Consistency in the HTML specification helped webmasters build sites that anyone with a browser could visit. When Microsoft began playing around with non-standard ways of handling HTML in its Internet Explorer browser, the Internet suffered a bit as developers were forced to build sites to display themselves one way for IE, and a different way for every other browser.

Microsoft cleaned up its act over the years, with IE 8 being as close to hewing to universal specifications on handling HTML and CSS. But the annoyances of several years of creating workarounds to cater to Microsoft likely played a role in the building of a mobile web specification by the W3C.

“The recommendations refer to delivered content and not to the processes by which it is created, nor to the devices or user agents to which it is delivered,” said the opening of this latest best practices document. “It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites.”

As more webmasters seek out mobile web users, especially in the competitive market for local business customers, they will want to embrace such consistency. No one wants to put a barrier in front of a potential customer.

To keep the mobile web open and inviting, W3C suggested minimal navigation for the top of pages, and consistent navigation methods throughout mobile sites. Since many webmasters practice SEO and redirection of links, W3C said using 3xx HTTP codes instead of markup to redirect pages should be the method here.

Skip the frames and the tables for organizing mobile content too. And when there is a non-text element on a page, a text equivalent should be provided too.

Reaching the growing number of web-capable mobile devices promises a long-term payoff. There is room for first-movers to seize a place on the mobile web with their content, where a similar opportunity may not exist on the conventional PC. Develop to reach as many mobile users as possible, for a chance at achieving this.

I’m not alone in thinking about the issue so first here are a few more posts I’ve come across, more against than in favor.

• SEO Standards: Are We Really Pretending these Will Work?
• SEO Standards Signal the Maturing of Our Industry
• SEO Standards Debate is Back – But Something’s Missing…
• No Optimizer Left Behind

Again I’ll encourage you to read these posts and their associated discussions. And again I’ll ask those of you who aren’t part of the seo community to share your thoughts. I think much of the usefulness or lack of usefulness with standards will have a lot to do with how they are seen by people outside the industry.

Just Say No to Regulation

My stance on seo standards as regulation hasn’t changed at all. There are arguments for an against, but in then end seo can not be regulated in any way that makes people follow the regulations. It’s silly to even argue otherwise. Every aspect of seo overlaps with something else and if you want to regulate seo fine. I’ll call myself something else and still do the same things and tell you it’s for reasons other than seo. Try and stop me.

Licensing and certification aren’t going to make a difference to well informed clients. Clients are interested in results. Who cares if someone sanctions you as a qualified SEO if you can’t help someone make more money. Licensing and certification would more likely lead to less qualified SEOs picking up clients since the requirements to gain the credentials would likely be easier than the actual work involved.

But there is another way to look at standards that have nothing to do with regulation and I can see some potential cases where those standards could prove beneficial for some.

Standards as an Authority Guide to SEO

Yura left a comment on my last post that made me see the issue differently than I had been.

I guess we simply need a trusted place that outsiders would recognize as trustworthy and start from there.

Short and sweet, but it did make me think. Imagine a couple of scenarios. Helen has developed an interest in SEO. For whatever reason she’s interested in entering the industry (god help her), but isn’t really sure where to begin. At the moment all she’s come across are some forum and blog posts that seem to contradict each other. She knows there’s something there, but is having a hard time sorting through the chaos, infighting, and misinformation. Sound familiar?

If Helen is persistent she will sort it all out and hopefully go on to seo success. But wouldn’t it be much easier on her if there was a site that offered her a better road map from the start. Nothing necessarily advanced or giving her specific tactics, but a guide that breaks down the various steps in the seo process and points her in the right direction.

Now imagine Bill. He’s not looking to work in the industry, but he thinks seo is important for marketing his site. He’s seen all the chaos too, but has no desire to sort through it all. He just wants to know enough so that he can ask the right questions when hiring an SEO and know enough about the answers to feel like he’s not going to be ripped off.

