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IAB, DMA, and SEO: WTF?
August 16, 2007
I just noticed this posted by Barry Schwartz over at SEL: The UK flavors of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have joined forces "to establish industry-wide search standards", as they put it in their release on the IAB's UK web site.
Every few years I see this stuff and I try -- really, I do try -- not to by cynical. But trying to qualify and quantify best practices is like sprinting like hell to get to the end of a Mobius strip. Historically, any efforts to define acceptable and unacceptable practices in SEO have been either so rigidly prescriptive as to except significant portions of successful (and lauded) SEO companies, or they've been so toothlessly vague as to allow access to anyone who can forge a backstage pass.
To which of these camps does the IAB/DMA "charter" belong? Judge for yourself: Following (in bold) are the minimum corporate qualifications found in the IAB's charter document (MS Word, 238K), with a little commentary (mine) in italic.
Many -- many -- of the industry's best SEOs are one-(wo)man shops.
That's actually not a bad benchmark. For PPC. How about the other 80% of clicks?
I'm not exactly sure what "trading" means, but I think it's a UKism for "having been in business." I certainly concede that most good SEOs have been in business for more than 6 months. But most of the lousy ones have been too.
Now we're getting somewhere. Explore the links to the membership pricing levels of the IAB UK, IAB Europe (PDF), DMA, and SEMPO.
I have nothing personally against any of these organizations, but answer this question honestly: With mass adoption of this charter by SEO companies, who benefits more -- these four membership organizations, or companies in search of a reputable SEO firm?
And in case you're still reading, thanks. Here's your reward, pulled from the original charter Word document, and delivered in the world's most accepted currency -- laughter:
Monitoring compliance
The charter will be self-policed by the SEM industry.
see all posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at August 16, 2007 10:08 PM
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Comments
Nicely put. As an "up and coming" very small search marketing company (only just over a year old) I see this as the big boys consolidating. LMAO.
After kicking their butts all year the big boys get together and try and say "if your company is not in this clique," they are in some way not reputable.
Reputation is built on the web. In forums. In networking sites. By results. By Client satisfaction.
Who would you pick to optimize and promote your site? A big company in this area or a mad obsessive geek with 8 years web hours at half the cost who spends 15 hours a day Googling (thinking the other 9 other hours of the day is wasted) with a team who don't see the big picture, are certainly not trained purely on seo, but who LOVE and take ownership of their cog in the wheel?
I've never received any professional training. I have never been accredited. Why should I? I've loved seo / sem so long and practice it every day and read so much new stuff every day it makes it easy.
I'm training my team.
Your point about some smaller companies being led by one seo is bang on.
I've never even MET another real seo in real life. They are just not that many on the ground here in Scotland.
We are a small company. We couldn't afford (and I'm not talking money here) to have another flakey seo in the organization at this size, especially if they are like me! I seo. My partner does the business stuff, my team help me out. I'd imaging that's the same for a lot of smaller companies.
We're going to kick these guys asses in 2008 no matter what frigging back slapping movement they belong to. :)
Posted by: Hobo at August 18, 2007 10:09 AM
Hi
I'm from the Internet Advertising Bureau, and would really like to keep you up to date with new announcements that we have. Therefore could you supply me with a contact email address, so that we can send any new releases or statements to you directly.
Regards, IAB UK
Posted by: Adam at October 16, 2007 01:34 PM
Hi
I'm from the Internet Advertising Bureau, and would really like to keep you up to date with new announcements that we have. Therefore could you supply me with a contact email address, so that we can send any new releases or statements to you directly.
Regards, IAB
Posted by: Adam at October 16, 2007 01:55 PM
nicely written but I think a lot of those organisations mess things up,
Posted by: James at May 20, 2008 10:28 PM
Really informative article, it helped me a lot, had to come back a few times and readi it again. keep up the good work, thanks
Posted by: Weis at May 26, 2008 01:16 PM