SEO Should Be Dead

[ebuzzmaster]

SEO is not just about the mechanics of on-page or off-page optimization. It is also about understanding linguistics, writing clean code, web analytics, building relationships (and links). Most most importantly, it's about guiding the organization's understanding of how search engines work; sharing what's possible and what's not possible to achieve.

Even with WordPress offering all those nifty plugins and cool (cleanly coded) templates, there are far more sites that are custom-written and far too complex NOT to have someone driving the vision of how the site should appear in search engines.

Should SEO be dead? Maybe... but maybe it is just growing up to include a whole lot of new types of expertise to make it work.

[Feydakin]

Originally Posted by janeth

Not sure who Saline is but did they work on the Ford GT-90?

Saleen takes showroom Fords and makes them High End performance cars and trucks..

Saleen, Inc.

[rorimandi]

Doc is my hero here. I agree with him.

And saying that a service industry should be dead is silly. It will die when it is no longer needed or fails to evolve, through the quick cutting natural selection that occurs here on the web.

And in order for optimization pros to become superfluous or unnecessary, the majority of web design/development pros and marketers would have to code perfectly, while aiming for the right traffic and knowing how to do so, while also understanding exactly how and where to pound the pavement to drum up the right traffic for that site. Or, be a team of such people who actually operate smoothly together. I, for one, am not holding my breath.

I personally love this job simply because of how much it is needed and how quickly we can have a huge effect on the viability of the client's business simply through a few hours consulting, coding or through longer term efforts like managing teams.

How can this industry be close to dead when I have more work to do at any given time than I can possibly manage? The ideal job, simply because it IS so needed. A needed industry does not die. Until it's not needed, it definitely shouldn't be dead. When that happens, I'll move to whatever the fashionable word is for helping non-technical or code-illiterate people get into their niche online. It will always be needed as long as the internet exists.

[weegillis]

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Saleen takes showroom Fords and makes them High End performance cars and trucks..

And Saline takes Fords (and most other vehicles) straight to the scrap yard.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by claybutler

I think designers who say SEO, copy, calls to action, architecture, usability, branding and positioning are someone else's problem are just coping out. How can you take money from someone and not care? I'm not saying you must be an expert in all, but you better have the professionalism and integrity to at least offer a suggestion when you see a client doing something that is clearly going to work against their best interests.

I agree 100% I want a client for life, not just a one time deal.

You get that by helping them get a ROI.

[MrGamm]

Well... If you believe five years from now the web will be exactly the same and perhaps you can throw anything on the web and get good rankings.

You would be correct.

I sort of understand where you are coming from. But even recently I have overhauled poorly built websites to proper standards (what those are I refuse to say), and the traffic started to roll in where before it did not.

So... hey... maybe if Google is always on top... we will always need seo?

[SEObyCanz]

SEO won't ever be dead, not while website owners still have input into what is put on their websites, and while they insist that "welcome to our website" is the heading of their home page, and owners are too cheap to pay for good content on their webpages.

The designers job is to make what they are supplied with look as good as they can, developers get the site to work how the owner wants it to, thats enough of a job in itself.

Keeping up with the various coding languages, etc and making a living is the most any developer can do.

Lynny

[Peter (IMC)]

5 years ago people said: "SEO won't exist in 5 years."

They were right as in that 5 years ago SEO was done differently than it is done today. No more PR craziness and link building schemes. (still exists I know, but it's peanuts compared to 5 years ago.)

So SEO will be done different in 5 years. That's for sure but it will still exist. Just like these kinds of threads that have as a main objective to put one self in the center of the attention to increase one's own status.

That will still work too in 5 years Which is a good thing by the way.

[SEObyCanz]

And in order for optimization pros to become superfluous necessary, the majority of web design/development pros and marketers would have to code perfectly, while aiming for the right traffic and knowing how to do so, while also understanding exactly how and where to pound the pavement to drum up the right traffic for that site. Or, be a team of such people who actually operate smoothly together. I, for one, am not holding my breath.