He’s heard some bad things about the industry being snake oil peddlers and wants to understand what to look out for. Maybe he’s even been ripped off once himself. Wouldn’t a simple guide from a trusted source be all he’d need to feel better about the industry?

Think for a moment about your favorite seo ebook. I know you’ve read a few. Now imagine that was your entry point into seo. Imagine you found that book before most anything else you read about seo. Would it have made your early days in seo easier? Now picture that book or guide as making up much of an seo standards site.

How Standards Could Work

There’s no question trying to create standards is a pretty big task, especially given the opposition. Rand made an interesting statement at the end of his post weighing in on the debate:

To be honest, I’m not particularly opposed to standards and if I personally agreed with them, I’d probably be willing to join a standards organization as long as it wasn’t too costly, too time-intensive or fraught with political issues (and I genuinely fear it could be all three). The big problem I see is that no individual or organization has actually put forward even an outline of what these standards might look like.

If you do think standards are necessary I’d suggest you stop the talk about should we or shouldn’t we and simply start drafting the outline. It will be much easier to convince the naysayers if you can show them what the standards might look like.

A few thoughts:

Any standards should be educational only. Regulation won’t work and it’s best to be left out. Also stay away from any ethical talk completely. If you bring ethics into the standards you’ll have lost before you even get started.

I’ve seen the W3C mentioned a few times as a possible guide to follow. I think it’s a good candidate to take cues from, though I think it should be limited to the W3Schools. The standards should be an educational body only. The education shouldn’t hope to be comprehensive. It can’t be when seo changes so rapidly and when so little is actually known. Stick to the basics. Tell people why it’s important they spend time researching keywords and how to make websites more search friendly. Teach them that seo is not a quick fix to building a business. Yes, that’s very basic, but that’s what those outside of the industry need to hear.

Remember though, you’re not trying to tell a browser how it should deal with a nofollowed link. You’re just trying to educate someone about what a nofollow is.

Here’s an example of a section that could be included. I think most everyone would agree that knowledge of 301 redirects is important for an SEO. Create a small section explaining what they are and why they’re important. Then provide the code to set up common redirections in both Apache and IIS along with links to more detailed resources.

Another example is a section on all the tools you can use to find keywords and how to use those tools.

Perhaps a glossary of terms with a simple definition and links to further sources. Keep the definitions simple. Stay away from points of contention. You can define what a backlink is and what constitutes anchor text without causing controversy.

Get some big names to back you. This only works if the standards become the de facto authority. That won’t happen unless well known and respected names are on board. You don’t need everyone on board. Just enough to convince a good number of people in the industry to follow you. Standards won’t need 100% backing to take hold.

Understand that you can’t be all things to all people. Your target audience for the best practices guide is limited. Think of Helen and Bill above. Most practicing SEOs will already know what you’re attempting to teach. You’re not writing the standards for them.

Benefits of SEO Standards

• Educational seo standards can benefit anyone new to the industry. They can serve as a course in SEO 101 and get people started on a career path with less confusion from the start. They can similarly serve anyone looking to hire an SEO.
• Standards may generate positive press leading to greater trust by those outside the industry
• A standards body can legitimize the industry in the eyes of potential clients. Snake oil salesman don’t have standards. An industry that has standards is going to be seen as more mature and more trustworthy.
• An increased level of seo awareness is good for everyone. It’s good for SEOs and it’s good for clients. You know why search traffic is good. I do too. Why not let others in on the fun?

Potential Problems for the Standards

Ok there are benefits, but there are still potential problems.

