Over the years though, you can't really fault the logic, per se, of either google or yahoo.
The primary important factor, is that a page is somewhere near what it claims to be; by either title, description or in page text.
Styling, is and should be secondary, if not less. (Forgive me designers, but you know what I mean)

Its about relevant matches, rather than beautiful matches.
In fact, it must be even more basic than that: its text matching. Similar to any search (local) engine, it must work from this point, downwards (any in-built and customised algorithms).

We shall see if this can even change a lot, looking to the future.

WC3, and the likes, were put forth a while back, but if a page is readable and the result (with regard to information) is what you wished; well thats pretty much it.

In retrospect, nothing much has changed with respect to accessabilitiy. You don't see many with phonetic and visual agents, and the like. In fact, or it seems that flash has become more prevalent (as it might, given modern influences, etc..) As I see it and should anyone care, is that things have gotten worse. Only today, I saw 76 errors on the main page alone, of a site. However, google returned it for what the owner wanted (it was about what it claimed).

Fair play to those that try and succeed, but Matt has access to statistics which make him very familiar to the "human condition", perhaps?

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Arranmore Island

It's a fair point lato but my issue is that, increasingly, sites are being tailored to perform on search engines. Not necessarily due to relevant content but due to hack, tricks and a knowledge of how SE's work. To me, it would be a better benchmark of a site's worth if it was coded properly (it's not about aesthetic by the way - it's about adherence to standards) and therefore ranked higher on SERP's. Not that content wouldn't be important - but proper markup should certainly receive more weight than it currently does.

The fact that there are people out there making a living by optimising sites for SE's - when listings are meant to be organic, unbiased and natural - is cause for concern. That's not to say there's anything wrong with SEO as a profession but it does point to an inherent weakness in SE algorithms.

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Web Design | Flash Development | Property | Irish Fitness Forum

It's a learning process Ken, designers created the SEO industry by ignoring the search engines, now they have to consider them and feel hard done by.

Even on CI all-Flash sites now get a bit of a jaundiced eye where before it was all slaps on the back, it's simply a question of learning to be creative within some fairly flexible parameters, IMO...

Well I think it's a bit myopic to suggest that SEO is merely the practice of advising clients against all-Flash websites. My issue is that a lot of the time sites are being built for search engines and not people. It's a difficult balance to get it all right but the saying 'content is king' probably holds a good deal of weight these days.

SEO is often the practice of finding work-arounds to design and development "features" that appear to have been created in a vacuum, you could add most CMS and shopping carts to that Flash.

Yeah there's no doubt about it, there are a lot of barriers to SEO. There are a lot of barriers to maximum user experience, accessibility, etc. (SEO would fit in there somewhere in many cases). I guess it just depends on where your priorities lie and where you think you can get maximum return - search, of course, being one of the more salient factors.

In terms of SEO and it's future though - what would happen to SEO professionals should (and this is a very hypothetical question) every site be as optimised as it possibly could be tomorrow or, let's say, SE's suddenly ceased to exist? I'll throw that out to the SEO's out there...

For "every site be as optimised as it possibly could be" would still require a specialist whether in-house or contracted.

You work in an agency IIRC could you imagine if everything had to pass through the in-house SEO for approval?

I think you're missing the point there. I was speaking hypothetically.

I don't work for an agency but if I did, and we had an SEO in-house, I guess the audit would be done in tandem with everything else and then SEO/SEM carried as an ongoing service. Personally though, I'd be inclined to train production staff up on SEO. Ongoing campaigns would then be outsourced I suppose.

Yeah.

From what i've read - "on page" SEO - is just Good web design / coding. (come on.. good title tags, no major errors, using html markup for what it's supposed to be used..)

All that keyword density / optimized keywords etc i'd call SEM (search engine marketing)

All the linkbait linkbuying linklinking etc is really "advertising" in reality.

SEO is a bit like a radio with a built in clock if you know what i mean.

Or am i completely in the clouds with this one?

Very good question and to be honest they would probably find something else, but who really knows what that would be? Now if validation & development of a site became the only way to rank in a SE then I’m sure the majority of SEO people would become developers.

David Rooney has had the honours of having to pass his work through me and he would probably agree that having Development & SEO work together is better for a site. Some of the most talented SEO people that I know are also extremely good Developers also.


That is exactly what it is. For the most part the industry makes a lot of noise about all sorts so the ‘real basic’ factors needed (good coding, site structure etc) are missed out by most.

When the easiest and fasted way to have a Search bot hit your site is from a few quality back links then linkage also becomes important as it does when you actually see how links can change a site position. Unfortunately too many people are not aware of being moderate with links. They still think ranking is based on all the old methods, as many links as possible. With a huge demand for the links the market becomes very profitable which has created a huge attraction that Google has even recognised as a problem.

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