Along with above, a client that is actually willing to pay for all that extra work, you can't expect a developer to put in all that extra work, and get paid $500 or even $1500 for a website.


Lynny

[janeth]

Originally Posted by ebuzzmaster

Even with WordPress offering all those nifty plugins and cool (cleanly coded) templates, there are far more sites that are custom-written and far too complex NOT to have someone driving the vision of how the site should appear in search engines.

Yes, I agree however, my thought is that as more and more sites get done correctly and as more programs become SEO friendly the SEO's job has to change.

There will be no need for onsite optimization.

[Social.Netting]

Hi Janeth

It's nice to read more from you again.

I agree with you that SEO is just a part of a bigger picture and one shouldn't put all one's eggs into one basket.

But it would be cool to be able to see into what is happening in 5 years time - a kind of inverted scheme from the film "Dejá Vu".

Any ideas out there?

Best Wishes to you and your Family!

Dan

[robert.cfi]

As all good things on the web must change so will "SEO". You said in five years.. hell, in five years google will not be a front runner, there will be new ways that searches are done and the web will be 3D!

While Your statement is true, it is only true for big business. Many companies together put together a site that's quick and easy. I am finding its these guys who will need SEO which leads to redesign of websites.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

5 years ago people said: "SEO won't exist in 5 years."

I believe that programs like wordpress is doing away with onsite optimization.

As new programs come out and try and compete with programs like wordpress they will have to do the same.

It’s just a matter of time before onsite optimization is no longer needed.

[Compu Solver]

Clay Butler is on track! Ignore SEO at your own (and your clients') peril.

SEO and effective marketing must be entertwined artfully to create content that is optimized for your visitors and for the search engines.

You're sort of right though (original poster) in that most web designers may as well forget seo because they know next to nothing about seo or marketing.

They have never gotten over "the Web" and they forget it is just another medium. Would you hire someone to write a magazine ad merely because they could spell? But that's how many people hire web designers - just because they learned a tad of html and css.

[racerx]

SEO isn't going anywhere for a multitude of reasons! (Note, I'm a developer)

1) Just as we'll continue to use accountants to do our taxes and graphic designers to develop the graphics for truly astounding web sites. Focusing on core competencies results in better than average solutions.

2) Agreed, structural SEO should be handled by the developer but the content can always be refined and a great deal of time and energy "outside of programming" goes into well optimized content on a web site. If done properly for a competitive key phrase niche it's VERY time consuming and would never be billed as web site development.

3) It appears your making an assumption that quality web design is on the rise. Not so, in my opinion. What's on the rise is the public becoming more aware of off-shore web development companies that are building $200.00 web sites. This is great for the SEO guys, as businesses that have been sold a $200.00 "Fast Food" web site will at some point want to become a "Quality Restaurant"web site with good SERP.

Respectfully, J

[robert.cfi]

racerx has excellent point.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by janeth

I believe that programs like wordpress is doing away with onsite optimization.

As new programs come out and try and compete with programs like wordpress they will have to do the same.

It’s just a matter of time before onsite optimization is no longer needed.

Set up a thread about the non-technical part of on-site SEO. For example, how to get 2 results in a SERP. (you know, the second one is indented.) No "optimizing a keyword in the H1 tag, enhancing the title tag, keyword density, keyword proximity, internal linking with proper anchor text, validating your code, using CSS over tables, optimal use of flash and Java" will do that for you. Or how to increase the total number of search terms a site is found for, how to increase conversion rates using SEO as well, etc. etc. etc.

On-site SEO is much more than just codes. In fact, it's everything but codes. From that point of view you´re right.

[flhu]

Is it me or do people have this tone that they disagree with me, but then state exactly what I said in a different way?

I basically said that drag-n-drop WYSIWYG editors are supposed to allow everyone to design their own websites... but (thankfully) not all do. (and, obviously, if someone without design experience does it, it shows) ...it's, as Janeth says, "an art."