• Who’s going to pay for this. Let’s face it setting up standards is going to cost money and time and probably a lot of stress. I’m not sure who’s up for all the work.
• Conflicts of interest. Anyone working on standards does gain a competitive advantage. The rest of us might withhold support for that reason alone. This could be overcome somewhat, by having those already at the top being the ones to set this up. They already have the advantage. Any additional advantage may not mean as much.
• There’s a similar conflict of interest for anyone cited as a resources and effort would need to be put into finding sources that stay away from community members.
• Even a few words could skew things in an ethical direction. Any standards would need to be only about the facts. If something isn’t absolutely known it needs to be expressed that way.
• Regardless of intent educational standards could eventually lead toward regulation or pseudo regulation. As standards become authority anyone working outside those standards could end up being viewed in a less than positive light. I’m not sure this doesn’t already go on anyway, though.
• The same arguments could arise as exist now in regards to search engine guidelines. Again these are already present anyway.

I’m sure there are more potential problems as well as potential benefits. The above are simply thoughts off the top of my head as I’m writing

Could SEO Standards Work?

While this post is a bit more in favor of standards than my previous posts I’d hardly call myself in favor of standards. I’m just beginning to see possibilities of how standards could work.

Regulation? No. Education? Maybe.

It would take a lot of work to build a standards body that gains acceptance, though I suspect the same has been true of most every other industry that has enacting standards along the way. Could all the positives really get done while keeping the problems at bay? I’m not sure. I can still easily see standards getting turned into a regulatory agency and easily see some using the standards solely for personal gain.

I have no idea who would want to take on the work, though I have my opinion on who could make it happen.

Much of the benefits would hinge on how people outside the industry would view the standards and I honestly don’t know how they’d be perceived. I’ll ask again that those of you who don’t call yourself SEO offer some thoughts on whether you think seo standards would be good for you. Don’t worry about how the seo community sees standards. How do you see them?

I’m still not sold on the idea, but I am listening to the sales floor. I can see how an educational set of standards could be beneficial to enough people to make it an idea worth pursuing. Again my suggestion to anyone who is already sold stop trying to convince and start outlining the standards themselves. I think there are many you could convince if you had something tangible to show them.

Even if a set of standards can’t be agreed on I have a hard time seeing how a central authority source to the basic principles of seo would be a bad thing for anyone. Worst case is it’s just one of the many guides of it’s type already in existence. Best case it’s an entry point for most people starting out in the industry.

Keep in mind too that all it would take for your guide to become the standards guide is to create one so good the rest of us have no choice but to recommend it.

Comments

 Partially, XHTML2 made more sense to me (e.g. a simple <h> instead of <h1>, <h2> and so on could be used for headings, accompanied by a <section> element… and RSS features were integrated right into the document). We’ll have to see where the W3C wants to go – and then wait some years for browsers to actually implement any of this… and then wait for those browsers to be reasonably deployed.

Right now, this Alpha specification seems to try to acknowledge some web realities (like an <article> element for typical blogs, called “Web logs” in the draft), while ignoring others (for instance, elements like <address> are still included even though they remain to be largely ignored by web authors even after years). It’s a bit of a manifesto – written in rather non-accessible language, in good W3C tradition – trying to merge different “HTML religions” (e.g. Plain Old HTML vs XHTML/ XML), so many aspects of it are merely of religious interest it seems. At one point, this aspect is even made explicit when the draft says (my emphasis):

Though it has absolutely no effect and no meaning, the html element, in HTML documents, may have an xmlns attribute specified, if, and only if, it has the exact value “http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”. … In HTML, the xmlns attribute has absolutely no effect. It is basically a talisman. It is allowed merely to make migration to and from XHTML mildly easier.

