Poll: How important is SEO to your website development?

As we are developers, you think we might be subjective, but we are not. SEO should be placed on the same scale with a good website design, I mean, you can have a great design without SEO but you will never head to where you want, the very first page on SE.

Depending on the nature of the websites, SEO, at least for local results can be very important. We’re finding search engines are replacing the yellow pages for many industries, and in those cases SEO is very important. Something along the lines of ‘city’ ‘industry/topic’, for example Vancouver Fishing Shops. But good point about having your site prepared for international traffic.

I only supply the tools for SEO, other than that it seems very unimportant to me

Good question by you. SEO is very much important for website development. It helps in increasing the ranking of the site in search engines which ultimately leads to more visitors than others.

SEO is important for every site. However, the shape of the SEO campaign will change depending on the requirements for the business / operation.

A site owner should always decide where their target audience is located. If the target consumer is local, then the campaign should focus on Google local results such as Jared’s fishing shop described above.

Service oriented organizations need to focus on organic Google results in general but with a focus on natural language searches. Ie. do your keyword research.

The final SEO consideration is one for entities with an existing strong brand. A company such as Coca Cola doesn’t require SEO centered around pop or beverages, their existing brand is so strong that it would become meaningless. However, they may still choose to focus on SEO campaigns centered around promotions, contests and social media campaigns.

The line between web designer and SEO provider is blurring.. customers expect that their vendor is knowledgeable enough about all areas of web to be able to recommend best practices for driving traffic to the new site (or redesigned site)… whether they choose to spend the money on these additional considerations is another story entirely…

SEO should be an integral part of design. Otherwise it’s like having a party to which nobody comes.

I recently lost a job to someone who put up the site with no content, only an image, on the landing page. (Probably the owner’s idea, the folly of which could have been explained) The landing page title is the site name. Every other page on the site has the exact same title, and no page has a meta description.

The owners of the site will likely never know why they don’t get any SE traffic outside of searches for the site name.

Oh, well.

I am finding that SEO is very important if you are trying to build a strong business.

Google and I believe Bing both use the searchers IP to display its results. So the international issue is more of an example of bad SEO. A designer who knows how to take advantage responsibly of the great antilogarithms that these search engines have to offer just has one more feather in there cap. As for the intranet issue Google now has tools that let you use there algorithms with in your own site search so there is a way to use SEO within even a intranet site to make it more efficient.

Without SEO, you don’t exist on Internet. If you build a small network or a private network, a login or anything like could stop unwanted visitors. However, most sites from all the Internet can lose potential customers if they don’t care about moving on the top for their specialization. SEO is the best advertisement for a site, better even than commercial ads.

You mean people actually build websites without considering SEO?

Wow, who would’ve thought!

I’m joking of course, yet both well-intentioned business owners and webmasters make that mistake everyday.

Searching online is today the preferred method to find services, products and information. If your website can’t be found via a search engine query for keywords related to your offer, you might as well be located on the moon.

John Barremore
Houston, TX

Local businesses and services do not need the extra traffic and expense of having a high google ranking. If you’re a local dentist from Michigan, you don’t want comments from people in California clogging your business avenue, however if you were a social media dental marketer that can broadcast through technology, the incentive for SEO is greater.

I think that SEO is just one of the most important things you can do for a website, other then have a perfectly functioning design and relevant and informative content of course, the more SEO you do the more people will find your site.

Of course, SEO is important both for local and international traffic. You will never or seldom have a sale because you are not visible on Google’s first page. The optimal rankings are from #1 to 3.. lower than that gets the scraps.

Google Maps Local Business Listings or Google Places are for those who want to target the local market. You still need a Google Places Expert to take care of your local listings.

Believe me, you will want the Top 1-7 listings on Google maps results for localized search.

It’s all about the sales baby..

I do think that SEO is essential for website development.

In particular, my very choice of css style was motivated by SEO, before I developed any content whatsoever. So in my case, SEO was in the DNA or skeleton of the site.

Of course, even if one takes the position that SEO is not that important for website development, there is no excuse to fail to do some basic SEO, such as (1) thinking of a couple of keywords, (2) making them part of an h1 title, (3) signing up to Google places and a few directories such as Yahoo Local and so on. The time involved in this is minimal, after all.

i too agree with all, SEO is really needs for website development. Through SEO we can get targeted traffic and customers.
We have to impress new visitors with fresh content and some link baiting techniques.

What I find sad, is the number is site owners who admit they need Search engine optimization or SEO – and yet they will put it off for as long as they can until they absolutely must hire a Search engine optimization or SEO consultant.

Jennifer, I dont actually “start” the design of any website without mapping out my complete SEO strategy ahead of time. Starting from the ground work of keyword research right through to the final stages of promotion, SEO for me is absolutely vital. And so it should be to any developer that intends on attracting customers as you say.

SEO is so important that I, a dentist in Swampscott, decided to design my own website. After about one year of SEO learning and optimization – on my own! – I find the rankings are quite good, especially considering that other local dentists have had websites running years before.

On the hand, the website design’s is fairly primitive by today’s dental office standards, and I find that the bounce rate is quite high, probably as a consequence.

To summarize, though the answer is “yes”, SEO cannot come at the expense of design. Thankfully, design is fixable if one is willing to hire a professional who is open to preserving what I have implemented.

The web is a communication medium. When someone opens their web browser they don’t immediately see your company or what they are looking for. So, if your website can’t be found in Search Engines, you don’t exist online. SEO is now also extremely important for local search. You need to optimize your site for your city and province, as well as your industry terms.

So just like most other comments before me, SEO IS CRUCIAL to any website strategy.

SEO is very important, I believe if your not ranking well then you are missing out on a big chunk of business. SEO goes hand in hand with a good web design. Your site will most probably not rank well if your site isn’t well structured or SEO friendly.