Search Engine Optimization, Submission and Technologies Organization

SeoPros.org is an organization of search engines, search engine optimization consultants, internet marketers, and developers of remote technology used by consultants and marketers to submit sites to search engines and monitor their positions.

The organization was founded by Terry Van Horne (aka Webmaster T) in April, 2001. Terry has been an advocate of "best practices" since long before the creation of the organization. His "Spamdexers Hall of Shame" was added to his site, Webmaster T's World of Design, in 1996.

T quickly realized that his efforts in identifying chronic and systematic abusers was hindered by his image as a "Lone Ranger" with little or no support from the industry. Before moving online, Terry was a direct marketer, primarily in the telemarketing field. He saw that the SEO industry was slowly becoming the "telemarketers of the net".

He believes the reason for this is that a small element, just like in telemarketing, carry on fraudulent and misleading business practices. Telemarketers have an association which provide a means for consumers to seek help in these matters. At the very least, the public sees that the industry is aware of the "bad elements" within it and is trying to do something about it.

Terry is also an advocate of responsible use of remote technologies. Terry was a successful reseller for one of the leading products used by SEOs to monitor positions. When a new version came out, he saw the potential for abuse and made his concerns known to the company and its developers.

He saw the new features as being exploitive of SE resources and tried in vain to get them to change or at least put more controls into the software. They didn't see it that way. T chose his only alternative, which was to drop the product, though the company would say he was removed from the program for the tone of the email exchanged between them.

Terry believes that if the industry doesn't get this under control, it will be cut off from some of the marketing data which is key to a search engine marketing campaign.

Google already has blocked IP addresses from access to its search for these sorts of activities. Terry believes this is just the beginning. He has incorporated the responsible use of remote technologies into the mandate of SeoPros.org for precisely these reasons. That is also why developers of remote technologies have been included in the organization.

A more structured and orderly means of retrieving this data is needed. The current willy-nilly approach is not sustainable, because it isn't efficient and SEs bear the brunt of costs for supporting another organization's software. Google has made this abundantly clear in their terms of service and by their blocking of abusers from the site.

Currently, the developers of these products have shown no interest in either adding controls that would enable their users to run the software responsibly, or supporting the costs of providing the data. Both are doable, but at a price, a cost they don't wish to pay. When one of their users is blocked, they just add a new victim to the list of those who suffer for exploiting SE resources, whether they knew they were doing it or not.

These software developers have also propagated many SEO myths in their quest for increased sales. They know that many of these techniques are contrary to SE content guidelines. If they don't, they should! The doorway strategies promoted by one are especially destructive, clogging the indexing queues with millions of useless pages.

Terry doesn't see the use of the product as being bad. Using non-compliant features and techniques the software touts are. Marketing data (ranking reports) is needed, but one should not be abusive with the number of keyword terms and frequency and times when the software is used.

Terry has given a great deal of thought to this and does have a plan of action. It is the shared resource mentioned in the organization's mandate under remote technology.

Article edited by Bob Gladstein, SeoPros Webmaster