I think there is a little art to SEO that cannot be exactly formulated as well... There are too many variables of unknown quantities to consider. It's more along the lines of keeping "the rules" in mind while coding the site. Sometimes you do something purely for SEO, sometimes you do something purely for the user that might hurt SEO. The art is in the choices... the skill is using what you know like paint colors on a pallet, applied to the work masterfully.

This is especially important when we enter a future where supposedly all the SEO is done automatically. If I let an algorithm determine my SEO, how will it rank better than my 1000's of competitors who are using the exact same thing?

Of course, most designers and SEO specialists don't go to the lengths I do.
(meanwhile, most travel deeply through dead ends like validation... Google's home page has 57 validation errors on it. Do you think they can tell if yours is validated when they can't even validate their own?)

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by janeth

WordPress takes care of 80-90% of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

So, with 45,000 competing pages, WordPress will get you to the top of page 5,000 without any effort!?

SEO is about trying to take care of the 99.999%

And I sort of agree about what your web developer "should" be doing, but they don't, because they don't have the right skills - designers design, and make things look good (hopefully they have an inkling about SEO so they design with the right structure in mind); developers make it work, (hopefully adding all the technical bits of SEO, like alt tags title tags etc); but are you going to leave these two to write your sales copy?

In my view SEO has a vital part to play in selling as well - it goes way beyond just delivering an "optimised" site: it involves traffic generation through link building (traffic, not just spurious links), making sure the site is user optimised as well as search engine bot optimised, and that the copy works, both in traffic generation and selling.

Once a site is delivered, your designer and developer in most cases have lost interest - they're onto the next project and the next fee (and nothing wrong with that at all - they have to earn their livings). But the SEOer is in it for the longer haul.

And most SEOs these days are not just SEOs, but SEMs, and paid search comes into the equation as well.

[subsystems]

IMO one can't make the claim that validating DOES NOT have anything to do with SEO. It depends on why it is not validating and it depends on the SE as to how it is interpreting the invalid html.

If you miss a closing tag or mess up the tag itself by missing the opening or closing brackets it can definitely effect what the SE sees as visible links and text on the page.

I use validating to make sure I didn't make a serious mistake.

Validaters often complain about missing ALT text etc. There are some images that you don't want to have ALT text in. How about the images used for rounded corners and similar visual items that are not part of the text context. Why would I want the SEs paying attention such things as "Top Left Corner" and "Fancy Divider" etc. Then there is the whole accessibility factor. Visual design elements shouldn't always be visible to a text browser because a screen reader for the visually impaired will annoy such a visitor. I often take a look at pages I've written in Google cache and view text version. Then make sure no visual elements that are not supposed to be showing up in the page text. Does the text look proper on it's own? Did I inadvertently make 2 separate adjacent text elements show up as one larger text element or combine 2 separate words into a single word with a different meaning?

I would expect that a properly designed site WILL NOT validate 100%. It depends on what is making it invalidate.

Then there is the !DOCTYPE differences, transitional, strict where a page validates one way but not the other. I've had pages that render differently in the browser due to !DOCTYPE differences.

There has to be some common sense in the whole validating discussion. People that make absolute statements are not looking at things from a large enough perspective. Everything is some shade of gray or other hue. Even #000000 and #FFFFFF are not black and white. Even color corrected monitors can't display perfect black and perfect white.

A 100% validated page is not necessarily a proper goal. There are other factors that must be weighed and have merit.

[ogletreeseo]

I believe that programs like wordpress is doing away with onsite optimization.

Then why do we have to install mods to make wp better for SEO and why do people have to use templates that are set up better for SEO. Matt Cutts was wrong and misleading when he said that wp has 90% of SEO built in. Remember Matts idea of SEO is to not do anything to your site for search engines.

To use wp as your CMS you have to put a lot of time into it to set it up. Designers have to take out pretty much all the SEO stuff built into WP to do this. If they don't put it back in right it won't have the SEO stuff left.

