Need of ISO Standards for SEO (Rashid Maqbool) becoformanite@yahoo. com COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Lahore, Pakistan. Abstract: Mostly websites do not match the search engine requirements because of either black SEO implementation or no SEO to them. SEO supports the websites to get top rankings on the search engines. To get top ranking on search engines is the ultimate aim of each product and service based website. This top ranking on search engines leads more traffic towards site. But wrong or bad SEO do not lead traffic towards the site.
There is no particular standard for SEO in national and international level. In this search paper we, will see how SEO standards are mandatory at international level and how they can positively affect the websites-ultimately businesses. Introduction: The basic purpose of all the product and service based websites is to get top ranking on search engines. e. g. Google, yahoo, msn. This thing leads to the traffic towards website, which assist the sites to attain their goals. Web traffic is food, drink, and oxygen-in short, life itself-to any web-based business. 1] Now a day the main thing for increasing the traffic on website is to make it user friendly as well as search engine friendly. The design of Web site must be balance between the needs of its users and the needs of the search engines. [2] In order to make website as search engine friendly, the main technique is using now a days is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In SEO different algorithms and keyword are used which enhance the internet marketing without any cost which increase the traffic towards site. Keywords play very important role in order to provide a higher position to website on search engine.
That’s why sometimes people use irrelevant keywords for their sites. Irrelevant keywords can lead to a good traffic but it cannot help to provide the desire position in the eye of users. The amount of information on the web is growing rapidly, as well as the number of new users inexperienced in the art of web research. Apart from the problems of scaling traditional search techniques to data of this magnitude, there are new technical challenges involved with using the additional information present in hypertext to produce better search results.
So, this is essential to make standards for SEO. [3] In order to minimize the frauds, misleading and any discrepancy, some suitable standards for sites on International level are mandatory. This thing helps the sites to get the higher position on search engines. On the other hand user will not get any problems because of wrong keywords. ISO can play a very vital role in this way, which is currently providing check to many products and services related organizations. ISO is a non-governmental organization that forms a bridge between the public and private sectors. 4] The Problem-SEO Issues: A website is a collection of documents, typically written in (X)HTML, that are almost always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the web server to display in the user’s web browser. [5] Websites are used to transfer information in order to aware the people about different products and services. Currently total population of the world is 6,710,029,070. Internet users in 2000 were 360,985,492 and Current users are 1,596,270,10. The Growth rate of Internet usage is 342. 2 % from 2000 to 2009. 6] So, websites are playing very good role in order to aware and attract the maximum customers through world wide. [pic] The websites are widely using now a day in business. In order to increase the traffic on website, it is essential for a site to get first positions in search engines. For this purpose different tools and techniques are used. The combination of these tools and techniques come under search engine optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful online marketing strategy. When done correctly, millions of online searchers can find a site among millions of top search results. 7] Where good SEO provide the first position to websites on search engines, the bad tools and techniques of SEO make the websites in trouble at the same time. Usually SEO issues happen because of the following mistakes: (1)-Targeting the wrong keywords. (2)- Ignoring the title tag. (3)- A flash website without an html alternative. (4)- Java script menus. (5)- Lack of consistency and maintenance. (6)- Concentrating too much on meta tags. (7)- Using only Images for headings. (8)- Ignoring URLs. (9)- Backlink spamming. (10)-Lack of keywords in the content. 8] Below are some example sites that have been bad, either in the present or in the past. (1)- V7n has a popular SEO blog which happens to have been hacked several months ago. Google banned them for some shady SEO. Spammy text phrases were hidden all over in the V7n SEO blog, which in turn triggered Google’s spam bot detectors and got them banned from the index. This is the perfect example of how inadequate security on the site can lead to exploitation by a third-party, and consequently get the site kicked out of Google. 2)- In 2006 Google infamously kicked the German BMW site (bmw. de) out of their index after they were caught using doorway pages. Tsk, tsk! This incident made international headlines, and BMW was quick to remove the offending pages, which were apparently live for a whole two years before being caught. [9] (3)-Sometimes problems occur by spreading all the potential incoming PageRank power to different URLs, rather than just one – that’s bad SEO. For example, the following URLs all delivered the same content in the past: http://yourdomain. com http://www. yourdomain. om http://yourdomain. com/index. php http://www. yourdomain. com/index. php. [10] These are very important issues because of their nature. Some of the important drawbacks of these SEO mistakes are followings: (1)- Website cannot get first position in search engine. (2)- Web traffic does not increase. (3)- Corporate image and popularity of organization spoiled. (4)- Waste of money. The currently booming search engine industry has determined many online organizations to attempt to artificially increase their ranking in order to attract more visitors to their web sites.