Interestingly enough, the “nofollow” attribute value for links – originally introduced by several search engines, including Google (nofollow was only used a document’s meta section before that) – has made it into the specification, along with a couple of other values. Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the two editors listed for the document is Ian Hickson, who works at Google. Quote from the draft:

• “The nofollow keyword may be used with a and area elements. The nofollow keyword indicates that the link is not endorsed by the original author or publisher of the page.”
• “The noreferrer keyword may be used with a and area elements. If a user agent follows a link defined by an a or area element that has the noreferrer keyword, the user agent must not include a Referer HTTP header (or equivalent for other protocols) in the request.”
• “The search keyword may be used with link, a, and area elements. … The search keyword indicates that the referenced document provides an interface specifically for searching the document and its related resources.”
• “The help keyword may be used with link, a, and area elements. … For a and area elements, the help keyword indicates that the referenced document provides further help information for the parent of the element defining the hyperlink, and its children.”
• “The license keyword may be used with link, a, and area elements. For link elements, it creates a hyperlink. The license keyword indicates that the referenced document provides the copyright license terms under which the current document is provided.”
• “The archives keyword indicates that the referenced document describes a collection of records, documents, or other materials of historical interest.”
• “The feed keyword indicates that the referenced document is a syndication feed.”

[Via Martin Porcheron at Friendfeed.]

Comments

• show everything (the default old search)
• show faces
• show news images

But there doesn’t seem to be anything in the interface to trigger this – you have to resort to appending a parameter named “imgtype” to the result URL, with the values “face” or “news”. A normal result URL when searching for the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) for instance looks like the following:

>> images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=w3c

As you can see, there’s logos, white papers, maps, group photos and so on. But append &imgtype=face to the URL, and you’ll end up with lots of W3C members – this works incredibly well (with only a single result that could be a potential miss, and even that one includes a small face as part of the image; it should be noted however that “face” in this case means “human face,” and not e.g. the face of Mickey Mouse):

>> images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=w3c&imgtype=face

Google watcher Ionut Alex. Chitu comments that this type of search result “may be the first visible result of the Neven Vision acquisition” from August 2006; Neven Vision’s speciality was image object recognition. The “news” parameter on the other hand triggers the following search result, and it may well be that it’s based on the much simpler algorithm of Google just taking into account images from sources they list as news:

>> images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=w3c&imgtype=news

It’s unclear what exactly Google defines as news. Whereas for instance the second result, Sci-tech-today.com, is also one of the ~10,000 Google News USA sources – we can verify this using the “site:” operator – the first one, Counter-smap.com, isn’t (it may be a source in a non-US Google News, or it may be that Google uses certain keywords found on a page to determine its “news” status).

It would be incredibly neat to see this being rolled out for many other categories, from “animal” to “Creative Commons-licensed” and what-not. And it’s actually possible that more undiscovered image types are already supported. Which image categories would you like to see?

Try it yourself…

As right now there’s apparently no official interface to accompany these two new search types, I’ve created a form for you below to perform it, and also made available the functionality as part of the multi search gadget for iGoogle:

(Note that you need to return to this form for multiple searches, as the image type parameter will be lost if you continue with new queries from Google’s search box.)

Ongoing comments

[Thanks Inferno and Search-Engines-Web.com!]

Tag:

Naaman relegated Berners-Lee’s vision of a cooperative Web where people and machines get along in digitized, organized artificial intelligence harmony via tags (told ya, this is some heady, quantum stuff) to a pipe dream. Naaman reminds Berners-Lee that people, in general, especially collectively, just ain’t that bright.

The Semantic Web, you see, relies in large part on people tagging their online media in a rather standardized, academic, high-minded, meaningful, and structured way. And Naaman thinks that’s too much to ask:

There is no way that we can engage the masses in annotating media with “semantic” labels. At best, we can get the people to annotate content (such as Flickr images or YouTube videos) with short text descriptions or tags.  

Hmmm, yes, very Aristotelian. I like it. Sounds like Naaman’s actually observed the primates in question. (Down the block from me, one of these primates spray-painted his name on the road with stencil. It’s not a complicated name, a four-letter smacker, spelled J-A-K-C, apparently.)

Naaman modified his original use of the word "dead," as it was intended more as a conversation-starter, opting for something closer to unachievable.

Certainly, Berners-Lee has wowed the world in the past. It wouldn’t be surprising if he heard rhetoric like this before his historic launch of an HTML page. So what does ol’ TBL have to say about it? Let’s check his blog.

