I was thinking about this problem earlier today – so many “SEO optimized” sites are ugly, not functional, or link spam.
What gets me is people focus so heavily on “engineered” SEO, and trying to work the system.
I’m wondering about this. This hype around SEO – is it because people want a magic elixir to have their site rank without having to create relevant content all the time?
Isn’t it about fresh content more than keywords, content that people find valuable? Every conversation I’ve had with people who actually create search engine algorithms (they never talked in more than generalities – they can’t) has focused on to keep the design solid, follow basic conventions, keep it updated, make it relevant, useful information, and don’t try to game the system and you’ll do well, regardless of the technical implementation.
Many SEO firms have you do completely dysfunctional things like not use a content management system (yes, some CMS systems seem to be better than others) or create sites that are just plain ugly and unfriendly to users.
Check out what Calacanis says on his blog – as much as I have friends in the SEO business too, I gotta agree. I went and took a look at their various optimized code in various implementations – and it’s just well tagged or files labeled well (and sometimes, not so well). An excerpt from Jason:
Note: There are some whitehat SEO firms out there I know, but frankly the whitehat SEO companies are simply doing solid web design so I don’t consider them SEO at all. SEO is a tainted term and it means “gaming the system” to 90% of us.
Now, if you make great content, keep your page design clean, and stick with it you’re gonna do just fine in the rankings. Don’t smoke the SEO-crack… you’ll just wind up chasing your tail as digg and Google closes the tiny SEO loopholes and put your domain on the black list.
In short – SEO / SEM looks like, at it’s best, just over-hyped solid web design that people buy because they think it’ll be a magic bullet.
Thing I’m wrong? Fire back in the comment session. Just beware – I might return volley 
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