What comes first Graphics, SEO or overall quality?

[brentpix]

Hi Friends!

I am an SEO and web design enthusiast. This is a topic that I always wanted to share with others. I believe SEO has its share of both good and evil in web marketing. These days most sites are designed in Search Engine friendly manner so that they can earn higher ranks. But it is often seen that there are many sites that are equal if not better than the top rankers in the Search Engines but never ranked higher. For example, “Frog Design” is a world famous design studio; but you can never find that website in Google first page if searched with the most popular keywords.

Frog Design can afford it because they are already the world leaders. But what about the rather smaller companies who surely have the expertise but not getting the exposure in web market due to the lack of “keyword optimization”.

This is a new website designed by my friend. The site looks good and very clear and particular about their services. But the less amount of content makes this site anything but SEO friendly. There is hardly any content and no landing page for the services they offer. It is been there for a while but as expected, it is not getting any higher ranks in Google. Please visit the site and let me know what are things this site exactly lacks or does it at all lack anything? Your comments are welcome.

http://www.rarefly.com

[Twey]

People who set out specifically to make their sites search-engine-friendly are attempting to cheat the system in a way. It shouldn't be necessary. The search engine grades on quality of content, and if your site is well-designed and accessible then it will get good scores. If it's written well for humans then it will be written well for search engines.

Your friend's site, for example, is very inaccessible to people with poor vision. Take the portfolio page for an example. It's nothing but a mass of logos with links to #. A link should go somewhere if clicked. Personally, I would have each of those links go to a textual description of the logo, with an explanation of the design process: how each of the elements and colours was arrived at, &c. The reason the site isn't getting ranked is because, as far as the search engine (or a blind person, or someone using a text-based browser) can tell, it's practically empty. There's no way to evaluate the logos and the skill of the employees who made them, because there's no explanation of the thought process that went into each one. Anybody can come up with a neat-looking picture and stick some text on it — what matters is how the logo reflects the company's brand and identity, which isn't immediately clear to those just looking at the images.