[rorimandi]

Originally Posted by SEObyCanz

Along with above, a client that is actually willing to pay for all that extra work, you can't expect a developer to put in all that extra work, and get paid $500 or even $1500 for a website.


Lynny

Agreed. And as an aside, ClayButler spoke out loud what irks me nearly daily. I spend more time fighting or removing cruddy work than perfecting already working institutions.

[janeth]

Originally Posted by racerx

3) It appears your making an assumption that quality web design is on the rise. Not so, in my opinion. What's on the rise is the public becoming more aware of off-shore web development companies that are building $200.00 web sites. This is great for the SEO guys, as businesses that have been sold a $200.00 "Fast Food" web site will at some point want to become a "Quality Restaurant"web site with good SERP.

Respectfully, J

Yes, you are correct and have a valid point. My assumption was that quality web design was on the rise due to clients being more informed.

However, I did not factor in being more informed about website from India for $200.00

[AcmeSEO]

Originally Posted by williamc

I have yet to see any proof that any of the major SE's gives a damn about validated code, or css over tables. The one advantage I 'can' see about css is that you can position text on the page to be seen first in a textual scan of the page (SE's) and yet have the text be positioned where you actually want it for visitors.

You can use "Absolute Positioning" in HTML. It doesn't require style sheets.

Robert

[sharonjackson]

Originally Posted by janeth

Yes, you are correct and have a valid point. My assumption was that quality web design was on the rise due to clients being more informed.

However, I did not factor in being more informed about website from India for $200.00

This string is a riot, it is like reading "The Battle of the Titans" with Moderators, 1000+ and Veteran members all going head to head.

I have not had problems yet with the $200 websites. In fact, I have lost a number of jobs to competitors by low balling a price. So, I don't do it any more. I have raised my hourly rate, I do less jobs, but the jobs I do make me more money and I can concentrate on giving them the extras that they deserve, because I am an ethical designer.

But I would not do any seo at all if someone offered me $200!!

[datajam]

You guys are missing the ppoint. "SEO should be dead" but, not by anything the Designer or anyone doing edits for SEO. Plain and simple, Search Engines do not have the ability to properly index the Internet.

A book authored by an award winning author, published on the Internet, in it's original format, wording, punctuation, and graphics . . . should place at the very top position of the SE results. EVERYTIME! It should never be reduced in ranking by some garbage page or website selling the book with or without Google Adsense included.

An original document on any topic should never find itself lower in ranking than the documents that subsequently address it. Credibility of the document is not even a true consideration of the SE's. If it was nobody would ever have gotten away with plugging a page full of hidden keywords, and have a page on a totally different topic acheive higher rankings.

The issue really is, Search Engines do not know how to do the job they have undertaken. They need to stick a couple fourteen year old nerds in a closet with their computers and tell them to come up with a better way to do the job, because nobody in the Search Engine world has yet to figure it out. Someone with a new perspective needs to try. SEARCH ENGINES do not work adequately. They do not have the ability to do so, and all the SEO editing and validation in the world will not meet the need.

[weegillis]

Record keeping, bookkeeping and accounting all equate to the same thing in a general sense, but each have very unique requirements and procedures that set them drastically apart. I think the same applies with web publishing (to use a broadly generalized term). Design, development, implementation, marketing, managing, researching, and so on are but some of the hats a web publisher (loosely used) must wear--a whole array of expertise, each with its own particular demands and esoterica.

The thing is it looks like the SE's are encouraging experimentation and debate and are paying particular attention to the content they glean from forums and blogs and the likes (including 'eye-mails' (sp. deliberate)). They are learning from everyone's interpretations, not just white hatters. This is what created the SEO niche in the first place--A responsive search engine network.

As long as SE's keep encouraging debate (and experimentation), there will be nothing static, only a line of best fit. SEO in this sense will never, in present manner of speaking, be dead.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by williamc

I have yet to see any proof that any of the major SE's gives a damn about validated code, or css over tables.

