Web development and programming is often accompanied by the introduction of
standards to ensure that all websites and web based applications are uniformly
compliant. As a general rule, these standards are considered a beneficial factor
because they ensure that other applications can be developed, the Internet
is accessible for the majority of people, and that a level of transparency
is introduced to the design and development industry. For some time, there
has been calls for the introduction of SEO standards in the same way but it
is highly unlikely that they will ever be introduced.

Search Engines And Algorithms

Search engines employ a series of complex algorithms in order to determine
the value of a web page for a search term or keyword. The practice of SEO is
the optimisation of a page or pages in order to rank as highly possible in
the search engines. While it is difficult for the SEO to predict the content
of search engine algorithms, some degree of prediction of necessary because
the actual algorithm details are considered highly confidential.

Algorithm Details

The search engines have no desire to release details of their algorithms because
they know that black hat SEOs and Webmasters will artificially alter their
sites with the sole intention of ranking highly. This would detract from the
quality of web pages that appear in search results and would make search engines
less popular with users. Introducing standards to the SEO arena would have
the same effect.

High Ranking Sites

SEO standards could be considered a bad thing in another respect too. Sites
rank highly because they offer good quality content and have interpreted the
search engine results into hard search engine optimisation practices. With
standards, every website owner, SEO, and marketer would have access to the
same information and basically every website would be in a position to manipulate
the search results so that their pages were displayed at the top. Those pages
creating high quality content and naturally building links would, ultimately,
be the ones to suffer.

The Cream Rises To The Top

The current lack of complete transparency in SEO means that the cream tends
to rise to the top of the result pages. Quality websites employing ethical
marketing techniques benefit because it is these techniques that most closely
match the requirements of the search engine algorithms. Best practices and
proven techniques do exist and a lot is certainly know about the techniques
that are likely to be considered black hat or unethical. This means that using
a quality search engine optimisation service will help a web page reach the
top of the pile.

Ethical SEO

Ethical search engine optimisation is the only way to guarantee the best results
for a website. Offering high quality website content and building links through
ethical means will inevitably see a website rise to the top of the rankings
and remain there without suffering penalties for the use of techniques that
search engines do not like. The introduction of standards would provide unethical
SEOs with a means to manipulate the search engines and rank their pages highly
even if they do not contain information that is valuable to the end user.

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