Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you everyone for helping out. The article has gone live at Sitepoint. http://www.sitepoint.com/why-seo-comes-first/ .

Hopefully you chaps agree with what's being said. Clearly I'm trying to get a bit of a rise from web developers but we shall see if they "bite" at all.

Thanks guys.

This is the problem eh, doing what we do often means undoing someone elses hardwork. But great point Eugene, the hadn't thought about the battle lines between our needs and the effects that can have visually.

"their kids are ugly". Made me chuckle that.

Unfortunatley, I'm working at an agency and pretty much all their sites they built (who are now SEO clients) are "ugly". It's not obvious stuff to the uninitiated but stuff like canoncialized home pages, poor site architecture and not a drop of keyword research in site. Hey ho.

Point of my article is going to be that clients should approach an SEO/SEM first then do the web build and not the other way round. Fed up of people having a downer on SEO's becasue they've had some web desinger sell them SEO when they've not thought a jot about a long term marketing plan and they're annoyed that there brand new site hasn't made them a shed load of cash within a few months of being launched.

I'm putting together an article about Web Designers and SEO. The basic crux is that most designers will at most (if you are lucky) add in title tags, maybe pretty URL's and HTML links and call it SEO friendly. (lot's who don't probably but also lot's who are even worse)

Of course I want it to be a bit controversial so please feel free to let rip. My argument is clients who have previously had site's that have had "SEO on them", know think that all SEO is a waste of time as their previous experience didn't produce the traffic and sales they were expecting. I don't know many designers who independently consider a site marketing strategy and how a site is going to generate links in the long term.

I'm sure most of us have read this post on SEO responsiblities but becasue the first port of call for most business owners are the web designers, our offering is undermined by their misunderstandings and in some cases mis-sellings.

So under the working title, "Why Web Designers Are Bad For SEO", any care to share some imput.

Cheers guys. Was hoping for some obscure reason why it would be ok to go with the weird and wonderful names in this instance. Hoping to get some keyword association is a bit too much of a hit and hope I think. Just going to have to be the dull one, as always, in the project and keep things on the straight and narrow. Alex.

I reckon I've bagged one of the most interesting SEO projects of the year. My new client is selling vibrators. The site is not even in development yet but they want to make it fun and friendly and take away the stigma and "seediness" of the product.

Anyway, the owenr has presented a list of "places" within this site which are places where the products are going to be showcased. These are along the lines of, Royal Rabbits Palace, Clitoral Courtyard, Dungeon Dildos, Magical G-arden etc. (there is a bit shreky/fariy tale thing going on)

Clearly, these places add a lot to the look and feel of the site but as URL's and Titles, they are clearly not optimal in an SEO sense.

What is for the best...making sure we shift the owner back into SEO best practice or hope that having these weird and wonderful names for the pages is going to add enough to the user experience to make it worthwhile to let through.

FYI, did you know you can get vibrators that you can plug an ipod into. Man, I've seen some weird things researching this client!

I'm using the site explorer to compare a potential  clients site against 4 others, in an incredibly competitive market.

Each of their competitiors has a higher page authority (on the home page) than their domain authority. This is untrue for the clients site. (which have much lower metrics all round)

Any input as to what this means/says about their competitors who I would guess (looking at some of their backlink profiles) have done some failry widespread grey hat stuff in the past. (Though haven't we all )

I'm putting together an article about Web Designers and SEO. The basic crux is that most designers will at most (if you are lucky) add in title tags, maybe pretty URL's and HTML links and call it SEO friendly. (lot's who don't probably but also lot's who are even worse)

Of course I want it to be a bit controversial so please feel free to let rip. My argument is clients who have previously had site's that have had "SEO on them", know think that all SEO is a waste of time as their previous experience didn't produce the traffic and sales they were expecting. I don't know many designers who independently consider a site marketing strategy and how a site is going to generate links in the long term.

I'm sure most of us have read this post on SEO responsiblities but becasue the first port of call for most business owners are the web designers, our offering is undermined by their misunderstandings and in some cases mis-sellings.

So under the working title, "Why Web Designers Are Bad For SEO", any care to share some imput.