SEO tools and procedures are in dire need of technical standardization: Find out why

It is not uncommon to chance upon a well written piece with the right keywords and the right interests that is stagnated within a SE. It never makes it to the front page of the SERP and it is never optimized enough. And at the same time, we come across terribly designed websites without any efforts of producing any quality content whatsoever that fair well with search engines simply because it is in terms with the latest optimization trends.

First we need to understand the paradigms of SEO –

SEO is how you make sure that your website stays on top of every local listing and every other SERP. There can be two primary approaches to SE optimization:

1. On-site SEO – this typically means that all the optimization work is done on the back end of your website

2. Off-site SEO – this is where you make the efforts of getting your name out to the netigens using social networking sites as platform

SEO is extremely heterogeneous and even webmasters struggle to fathom the exact parameters that can and possibly govern a website’s optimization. Now the standardization of SEO technology will tremendously benefit all the websites. Many a times the heterogeneity of the process keeps quality content under piles of optimized but low quality content that people are gobbling up. This has become a raging problem in the SEO industry especially because Google’s own specifications are not consistent with the standard SEO tools and Google has changed its algorithms at least 20 times in just the last 2 years.

The standardization predecessors –

Just like W3C and WasP standardized the protocol standards and coding practices respectively in 1994 and 1998, it is now time for standardization of SEO techniques. The lack of technical standards in the SEO tool industry is compromising the quality of content an UX beyond our imagination. Every tool now has a different concept and approach towards the standardization of SEO for websites.

Google has laid down a few guidelines as far as website and native app SEO are concerned. For example – search engines crawlers from Google can read website HTML5 and CSS codes and at the same time it can now make sense of JavaScript apps. It is fine for websites to use JavaScript redirects from website (desktop) version to the mobile version, but there are hardly any SEO tools in the market that can identify that. There are no clear distinctions between HTTP and HTTPS websites as per the contemporary SEO tools. However Google has clearly set out to promote the websites with luxurious SSL layers. Most tools in the market cannot tell is the websites that are using 302s should actually be using them for JS redirects.

Why is there such a dearth of technical standards?

1. SEO is still in its adolescence. It still has its tantrums, qualms and it gradually maturing towards stability. At this moment, restricting the immense potential of search engine optimization by implyingtechnical standards is almost buffoonery. Although some might argue that Google itself is younger than the SEO industry, we’d like to point out that they are running on different time lines. Google is aging and attaining stability much faster than SEO. Technically speaking, if Google is making retirement plans, SEO isn’t even old enough to drink yet! So many experts and even common people think that SEO’s young attitude can be responsible for the lack of standardization.

2. Complications within –this isn’t unheard of, but we like to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Workplace politics does not elude SEO industry at all. Any organization which has gone on to establish code of ethics for SEO tools has faced the wrath of several other organizations. This is a political strife that all companies with the zeal to standardize SEO tools have to face even today. We don’t think it is possible for any one-man band to plant the flag for SEO standards any time soon.

Proprietary advantages –Google has left quite a few gaping holes open in the field of SEO. Most of the SEO tools have evolved to act as landfills. Google never offered users any reliable PageRank value so companies like Moz developed with their own Spam Score Matrix and Domain Authority. At this moment, SEO is a dog eat dog world where companies are more interested to establish ownership rather than provide standardized services. So it is of no wonder that the world still lacks any form of code of ethics or technical standards whatsoever when it comes to SEO practices.

What will be the possible advantages of standardization of SEO tools?

The value of technical advantages can be both direct and indirect. It basically boils down to better UX and healthy competitions. Here are a few of the basic advantages of establishing SEO standards –

1. Data portability –you will be easily able to jump from one SEO tool to another without going nuts about optimizing data for each one of them.

2. Eliminate miseducation – although most of the miseducation revolving around the SEO industry is due to passive negligence rather than active misdirection, most of it can be removed by the standardization of the SEO tools and practices. A lot of misconceptions keep SEO clouded; the standardization will hopefully illuminate the factors and parameters that actually govern SEO.

Staying friends with Google – if you think Google does not have any SEO preferences you are dead-wrong! Google has its own specifications (although fluctuating) and standardization will help most websites meet the requirements of Google for quality SEO.

Standardizing SEO tools and practices is no easy feat. According to the top SEO blogs, the most prominent areas that need rethinking include rankings, crawling aptitude, crawl data, link matrix and content analysis. This will bring about the much needed homogeneity in the SEO industry that is required for establishing working parameters for search engine optimization.