In the same time, the growth of the web has also inherently generated several navigational hyperlink structures which have a negative impact on the importance measures employed by current search engines. [11] Solution of Problem-Our idea: ISO and SEO: Standards make an enormous and positive contribution to most aspects of our lives. Standards ensure desirable characteristics of products and services such as quality, environmental friendliness, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability – and at an economical cost. [12]
ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 161 countries that is securing the quality, safety and efficiency at world level which is highly esteemed and accepted. ISO has made the standards of different products and services same for all locations of the world. These standards are not really concerned with the specific field of a certain industry but are rather focused on how the company can ascertain that there is quality in the way it presents the market with its products and services. [13] ISO standards are of great importance overall with very low cost.
Following are some of important benefits that organizations and companies enjoy with ISO standards; 1-ISO Certification increases the Customer’s confidence in Supplier’s Quality and Delivery Commitments. 2- It helps in penetrating New Markets Globally. 3- Registration can improve service performance and reduce uncertainty. 4- Worldwide Recogination. 5- Clarity in Roles, Responsibilities and Authorities among all. 6- Regular assessments ensure the organization continually uses, monitors and improves their processes. [14]
These standards are successfully implemented over following services; Employment working environment, Finances, Banking and monetary systems. Insurance Including personal financial planning, Postal services, Transport, Patents, Intellectual property, Law, Education, E-learning, Tourism, and Transport services. So, if these standards will use in SEO (Search engine optimization) then there will be more chances for businesses to attract more people towards their products and services. This can be happen by making the particular standards for following important elements of SEO (Search engine optimization); -Alt Tag, 2-Backlink, 3-Blog, 4-Bot, 5-Cloaking, 6-Conversion, 7-CSS – Cascading Style Sheet, 8-CTR – Click through ratio, 9-Keywords, 10-Keyphrase, 11-Keyword Density, 12-Landing Page, 13-LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing, 14-Linkbait, 15-Link spam, 16-Meta Data, 17-Meta Tags, 18-Nofollow, 19-Organic Search Results, 20-PageRank, 21-Paid Linking, 22-Reciprocal Link, 23-Spider- Web Spider, 24-Splash Page, 25-Title Tag, 26-URL – Uniform Resource Locator, 27-White Hat SEO. [15] ISO in Practical way:
There are many standards in ISO at present, which can be implemented on SEO in order to make world-class quality and make the search engine friendly websites. Some of these standards are followings; ICS 01. 020: Terminology (principles and coordination). ICS 01. 040: Vocabularies. ICS 01. 070: Colour coding. ICS 01. 075: Character symbols. ICS 01. 080: Graphical symbols. ICS 01. 120: Standardization. General rules. ICS 01. 140: Information sciences, publishing. ISO 2384:1977: Documentation — Presentation of translations 01. 140. 20: Information and documentation – Vocabulary
ISO 446:2004: Micrographics — ISO character and ISO test chart No. 1 — Description and use ISO 8514-1:2000: Micrographics — Alphanumeric computer output microforms — Quality control — Part 1: Characteristics of the test slide and test data ISO/TS 12029:2007: Electronic imaging — Forms design optimization for electronic image ISO/TS 12033:2001: Electronic imaging — Guidance for selection of document image compression methods ISO/TR 12037:1998: Electronic imaging — Recommendations for the expungement of information recorded on write-once optical media ISO 12651:1999: Electronic imaging – Vocabulary
ISO/PRF TR 12859: Intelligent transport systems — System architecture — Privacy aspects in ITS standards and systems ISO/NP 13189: Business Case Template for ITS Projects ISO 15662:2006: Intelligent transport systems — Wide area communication — Protocol management information ISO/DIS 17267: Navigation System Application Program Interface (API) ISO/CD TS 25114: Probe Data Reporting Management ISO/NP TR 26682: Crash and Emergency Notification Reference Architecture ISO/NP 29284: Event based Probe Vehicle Data. [4]
With the implementation of these ISO standards to SEO, there will be more chances of websites to attract the people towards particular products and services. So ultimately the business will grow rapidly. ISO can generate new SEO standards on need basis. Background and related work: Most of the previous works on SEO are focused on increasing the ranking of websites on search engines through traditional techniques. These technique are using in different locations with no similarity and so there are no particular standards about SEO techniques.
