Comments on: Is search engine optimisation unnecessary?

By: EggManJohn

EggManJohn — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:17:17 +0000

Hi Aaron, thanks for the link and the follow up!
Some great comments too – I think they were referring to my title being misleading though, but let me put it like this, if I’d titled it “7 reasons why you should get seo right the first time and maybe not pay very much for an overpriced seo consultant” – would my post have been as successful as it was?
The point of the article wasn’t as linkbait, or for the sake of a load of traffic – but I write my articles to be read by as many as possible, if that means I have to create a click-friendly title, then I don’t really have a problem with it. I don’t think I’m the only guilty party for that little trick

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:49 +0000

@Tracey – What the client should know is that if they have paid for someone to fix their site’s problems, then someone earlier down the line hasn’t done their job properly. Client’s shouldn’t need to hire consultants to fix a designer-developers shoddy work.

@Shaun – Is it a misleading article title? Er, yeah, sorry about that… To be clear, I’m not knocking SEO, of course SEO is absolutely vital for driving organic traffic to any site. I’m knocking the countless designer-developers who are pumping sites out that just aren’t up to standard. The techniques which collectively we call SEO are necessary, but SEO as a service shouldn’t be – it should be an integral part of every conscientious designer-developers processes. Which I guess is exactly what you’re saying.
ps – I had one of those sites today too

By: Shaun

Shaun — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:07:21 +0000

I agree with most of the post but think the title is misleading.

I would still consider the mentioned points to be SEO, whether they are implemented by the web designer (they should be) or an ‘SEO Consultant’ afterwards.

So therefore SEO is necessary, it just should be part of good web design and not an expensive extra. It’s amazing how many new clients come to me telling me that they can’t find their site in Google when just a couple of minor changes gets them listed within days. I’ve had 2 come to me with title tags displaying ‘Untitled Document’ !!!

By: Tracey Grady

Tracey Grady — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:35:59 +0000

John’s list isn’t so much “7 reasons why you don’t need SEO” as “7 things which aren’t SEO and which aren’t necessary if your website was written and coded properly first time round”. That said, it’s an excellent list.
What this gets at is that there are many, many people who have gone (or have been led) down the wrong path when they got their website: non-semantic markup, poor content, etc. If someone fixes (or simply reworks) these problems and calls it SEO, how is the client to know otherwise?