Yep; SE's seek and index textual content, ignoring code.

If you want to see what a crawler sees, use a text only browser, such as Lynx.

Download Lynx Text Only Browser

If you just want a quick view of a page, try the Lynx Viewer.

Lynx Viewer

Note: This viewer requires that the page be under your control. "You need to create a file called delorie.htm or delorie.gif on your web server to prove you're the webmaster. When I see this file (it can be empty) I'll allow my tools to access your site.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Doc

I agree, but if there one day exists a solid standard, and some meaningful way of enforcing it, I think it will simplify the SEO's job, when the designer follows those standards.

Presumably you mean, not the designer, but the developer.

This confusion and co-mingling of roles began decades ago, when many firms conjoined the the systems analyst and the programmer into a systems-analyst. Unfortunately, being good at one does not perforce guarantee even minimal competence at the other.

To further exacerbate the problem, far too many of today's designers/developers know little to nothing re. usability, ignoring the maxim that "Form follows Function" in search of "cool," "happening" or "now."

[Webnauts]

I see that the markup validation topic came into this discussion, so I would like to add my two cents.

It is mentioned here that some years back some members SEOs were claiming that code validation is a ranking factor. One of them was myself. And I am not ashame of that.

I still advocate valid code, as my first profession in the Internet industry was and is web accessibility and usability consultant, so that is something I cannot avoid.

Someone said, who is W3C. I would like to ask that person, if W3C did not exist, how would he/she create a web site. Would he or she develop an own markup? Lets get serious here.

So what am I about?

Since May this year Google began supporting RDFa. In other words to be able to use RDFa, you site should use for a doctype XHTML+RDFa. And that is more strict than XHTML Strict.

User agents have problems with code errors in XHTML+RDFa documents. If these technologies do not interest you then it is fine. But if you know what the whole thing is about, I think you would care a lot.

Some further reading:

- The Future of SEO – Structured Markup

- About RDFa - Webmasters/Site owners Help (Google)

- http://developer.search.yahoo.com/help/objects/product (Yahoo)

I do not worry. My site is already coded in XHTML+RDFa, also all sites / shops I am building for my customers since the beginning of this year.

No further comments...

[Webnauts]

Sorry it's me again. Did someone say that SEO is dead? Well SEO is for sure not dead. I woud rather say "SCAM IS DEAD".

Here are the recent opinions of other SEO experts about the future of SEO:
The Future Of Search: What Do Experts Believe? aimClear Search Marketing Blog

KEYNOTE: Semantic intent will be key to the future of search. (For the ones who don't click on links. )

Wasn't I saying that too some years ago?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by janeth

WordCamp SF: Google & What You Need to Know WordPress Publisher Blog

Matt Cutts

WordPress takes care of 80-90% of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Yes, and there are content management systems whose developers are:

1. Good at separating content from styling and behavior on your site.
2. This library jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library will automatice much of the work for you. Related site Learning jQuery - Tips, Techniques, Tutorials jQuery was made for finding (querying) elements on pages and later manipulate them.

SEO = Search Engine optimization.

I am sure that the onsite part of that can be automatized like bread beaking is automatized to day. You put the ingredients into a "baking machine" and out comes the finished bread.

In addition. Web applications and media sites with other than textual content will dominate the web more and more.

The table element was originally made for tabular data, but was soon used for other purposes. The table element should still be used for tabular data, but the table can be styled with CSS

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by kgun

The table element was originally made for tabular data, but was soon used for other purposes. The table element should still be used for tabular data, but the table can be styled with CSS

How can designers know that, if they never learned HTML?

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

KEYNOTE: Semantic intent will be key to the future of search. (For the ones who don't click on links. )

Wasn't I saying that too some years ago?

John who is ranking first for:

advanced samantic linking

Read more here: Creating a Science of the Web

Originally Posted by Webnauts

How can designers know that, if they never learned HTML?