In previously work, a lot of research has been done to find those problems that make hurdles in the way of website’s ranking on search engines. But no specific solution has been presented for removing these problems. Stuff that worked like a charm for many people in the early years of SEO may actually hurt rather than help now. As to what might trigger an SEO “red flag,” my guess is that it’s a combination of things. Like, if you have a certain number of traditional SEO factors on any given page, those may set off some Google warning bells (otherwise known as a spam filter). 16] Along with this a large of work has been done about ineffective SEO and frauds and misrepresentation of SEO techniques. As, Spammers in SEO intend to increase the PageRank of certain spam pages by creating a large number of links pointing to them. Spammed pages usually have a biased distribution of pages that contribute to the undeserved high PageRank value. SpamRank by penalizing pages that originate a suspicious PageRank share and personalizing PageRank can become the reason of serious penalties. [17] A lot of work has also been done about Black and White hat SEO.
White hat SEO refers to those practices generally regarded as ethical (An example of white hat SEO is making sure content is arranged in a clear hierarchy, so that important words and phrases stand out) whereas Black hat SEO refers to those practices generally thought of as cheating the system (Cloaking is generally regarded as a black hat SEO practice, and it can get a Web site banned from search engines). [18] Unfortunately, there is no particular way of securing the people and sites through these frauds and misrepresentation.
So, a particular set of standards is mandatory for SEO tools and tips for implementation. Conclusion and further work: In this paper we proposed ISO standards for SEO (search engine optimization) in order to increase the ranking of websites on search engines and secure the people and businesses through proper standards. ISO standards will help a lot to save the wastage of time and money because of Black hat SEO techniques and tools. After this the companies and businesses will be able to market their products and services to their target market at very low cost.
As the ISO standards are well known and prominent in the whole world, so ISO will be a license of progress for businesses. In future ISO standards can also be helpful to make the specific roles and regulation for books, research paper and thesis writings. These standards can help a lot in order to provide a pure and perfect thing in better way. References: 1- Harold Davis, and Safari. Search Engine Optimization: Building Traffic and Making Money with SEO. Published by O’Reilly. 2006. Pages 1-12. 2- Kristopher B. Jones.
Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint for effective Internet Marketing. Wiley Publishing, Inc Indiana. 2008. Pages XIV-XXIV. 3- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. Pages 1-3. 4- About ISO. May 7, 2009. (http://www. iso. org/iso/about. htm). 5- Website. May 6. 2009. (http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Website). 6- The Internet Big Picture. May 7, 2009. (http://www. internetworldstats. com/stats. htm). 7- Shari Thurow, Search Engine Visibility: Before you build. Published by New Riders. 2003.
Pages 6-14. 8- Top 10 SEO mistakes. May 8, 2009. (http://www. webconfs. com/top-10-seo-mistakes-article-24. php). 9- Search Engine Journal. May 9, 2009. (http://www. searchenginejournal. com/bad-seo-techniques-that-will-hurt-your-google-rankings/7065/). 10- SEO Issues with duplicate contents. May 9, 2009. (http://www. barrywise. com/2008/10/seo-issues-with-duplicate-content-htaccess-robots-and-urls-part-1/). 11- Andre Luiz da Costa Carvalho, Paul – Alexandru Chirita, Edleno Silva de Moura, Pavel Calado, Wolfgang Nejdl. Site Level Noise Removal for Search Engines.
Pages 1-5. 12- ISO. May 12, 2009. (http://www. oppapers. com/essays/Iso/191168). 13- The essence of ISO 9000registration, May 12, 2009. (http://theartofservice. com/ISO/ISO/The-Essence-of-ISO-9000-Registration. html). 14- Need for ISO 9001:2008 QMS Certifications. May 12, 2009. (http://tqvision. com/iso9000why. htm). 15- SEO-Search Engine Optimization Terms & Acronyms. May 12, 2009. (http://www. xivos. com/seo-search-engine-optimisation-terms-acronyms/). 16- Jill Whalen. The Art of SEO. Published: Tuesday, August 28, 2007.