He says "blogging is great" … um, at least he thought so last November.  

The submission itself looks similar to what I looked at before. Extremely high level; not much there for me to react to yet – they are still wrestling with (from my practitioner’s perspective) non value adding meta-meta work. (Yes, I suppose that being able to validate that if an XML type is acyclic then its derivations must also be is important… has to do with the graph-centric nature of internal IT data for those of you who are curious – but man, this is deep foundational work.)

Somebody please wake me when we start seeing some attempts to actually define service semantics.

I’m just sorry they didn’t submit this to the OMG instead, but with Microsoft on board no way that was going to happen, and I’m also not sure how interested the OMG would be in this.

All I can say is that I want to model these services once, in a common environment with my software system construction. Is that so much to ask? Now we will need a translation from UML deployment diagrams into SML – no big deal, I suppose – preferably through some DSM workbench that supports both UML and SML. The SML models in turn will feed my release management system and CMDB. 

Would really like some discussion on this one.

Comments

I am thoroughly impressed with the hospitality I was shown in Milwaukee. Everyone was very helpful and welcoming. I appreciate that very much. I intend to return to Milwaukee and see more of this great city.

A special thanks to Tiffany, Bill, and Erica for the extra work they did to make sure I was taken care of during my trip.

Regarding the 3 main points I made about constructing quality websites for your clients, here are some links for additional reading.

Code Quality

• W3C Markup Validator — Enter a URL in the first box and click the “Check” button to validate any page on the Web.
• Firefox web developer extension — This is the tool I use to turn stylesheets off and do other geeky website evaluation tricks.
• Adobe on Accessibility — A great primer on accessibility.
• CSS Zen Garden — This is the site that illustrates the power of semantic markup and separating website content from presentation.

Search Engine Optimization

• The Goal of Search Marketing — Sometimes ranking first isn’t necessary to achieve your goals.
• Guide to Link Building for SEO Purposes — Linking is a powerful SEO strategy…this article discusses link building strategies in depth.
• Choosing Keywords Wisely — An overview of the keyword selection process.

Manageability

• 10 Reasons Every Website Needs a CMS — There are more than 10 but this is a good start!
• Sitemaps and SEO — An overview of the Sitemap XML protocol we discussed.

Miscellaneous

• Ten Buzzwords and What They Mean
• All Websites are Not Created Equally

I also had a few requests for information about the services my company offers as well as about Tweak, our content management system so here are links to both of those.

Agency Fusion
Tweak CMS

If you’re interested in learning more about our CMS, I recommend having one of my project managers do a brief online demonstration of the system for you. They’re really good at showing you specifically how you and your clients can benefit from using Tweak.

Please don’t hesitate to post a comment below if you have additional questions or have suggestions on my presentation. I love receiving feedback!

Comments

Tag:

One of the key processes in achieving Thematic Consistency, which is a prime objective of the One Web Principle, is what is called Adaptation. Adaptation of content to render it suitable for mobile devices is the current recommended practice. Andrea Rus of MobileAware in a presentation, ‘Embracing Device Diversity‘, at a W3C Mobile Web Seminar in November 2006 at Paris, France had a very good representation of that.

Since mobile devices have much less screen real estate, it makes sense to reduce the content and even remove items that cannot be displayed such as large images. If this is done ‘neutrally’ then who could object. However what may seem fair use to one observer may be regarded by another as breaching copyright.

The One Web principle may be attractive in theory, but here is another serious hurdle to its practical acceptance. For any website owner wishing to be visible on the Mobile Web, the only guaranteed fail-safe method of operating is to maintain distinct web pages for large screen devices and for small screen devices. Although it would be great if this could be achieved with style sheets, these are sometimes ignored by some browsers. It also is a technically challenging approach even if it worked all the time.

