Proposed SEM Standards (Part 1)

There is no way that one person could hope to write an entire Standards document for an entire industry, so I'm breaking this down into smaller parts that I feel would be the most helpful to others.

In this case, the following is a proposed set of Standards for creating Standards. Yes, you need rules for making the rules. In the full Standards, this would be the first section.

Naturally, comments here or elsewhere (as long as you quote what you are commenting on so we are all on the same page) are welcome and actively encouraged.

More information on how Standards fit within and relate to a Code of Ethics and Guideines

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Search Marketing Standards

In accordance with the Search Marketing Code of Ethics, the following Search Marketing Standards reflect the general consensus of the search marketing community.

The Creation of Standards

All Standards outlined in this document and any amendments thereof shall follow the intent and purpose of the Search Marketing Code of Ethics, and no Standard that directly violates a principle of the Code of Ethics shall be created.

Interpretations and Guidelines for Standards shall also be made in accordance with the principles of the Code of Ethics.

Standards shall strive to be consistent, useful and clear.

Standards should be written in such as way as to not stifle innovation, creativity or informed professional judgement, while still providing for a coherent, consistent and authoritative frame of reference for the industry and the public.

Standards should be written in a manner that is respectful towards, but independent of, other stakeholders in search, such as website owners and search engines.

No Standard shall be created without the opportunity for debate and discussion within the entire search marketing community. Standards are necessarily independent of the organizations and companies promoting them, and discussion and debate cannot be limited to only members of a particular company or organization.

Standards Creation Process

All Standards proposals shall undergo assessment and debate within the search marketing community.

• Method 1: A proposed standard is created and offered publicly for comments.
• Method 2: A particular Guideline or Best Practice achieves such a consensus amongst the search marketing community that it begins to act as a de facto Standard. With community permission, it can be promoted to a Standard.

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Ian

Proposed (Draft) SEM Code of Ethics

For more information about how a Code of Ethics fits in with Standards and Guidelines, see the previous post.

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Search Marketing Code of Ethics

We, the search marketing professionals who are voluntarily adhering to the statements of principles set out below, do hereby believe in and commit to the following:

Truth

We shall strive towards truthfulness and integrity in our dealings with others.

We will accurately disclose relevant significant potential conflicts of interest to our clients.

We shall avoid deceptive marketing practices.

We will clearly, accurately and fully disclose realistic potential negative consequences of our actions to our clients in advance.

Responsibility

We are responsible to our clients. Clients should never be harmed by our actions, and are entitled to be dealt with in a fair and accountable manner.

We are responsible to the profession. We will not engage in actions that are likely to bring the profession into disrepute in the eyes of the public.

We are responsible to society. We shall obey all laws pertaining to our professional actions and efforts.

We are responsible to ourselves, to continually improve and update our skills and knowledge.

Respect

We shall treat others with professional courtesy and conduct.

We shall hold the private information of others in strictest confidence.

Fairness

We shall treat clients fairly and in good faith, and are entitled to expect the same in return.

We shall use our best efforts to act on behalf of a client, while maintaining a professional demeanour towards other stakeholders.

We shall not encourage clients or the public to have unreasonable, unrealistic or unattainable expectations regarding the profession, the industry or the services offered.

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The Creation of Draft SEM Standards

UPDATES:

Draft Code of Ethics posted

Proposed SEM Standards (Part 1)

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As promised, I offer the following several posts to the SEM community as proposed draft Code of Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines.

First, a primer on how these 3 things fit together:

Code Of Ethics

A Code of Ethics is a general statement of common principles and ideals. They are usually not intended to deal with specific issues, but rather outline an overall approach and philosophy.

In law, this would be the equivalent of a constitution. It should rarely, if ever, change.

Example: SEO's shall avoid deceptive marketing practices.

This is fine as a philosophy, but of course it's not terribly clear what "deceptive" is in all cases. Sure, this would deal with directly and fraudulently lying to people, but what about something like IP delivery or cloaking, where there could be arguments as to whether they are deceptive or not?

Industry Standards

Standards are generally accepted and codified rules that are created to provide structure and guidance to a Code of Ethics. These can include definitions, best practices and so forth, but are generally at a high level.

Standards can change with the times, but should generally be written in such a way that such changes should be minimal. The idea here is to stabilize things and to give people something they can rely on.

Continuing with the legal analogy, if a Code of Ethics is like a Constitution, then Industry Standards are like laws or statutes.

