Australia needs professional SEO standards

In every profession that touches a company’s money or legal standing – law, accounting, financial advice – practitioners operate under enforceable standards. Breach them and you can be sanctioned, fined, even struck off.

In search engine optimisation, by contrast, anyone can print business cards on Monday and be an SEO agency by Tuesday. That vacuum invites abuse and small businesses wear the cost.

When I spoke with Billson at an event a couple of years ago, he told me his office gets more complaints about SEO agencies than any other industry. That should set off alarm bells. It signals an industry where where confusion is the norm, promises are often unrealistic and too many operators profit from keeping clients in the dark.

I’ve worked in SEO for years. I’ve seen the best of it – disciplined technical work, honest strategy, measurable uplift – and the worst: hostage-taking of client accounts, fabricated case studies, churn-and-burn link schemes and vanity reports designed to confuse, not inform. The majority of professionals are trying to do the right thing. But the absence of a baseline code makes it easy for bad actors to undercut good work and torch trust across the board.

It’s time to lift the floor. Australia needs a professional code of conduct for SEO – practical, enforceable and tied to accreditation – so that businesses can tell the difference between serious practitioners and fly-by-night operators.

Here’s what that should include.

1) Transparency by default

Clear scope, clear pricing and clear deliverables – up front and in writing. No ambiguous ‘proprietary secret sauce.’ No performance guarantees that violate platform rules or basic logic. Claims must be evidence-based and verifiable. If an agency says “we increased organic leads by 120%,” they should be able to show the data, the timeframe and the attribution method.

2) Client ownership and portability

All critical assets – Google Analytics, Search Console, ad accounts, CMS logins – must be created in the client’s name, with admin access for the client at all times. No more holding businesses hostage because credentials are trapped behind an agency’s master account.

3) Prohibited practices, plainly stated

A code should outlaw tactics that jeopardise clients: undisclosed paid links, private blog networks, auto-generated spam content and

manipulative ‘shadow domains.’ If such tactics are ever proposed, clients must receive a risk disclosure in plain English and opt in with informed consent.

4) Measurement that matters

Reporting must prioritise commercial outcomes: qualified leads, revenue contribution, lifetime value – supported by transparent traffic and ranking data. Vanity metrics (impressions without context, random keyword wins) shouldn’t be the headline. Agencies should maintain an audit trail of material changes to sites and campaigns.

5) Competency and continuous learning

Set a minimum bar for training and ongoing education, like continuing professional development in other professions. SEO evolves weekly; practitioners who stopped learning two years ago are now a risk. Accreditation should require demonstrable knowledge of technical SEO, content, digital PR, analytics and ethical guidelines.

6) Dispute resolution with teeth

An industry body should provide a low-friction path to resolve complaints – mediation first, sanctions where warranted. Accredited members who repeatedly breach the code should face suspension or removal from a public register, with reasons published.

Would this kill creativity? No. Standards don’t stifle excellence; they crowd out predatory behaviour that masquerades as expertise. Good operators already work this way. A code doesn’t tell professionals what strategies to use; it sets guardrails for how they engage, measure, disclose and account for their work.

Critics might ask: “Why not let the market sort it out?” Because the market is tilted. Most small businesses buy SEO once every few years. They cannot reliably judge quality at the point of sale and they don’t discover the consequences of poor work – penalties, lost rankings, broken tracking – until months later. By then, budgets are gone, and the next agency must start by fixing preventable damage. That is not efficient market discipline – it’s a trust tax on the entire sector.

A code and accreditation scheme would also reduce the burden on the Ombudsman. Today, many complaints stem from unclear contracts, inaccessible accounts and mismatched expectations. Codified rules solve the problem upstream: they make contracts clearer, access non-negotiable and expectations consistent, so fewer disputes ever need a government referee.

This isn’t a call for heavy-handed regulation. The industry should lead. A credible association – built with input from practitioners, platforms, consumer advocates, and legal experts – can run accreditation, publish the register and enforce the code. Government can recognise accredited providers in procurement frameworks, insurers can factor accreditation into professional indemnity policies and platforms can reward transparency. The incentives will align quickly.

For business owners, the benefits are immediate. Accreditation gives you a shortlist filter. The code gives you a yardstick. If an agency refuses client ownership of accounts, declines to

disclose methods, or won’t tie reporting to commercial outcomes, you can walk away with confidence – and tell them why.

For agencies, raising the bar is not a burden; it’s brand protection. It separates those who build enduring value from those who burn reputations for short-term wins. It will also make sales conversations cleaner: when the rules are clear, you can focus on strategy, not mythology.

The era of “trust me, mate” SEO must end. Australian small businesses deserve better than roulette with their marketing dollars. Let’s professionalise an industry that has grown up without a backbone – and give honest operators the standards they already live by.

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