So think of your visitor and present the information the way that works for them. Being visitor-centric is the only sensible way to go. That means having separate web pages that the visitor is directed to or can choose that will give a satisfactory user experience.

IBM and Microsoft were in that position in the two prior Computing Ages, but now Google owns the Internet. David Beisel is not convinced and feels a Fourth Age of Computing is on the way where Google will need to get involved in a new ball game. That new ball game is the Mobile Web.

The Mobile Web has even greater economic potential than the traditional Web as visited by desktop PCs. .. and despite the best efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with its Mobile Web Initiative, it may not end up as they would wish as One Web. There is a fundamental disconnect between agreeing Standards and competing in a fast moving technology where there are mega-bucks at stake. If in addition, the Standards are tough to apply in order to achieve that One Web, then in practice it may not work out even if many would wish to apply the Standards.

The other factor is that many involved have lived through the Internet tidal wave and may see all this from their Desktop PC perspective. That One Web should just spread out so that it becomes the Ubiquitous Web. Doesn’t that seem a natural evolution to follow? Well natural evolution is fine provided we don’t run into a disruptive technology that changes all the ground rules. It may even be so cataclysmic that it deserves the title, transformational technology. Some observers would apply that description to the whole Mobile world.

That is at the heart of Mobile Persuasion @ Stanford University with its tagline, “Changing people’s beliefs & behaviors with mobile technology”. Cameron Moll summarizes another very important article by Tomi T Ahonen entitled, “Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users“. That would certainly confirm that Mobile Phones represent a transformational technology. Ahonen’s final paragraph points out the urgency in all this.

Whatever your business or interest, going mobile now will give you a competitive advantage. But going mobile next year will be a desperation move to stay in the game. Don’t miss out on this. Mobile is the biggest opportunity going. Where is your business? Where is your mobile strategy?

The fact that Google may have been the winner in the Third Age of Computing is no guarantee of success in a completely changed world. There are already some powerful entities in the Mobile world. Google may already be Celling Out (free subscription required), but that doesn’t yet seem to be showing results. Even a Google-positive article, Hooked on Google (free subscription required) showing Google is leaving Microsoft in the dust, had a sting in the tail.

In brand new areas, like mobile devices that connect to the Internet, Microsoft is holding its own against Google. According to Telephia, a research firm, 3.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers are visiting Microsoft’s mobile Web sites, compared to 3.5 percent for Google.

But even in this area, Microsoft is still No. 2. Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile content for Telephia, said Yahoo is No. 1 with 5.9 percent of subscribers due to the popularity of Yahoo mail.

It will be interesting to see what develops during 2007 in this fast-changing Mobile world.

Comments

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Barry Welford, President of SMM Strategic Marketing Montreal works with business owners and senior management on Internet Marketing strategy and action plans to grow their companies. He is a moderator at the Cre8asite Forums and writes on current issues on the Internet and on the Mobile Web in three blogs, BPWrap, StayGoLinks and The Other Bloke’s Blog.

I have to say I had a great time and really enjoyed the audience. I was particularly impressed with the questions posed by the audience.

As promised, I’m posting links to some additional resources for those at the presentation who’re interested in further information.

If any of you had questions that you didn’t get a chance to answer, or have feedback, suggestions, or comments for mefeel free to post a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks Madison AdFed!

W3C HTML Validator – Enter a URL in the first box and click the “Check” button to validate any page on the Web.

Adobe on Accessibility – A great primer on accessibility.

The ESPN.com Redesign – How they saved 2 terabytes of bandwidth per day by using better markup.

Also, here are a few links to past blog posts that relate to the presentation.

10 Reasons Every Website Needs a CMS

Ten Buzzwords and What They Mean

All Websites are Not Created Equally

Sitemaps and SEO

5 Things You Should Know About IT People

Comments

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Brett Derricott is the founder and CEO of Agency Fusion, a web development company with a sweet content management system.

Brett blogs about technology at Agency Byte.