SEO - The Most Effective Form Of Advertising
 

Some web designers know SEO is important. However, most do not offer it to their clients. Usually, this is because they don't want to pay someone to do it for their clients. More importantly...they don't care. They want to design your site and get out. They know you can greatly improve the value of your site by implementing an SEO friendly design into the build and save you money in the process.

Dale King

There's big money in SEO, why would a web designer turn their back on you and intentionally try to get-in get-out? That comes across as just plain lazy, which doesn't make sense because the money would be great. SEO isn't hard to do, just takes patience and a set-it-and-forget-it type attitude. It doesn't take the web designer that long to implement SEO practices, the only thing that takes time is for the search engines to crawl and index the pages (and rank them), which takes much less time with good quality backlinks.

I think part of the factor is expectations. A web design/graphics/content are easier to set and achieve expectations. Put seo on top and that variable becomes much more challenging for the service provider. Then if the seo does not work, the client is not only disappointed in the seo results but also the design because they are tied together.

That said, I agree with you completely Dale and I have never done a website that did not include optimization services.

The thing is, what kind of SEO are we talking about? In theory I agree with Logan & Dale. It is wrong for a web designer to create a site that isn't "search engine friendly" and I would never do that, but ongoing SEO is a separate business. I don't think you can expect the average web designer to have the level of analytical skills and online marketing knowledge as someone who specializes in SEO.

All web designers should have a basic knowledge of SEO, though, and create sites wherein the only optimization services required after launching are promotion, adding of content and building of links. I don't think that should be the responsibility of the designer unless agreed to in advance as a separate service.

My business is just me, so I have a limited amount of time. If I am to continue doing what I love, web design and graphic art, then I can't agree to perform ongoing SEO on every site I build. I'd eventually have to stop taking new clients. No more new sites... that would be very sad.

Because many website designers aren't proficient in SEO. They're experts in design only. Also, time is money. And many website designers prefer to finish your website quickly, so that they can move on to the next project and the next one. Of course, not all website designers work this way - but many do.

Dale King

On page SEO as extra value of design
 

I think that Ktaylor310 has a good point here. Ongoing SEO is a work rather different from design, but all designers should be at least offering sites with a proper “on page” optimization.

The main problem is to agree with the customer for which keywords or keywords phrases he want to be found.

If the customer hires a SEO consultant to do a promotion campaign for his site, he will be asked to perform changes to the pages if the on page optimization is not right. This usually ends with customers complaining and demanding this extra work for free, or worst, customers making changes to the pages by themselves and messing around the design.

Offering a design with on page SEO is a way to differentiate from the rest of designers.:thumbsup2

Hang on a minute... not every site has to be SEO'd to the Nth degree. Sometimes it's more important to have a site which looks great and so on, even if that means the (onpage) optimisation isn't great.

S

I agree that some times you have no choice. One of my clients, a photographer, insisted that her home page be created as a graphic. After I explained the search engine implications she said she didn't care. The look was more important then the ranking. Since she was mainly using the site as a portfolio and for proof viewing AND was catering to a regional market AND using tons of other marketing with her web address (post cards, business cards, flyers, signs, etc.) It was not a huge deal.

I think Dale is trying to make a point about web designers (and remember anyone with web editing software is a web designer after all ;) ::great sarcasm!:: ) who release sites that HURT ranking - coding errors, poor linking, weak content, etc.

Exactly.

Dale King

While building a directory for 1 of my sites I found that 99% of service businesses in my niche were not SEO'd, content was not written for the visitor but for the website owner.

Many designers either don't know how to SEO or to create content, or they don't care. I suspect many simply don't have the knowledge. They simply learned design and quit learning.

While many of you here are knowledgeable, and therefore not average, the average designer does not seem to be.