Designers should never have learned the bad HTML dialect. They should have learned XML at childrens school.

And Microsoft make their own standards. They created the XMLHttpRequest object but did not use that object themself.

[Pico_Train]

Claybutler, you are on the money. Making it pretty, making it work, getting it to perform and making your client happy are all important. Too many developers/designers just slap something together that looks alright and works but will be missing some element of basic SEO like the meta descriptions or identical non-descriptive title tags for every page. They just can't be bothered to care or they do not like what they are doing, meaning they should think about a career change.

As you build a site, it will take anywhere from 2-10 mins to actually craft decent title, descriptions, headings and filenames for each page. For a 10 page site, that's 1.5 hours or so extra, big deal!

A happy client with a site that ranks well and looks nice is a client who comes back...

As for validation, who really cares? I've got page 1 results for competitive terms without it. None of my sites or clients' sites validate and they all rank well. So...

[williamc]

Before some of you get started on the 'valid markup' bandwagon again, I would like to look back at what I feel was one of the better posts in this thread.

Originally Posted by rickvidallon

Validators are great for quickly spot-checking possible deal-breaker gaffes among copious volumes of markup. But validators are servants, not masters. W3C badges are effectively academic badges of honor. Such validation is an admirable enough goal, but is not always worth the return on investment in a production environment. Far more important is to ensure that markup is efficiently written.
Let’s see if the big boys agree.

Google and Yahoo! handle some of the thickest traffic on the market. As of this writing, neither site complies with the W3C validator. How about heavy-hitters CNET and eBay? Failed. Adobe’s and Macromedia’s websites? Failed. What about php.net and python.org? These are the home bases of open-source developers who themselves rely on evolving quasi-authorities like the W3C … but no; these sites fail, as well. How about netscape.com? Staffs of Netscape Communications Corp. are members the W3C, after all, and Netscape is responsible for JavaScript, one of the worlds’s most widely used client side technologies. Yet their site does not comply. Surely useit.com, the site of the esteemed usability guru, Jacob Nielson, is compliant. Surely! Guess again.
W3C validation is not the web developer’s Holy Grail. Validation does not guarantee a site will look the same from platform to platform, from browser to browser. Validation does not assure that markup is efficiently written or adheres to a given entity’s assessment of best practices. What it means is that the developer has coded a functional document and used no markup in addition to that specified by the guidelines.

Valid markup is great, and it has its purposes, however, common sense and simply looking at some of the best sites on the net proves it is not really a main consideration of top performing sites.

RDFa = project/test. Not fully used and has been said that it may never be used on any given site (by search engines). Not worth the time doing it and adding extra load time to pages for in any case unless you sell specifically to the blind.

[kgun]

I use to sum that up by saying that:

1. content is King,
2. refactoring to better markup, styling and code is Queen.

If you have a tight time budget, I would focus on 1.

[Doc]

Originally Posted by subsystems

I would expect that a properly designed site WILL NOT validate 100%. It depends on what is making it invalidate.

This is an excellent point! I check my sites for validation errors, and almost always find some, so it's a worthwhile effort. But I'm building a page for the USER, with accessibility being a key factor. A user forced to use a reader does NOT need to hear alt. text for all my divider .gifs and icons. If my site is invalidated for that, so be it! I care more about my client and his customers than about the bots.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by williamc

RDFa = project/test. Not fully used and has been said that it may never be used on any given site (by search engines). Not worth the time doing it and adding extra load time to pages for in any case unless you sell specifically to the blind.

Can you tell me when you read that? Already Google and Yahoo are supporting parts of them. And I can back that up. Did you click on the links I posted above? Or do you need more resources? See below.

