Conflict of Interest ?

Recently, an article appeared in the press that said Ask Jeeves and Lycos would each offer SEO (defined) services. After the piece appeared, Ask Jeeves said its only doing SEM because of a relatively small relationship it inherited when it acquired Interactive Search Holdings. Nevertheless, the article spurred some interesting and important discussion in the industry. Some search engine optimizers feel a search engine company offering optimization services is a clear conflict of interest. Others believe it’s the natural evolution of search engine monetization.

Search Engine Motives

But what are the search engines motives? Perhaps search engines feel they has something to gain by enticing potential customers with the fact its an actual search engine doing SEO, including on its own sites. The gain must outweigh the perceived loss of credibility with search engine marketers (SEMs).

In addition, the general public might not realize Lycos doesnt use its own spider-based search engine for its search results. (It currently uses Inktomi.)

Maybe offering SEO services is a desperate attempt to monetize search property for short-term value the engines can show shareholders. Is this the start of a trend?

Strained Relationship Between Search Engines and SEOs

A level of paranoia has always existed between SEO firms and search companies. SEO firms get light praise at best from search engines. SEO firms were largely responsible for demonstrating search engines monetization value. Now, however, they feel theyre being treated like an increasingly unnecessary middleman, one that can be disposed of once search engines have learned enough of the trade.

A public company can face extreme financial pressures. Its expected to always grow, which means having to be more competitive. This can lead to switching from a collaborative relationship with others (where revenues are shared) to a strained competitive relationship (where former partners are eliminated). Being one of the smaller search engines can place more pressure on a company to draw additional revenues.

Many search engine software engineers distrust most SEO firms. Then again, most SEO firms distrust other SEO firms. Search marketing has become an increasingly high-demand industry with a rather negative reputation. Ethical SEO companies appear to be the exception rather than the rule. (By ethical we mean those who actively try to give search engines relevant, valuable content and follow the terms and guidelines set forth by the search engines.)

Unfair Advantage or False Impression?

Working at a search engine company doesn’t impart you with any natural gifts for SEO. In fact, many SEO professionals seem to be quite amused at this service offering. They know how to optimize better than the search engine staff. Many search engine companies have to hire outside SEO professionals to help them optimize their own sites.

Having access to your own search engines algorithms (which might be construed as a huge breach of integrity) doesn’t automatically make you an SEO expert. That only comes with years of actual experience in optimizing sites.

Search engine staff might have access to search data, but they don’t always have access to data from Web analytics software, usability tests, focus groups, and sales. Do search engine employees understand site design, information architecture and making a site search engine friendly without compromising its user-friendliness and ability to convert visitors into buyers?

In this situation, the engines are “newbies”, which is where SEO Business Solutions comes in. SEO Business Solutions has been at the vanguard of search engine optimization since the term was coined. That’s years and years of experience in search engine optimization. While the search engine companies were trying to understand optimization, SEO Business Solutions was already optimizing.

We have tried to establish a working relationship with the search engine companies. Rather than trying to cheat our way to the top, we discovered techniques which are very search engine friendly and slowly but surely get websites to the very first page. It is a known industry fact that most searches don’t go beyond the first two pages, and most don’t go past the first page. The payoff for being on the first page of a search is incalculable in sales and prestige.

Do you want your site to be relevant? Do you want your site to be found in the search engines? Are you tired of seeing your competitors rank much higher than you in the search results? Do you want an increase in website traffic? How about an increase in sales? If answered yes to any of these questions, then it’s time for you to optimize your site. Only SEO Business Solutions will get your site positioned where you want it to be in an ethical and search engine friendly way.

Conflict of Interest

This new search engine service can be problematic ethically. One reason natural or spidered search results are so popular is they level the playing field. Small and medium-sized businesses can compete with larger companies.

Just because a large company has the budget to purchase loads of pay-per-click (PPC) ads doesn’t mean its site contains the most relevant information people are searching for. Relevancy applies to all types of businesses: small and large, profit and nonprofit, commercial and noncommercial. End users ultimately decide if a small company contains more relevant content than a large company through (ethical) link development.

Once search engines start offering paid natural search results, many SEO firms feel the search engine index becomes tainted. Money takes priority over relevancy. It’s OK with ads because ads are clearly labeled. But paid relevancy isn’t OK with spidered search results.

Paid inclusion has always been a hotly debated topic. Yahoo claims participating in its Site Match program doesn’t boost positioning, but some prominent SEMs don’t believe it. (View the Site Match submission page and Content Guidelines.)

Yahoo currently doesn’t openly disclose which sites participate in its paid inclusion programs. Would search engines label the search results that have been optimized by their SEO staffs?

Conclusion

We understand search engines need to make money and continually provide relevant results. We have no problem with paid inclusion programs, because they allow sites with problematic URLs (such as Session IDs) to be indexed without having to undergo costly redesigns.

However, SEO Business Solutions has decided to remain neutral on whether there is an inherent conflict of interest. We will let the industry be the judge as matters develop on SEM and SEO done by search engine companies and there is more empirical evidence to weigh.