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Wondering about the current state of webdevelopment
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:43 pm
by timvw
More and more i see webmasters that are concerned about the search-engine friendliness of their website... On the other hand, i still lost of human unfriendly websites.. Are search-engines really more important than your users?
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:47 pm
by Luke

yea that's very true... you definitely shouldn't sacrifice a good user experience for good search engine rankings... I'm always after user interface before ANYTHING. I try anyway.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:50 pm
by Burrito
you have to have a good balance though. in a lot of cases you're not going to have users to have an experience if you don't rank well.
it's a tough nut to crack for sure.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:52 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I'm not really convinced that search engines is where you should be looking for traffic.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:53 pm
by Luke
d11wtq wrote:I'm not really convinced that search engines is where you should be looking for traffic.
that really depends on your content...
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:55 pm
by Burrito
d11wtq wrote:I'm not really convinced that search engines is where you should be looking for traffic.
why not? it's the most targeted form of marketing ever. the beauty of search engines is that people who find your site are ACTIVELY looking for your product. Most forms of advertising are passive, meaning you show an ad on TV and hope the people watching remember next time they are looking for whatever it is you advertised. SE is much much much more targeted.... ranking well is VERY important.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:58 pm
by Luke
exactly... if your target demographic isn't looking for you on a search engine, search engine ranking is useless.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:08 pm
by Burrito
what I was referring to is more this: active marketing. people who find your site that sells widgets are ACTIVELY looking for widgets and more than likely they're ACTIVELY looking to buy widgets and more than likely they're ACTIVELY looking to buy widgets RIGHT NOW! This marketing model is relatively unique in that your target audience is pursuing you, not the other way around. It's the same concept as why people have company names like 'AAA plumbing'. People who need a plumber open the phonebook and turn to plumbing, the first one that's gonna show up is AAA, they call AAA and AAA comes out and does the job. With SE, this concept could be expanded to almost any product / service but the same principal applies, you need to be AAA to be found quickly.
In short and back on topic to the OP, I think user friendliness is equally important to SEO for commercial sites. For informational sites, not so much, more emphasis can be placed on the user experience. But going back to my original post, if you don't have visitors, then what's the point of making your site friendly in the first place?
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:13 pm
by Luke
yea I get ya
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:14 pm
by Burrito
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:yea I get ya
I know you did, I just wanted to hear myself talk today

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:16 pm
by Luke
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:24 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I usually code to standards compliance, then find ways to make the code SEO friendly. It just makes sense that there should be a balance of sorts, though. Without users seeing your cool interface, the interface means nothing. But with a crappy interface, the users will not stay long. My head hurts, who has aspirin?
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:51 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Search engine rankings go up most when people actually start linking to you. Those people need to know about you first. A search engine won't magically find your site just because it's geared towards SEO. You need to push you product out to your target audience, be it placing ads in relevant magazines, walking around with a big cardboard signs on your back, press conferences or whatever. If nobody knows about your product at all then a search engine is going to be pretty useless. You'll likely see the usual flux where your site nearly hits the top for the keywords you want before it mystically plummets off the listings.
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:21 pm
by hawleyjr
d11wtq wrote:Search engine rankings go up most when people actually start linking to you. Those people need to know about you first. A search engine won't magically find your site just because it's geared towards SEO. You need to push you product out to your target audience, be it placing ads in relevant magazines, walking around with a big cardboard signs on your back, press conferences or whatever. If nobody knows about your product at all then a search engine is going to be pretty useless. You'll likely see the usual flux where your site nearly hits the top for the keywords you want before it mystically plummets off the listings.
I've actually had very good luck with press releases. The company I use is about $80 per press release and tons of sites pick up the press release and publish it on their site which has a link back to me

Re: Wondering about the current state of webdevelopment
Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:42 pm
by alex.barylski
timvw wrote:More and more i see webmasters that are concerned about the search-engine friendliness of their website... On the other hand, i still lost of human unfriendly websites.. Are search-engines really more important than your users?
Interesting...can you give any specific examples which changed direction in favouring SEO over user experience?
I'd be interested in seeing a before and after analysis