[Webnauts]

• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Specifying an image's license using RDFa
• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing Rich Snippets
• Google Custom Search: Enabling Rich Snippets in Custom Search
• SearchMonkey - Product
• Marking up structured data - Webmasters/Site owners Help
• Reviews - Webmasters/Site owners Help
• Google Rich Snippets - a collection by Google Rich Snippets
• Google Rich Snippets: Ratings that don't use a 5-point scale - a knol by Kavi Goel
• Writing for robots ? adding semantic tags to a product review : Cody Burleson
• Google Announces Support for Microformats and RDFa - O'Reilly Radar
• Google Online Software & Service reviews - CNET Reviews
• Rdfa4google - Wiki of the E-Business and Web Science Research Group
• Google’s New Review Search Option and Sentiment Analysis

For people who want to know about why RDFa and if it is supported. I am not exclusively about full support. Anyway I will continue building sites with RDFa no matter what. That's it.

What do the SEO Experts say about all this? Again: http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/08/...perts-believe/

[slowseaa]

It might move you up a few spaces and can be made up with some links. On page can increase traffic quite a bit when it comes to long tail.

[stephen186]

this thread has really has some hot discussions and i guess it will not end.

I Think developer, designer, and SEO all have a future ahead and no one is going to be down in the future.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by slowseaa

It might move you up a few spaces and can be made up with some links. On page can increase traffic quite a bit when it comes to long tail.

A bit can mean one position? Even if so less, doesn't that make sense? If I rank #11 and I can move up to #10, or if I rank #2 and I move up to #1?

[williamc]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing Rich Snippets

From the above page.

If I mark up my pages, does that guarantee I'll get Rich Snippets?

No.

and

To ensure that this additional data is as helpful as possible to users, we'll be rolling this feature out gradually, expanding coverage to more sites as we do more experiments and process feedback from webmasters.

Note the word experiments.

Now, I agree, at some point this is liable to be in use and viable. However, right now, all it does is add page load time for 99.99999999% of websites out there, with no added benefit. It does give some web developers good reason to use it however, it allows them to pad the clients bill further by selling them something that will not help them at all right now, probably by preaching about how it will help them.

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Google

we support the pre-existing vCard and hReview types

If you're running a site with any kind of review related content you'd be an absolute fool not to be implementing RDF or microformats markup. But I think you should be keeping up with these developments anyway as they are sure to become more prominent in the future.

I think that a lot of the arguments here are coming from a lack of definition when it comes to the term SEO. Used to describe a particular skill then it's quite limited in it's definition but when you define SEO as a role within an IT department then it takes on a far bigger meaning.

A lot of you are stating that CSS and validation isn't important for rankings, true, but what about the other factors? Like I said before, a fireman doesn't just put out fires. We should be thinking about all sorts of factors that don't directly relate to SE rankings but do improve the quality of a site and it's ability to capture every possible opportunity.

[kgun]

What is so special with this W3Schools Online Web Tutorials Norwegian site that ranks near the top for everything related to web development?

IMO.

1. Good well organized content.
2. Some of their tutorials are good enough for the average webmaster.
3. There is a natural relationship between KW's and folder structure etc.
4. Practical minimalism.

Please, answere the introductury question before continuing.

Let us take two competing sites:

• A: Excellent markup, styling coding. In the end no technical errors, but a content error, 2 + 2 = 5.
• B: Bad markup, styling coding. In the end many technical errors, but no content error, 2 + 2 = 4.

I know Bots are not calculators but a new search engine Wolfram|Alpha that can handle heavy computations is being introduced.

A good SE should be able to judge content in some way beyond IBL's / votes in 2009, e.g. by artificial intelligence and adaptive (human intervention) filtering.

1. Ceteris paribus (term often used in economics): What is most important content or coding?
2. Do you think clean valid code can hurt you in the rankings?
3. Do you think bad (unprofessional) content can hurt your site?
4. Why is this site so popular?

My conclusion:
Validation, rdf, microformats, acessibility and clean coding can not hurt a site, but content is and will be King.

Ideally, all sites should use XML or similar markup.

