trust in the SEO industry.
I think the overarching issue being brought to light by this is that SEO is in demand, but clients are leery to undertake SEO due to a perceived inability to separate the legitimate experts from the “snake oil salesmen” (a term that gets used more in the context of SEO than almost any other field I can think of).
I’d like to know your thoughts on how the SEO industry can somehow regulate itself and in the process help those in need find a legitimate and trustworthy provider.
One idea that comes to mind is some sort of certification, licensing, or accreditation body.
In the engineering field (at least in Canada) in order to authorize and approve building plans (for example), a person must be a registered and licensed professional member of the province’s association of professional engineers (e.g. in Ontario that is the Professional Engineers of Ontario - PEO). This then allows them to use the legal designation of P.Eng. In order to become a P.Eng, you must have verifiable training and experience under another P.Eng for a certain number of years, and have graduated with an engineering degree from an accredited engineering program.
SEO may certainly not entail the public safety issues involved in engineering, medicine, and other such professions, but in my opinion it is a field that, in the delivery of services, is more technically-oriented than it is marketing-oriented, and could certainly benefit from an independent overseer.
What would you like to see in the SEO industry? How have you seen these issues overcome in other industries? Let me know your thoughts.
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I am trying to find some form of reputable learning facility in Ottawa and came across this.
http://www.the-cma.org/?C=39&K=224608&ListingByMonth=*ALL*&ListingByEventType=EMARK&ListingByProvince=&ListingByCity=
Any thoughts?
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