Example: Avoid IP delivery methods that present substantially different information to search engines from what a human visitor would experience.

This is more helpful than "avoid deceptive marketing practices". It answers most of my questions and is the one-liner to take back to my client or boss. This would deal with 90% of the questions.

But what if I'm dealing with a technical issue that is more complex than this? I think I need more guidance, since I can think of a few examples where even this definition doesn't cut it. And what does "substantially" really mean, anyway? Well, now we look at Guidelines, which interpret the Standards.

Guidelines

The guidelines could be very large and detailed, and include information like alternatives to IP delivery, some example scenarios, or (worst case scenario) say something like "we don't know exactly what the result of doing X would be, as there is evidence that sometimes it works , and sometimes it doesn't. Proceed with caution."

Or, it could say: IP cloaking to go past verification pages is OK, but using it to go past paid login pages is frowned upon because it creates a poor user experience.

Perhaps a separate guideline would say that you can do this for paid pages if there is notification up front (before clicking on the result) that the page is paid.

Or it could actually be an entire forum thread with the whole community arguing their various points of view. That's OK. Some things are complicated, and often there are many ways to accomplish the goal.

Continuing with the legal analogy, if a Code of Ethics is like a Constitution, and Industry Standards are like laws or statutes, then Guidelines are Case Law: the individually tailored decisions of judges and juries based on messy and unique circumstances.

From my perspective, Ethics are easy, and standards could be set in a committee. It's the guidelines where all the fun happens. That's where the exceptions to the rules happen, where the weird situations get looked at, and so forth.

One of the big issues (and the source of most of the debate on this subject) is that many people think that proponents of standards are intending to put things that belong in guidelines into the standards or ethics. That would be a bad idea.

Debates like the proper use of nofollow, etc belong in the guidelines, because sometimes there is no clear, correct answer. Sometimes the best you can do is to make people aware that there is a controversy and what the issues and risks are. That's perfectly acceptable in a guideline, but not in a Code of Ethics or Industry Standards, which need to a reliable and clear to both SEM's and the public.

Once there ceases to be controversy over a guideline, it can be considered for promotion to a Standard. But it would not be unusual to have some guidelines never getting promoted. SEM's are a contentious, opinionated, independent bunch, and I expect our guidelines will probably reflect that.

At no point should the establishment of standards interfere with or prevent a professional from using their judgement or solving a problem. The standards and guidelines should exist to help and guide, not to hinder or hold back.

With all this in mind, and after reviewing the following (excellent) resources, I'll try to present some draft versions of all of this, hopefully to start a discussion and lend some structure to the debate.

• Business.gov
• American Marketing Association Statement of Ethics
• CMA Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice
• BBB Code of Advertising
• Business Marketing Association Code of Ethics
• DMA Corporate Responsibility Guidelines
• Bruce Clay SEO Code of Ethics
• EthicsWeb

Ian

SEMPO International Committees

Once I joined SEMPO, I also joined a couple of committees/working groups/SIGS that struck my fancy at the time.

Since I'm the "International SEO Guy", I joined SEMPO Canada, SEMPO Latin America, and SEMPO Asia. We've already begun having meetings, and although these local SEMPO focus areas are new, there is some nice momentum going.

It's nice to see some localization happening - running things in a centralized or US-centric manner for a global market like the Internet is a bad idea, and I'm glad SEMPO has seen that. I'd like to see more, but I guess that's partly my job now (bait, fish, or get the hell out of the boat!)

Ian

SEMPO has Ethics Requirement?

So, I'm logging into SEMPO today to finally join (I was a member years ago, but allowed the membership to lapse during my SMA-NA days) and noticed this clause as part of the signup process:

Business Conduct. In addition, the applicant agrees to engage
in Search Marketing practices which are not in direction violation of published guidelines from Google, Yahoo!, and other search engine providers.

Interesting. Not that I have any objection (I think it's great!) but I distinctly remember there being a fair amount of controversy about SEMPO not requiring it's members to agree to not be spammers. It was one of the main reasons I helped found the SMA-NA.

Heh - maybe I *can* work with these guys. It's certainly a step in the right direction. There is no indication of any kind of enforcement, so it's not perfect, but a couple of years ago you would not have seen this, and it would have created a huge controversy if you had. Maybe our little industry really is starting to grow up.

Sign me up.

Ian