Newer browsers render XML sites fine. The XML family of technologies open for professional document handling. That is less important for small than for big companies.

The world is not ideal and I am sure that a lot of people are satisfied with their improperly nested, non closed tags static brochure like HTML sites.

Seamless platforms like:

1. Wordpress.
2. Joomla.
3. Drupal.
4. Elgg.
5. Etc. etc.

takes web development to a new level. You can update your content on an internet cafe and the code will be valid and the content well organized without writing a single line of HTML and SQL. Javascript libraries like jQuery and PHP libraries like pear are made to make life easier for the web master. The above mentioned platforms are made to make life easier for content providers. There are SEO experts that can fine tune your site even better.

An economist don't look for maximal but optimal solutions. Is the SEO ROI higher than the riskfree interest rate is the important question for an economist?

[Urbanxtremes]

Originally Posted by ogletreeseo

Designers have no interest in on-site SEO. They don't know what it is nor do they care because clients don't know what it is. They are hired to make something pretty.

A designer would have to charge extra to validate and clients are not going to pay for that. Having 200 nested tables on one page is bad because it is hard to make changes to later but has zero to do with SEO. Doing a complicated design in CSS takes longer and people are not going to want to pay extra for that. Not to mention if they have to make the CSS look the same in all browsers.

The Web Designer
The main problem that “Web Designers” come across, is that everyone feels that they know how a website should be built, this includes the majority of “Graphic Designers”; some of them should simply stick to print to be honest; as they give us web designers a bad name.


If you have employed a web designer and they don't know or care what SEO is, then frankly you have employed a fake. It's our business to understand all factors of web design: from usability, browser compatibility to making the site search engine friendly; weather using HTML or CSS makes no difference. We are not just hired to make things look pretty.


The SEO Practitioners
There are too many SEO practitioners, who have set-up their own websites, which define that they are the leading experts; however, without demonstrating any real proof in what they have done. Just because they have read a few forums/websites, does not make them an expert. You can not base your SEO ideas on other peoples opinion, you need to base them on facts, research and putting these into practice.


Companies should do:
Companies should employ someone who has extensive web-copywriting skills, to assist them in obtaining the best content for their users and not content solely for search engines. Listen to the web designer when it comes to the site and what actions they should follow to make the site cross compatible. Also, when it comes to the web designer - make sure they know how to “code by hand” and do not use “Dreamweaver” to build the sites; this will speed up the build process whether the site is being built in HTML or CSS.


Companies should not do:

• Listen to any sly fox: who claims that they know about SEO, but can not be found under the top ten of a search engine

• Who have not checked their own site for spelling errors

• Who do not have a full client list and can provide “relevant” searchable keywords/phrases to prove that they can do their job

[FoundByDesign]

Boy, I am jumping in this one late!

Janeth, I think your original post has some merit, but you are making a couple broad assumptions.

1. You assume that the average "designer" cares about making sure their designs are SEO friendly. Just will never be the case.

2. You assume that the average website owner will care enough about adding fresh content. Again, will never be the case.

In both cases, this provides an opportunity for someone that understands SEO strategy to make money. But then again, I don't like taking the garbage to the county dump, so I am willing to pay someone else to do that dirty work. (no comparison to SEO!)

Personally I work hard to ensure my client's sites are properly optimized and teach them the proper strategies. Its up to them to then execute that strategy.

Ed

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Sorry it's me again. Did someone say that SEO is dead? Well SEO is for sure not dead. I woud rather say "SCAM IS DEAD".

I have seen many web sites with an excellent technical solution. I don't trust many of them.

Scam is never dead.

[kgun]

Good post until I read this:

Originally Posted by Urbanxtremes

Also, when it comes to the web designer - make sure they know how to “code by hand” and do not use “Dreamweaver” to build the sites; this will speed up the build process whether the site is being built in HTML or CSS.

• Who have not checked their own site for spelling errors

1. As long as the site functions the platform you used is not important.
2. Spelling errors may depend on your location