October 9, 2006 In my position as a consultant on SEO, I seem to be getting an increase in the amount of customers asking why their designer had not considered the changes I suggest. Some of these questions are usually followed by «that jerk. I’ve been dealing with his crap for too long.» So are there really that many bad designers out there? I say no. Here’s why… SEO is a very analytical and tedious process, and in most cases deals solely with black and white. Most SEO specialist care not for the aesthetics of a site, giving only worry to how well it is written and how it functions on a search engine. I seem to have grown into this position because of it’s appeal to the nerd in me. I was great at math growing up, and I became a programmer in low level compile languages at an early age. My brain seems to like things that can be measured and assigned a number. I can give you all sorts of neat little formulas on finding the weight and height of a dog. But please don’t ask me to draw one. One of my best friends and co-workers is a website designer. He can do some really neat things with animation and design programs, and implement them into a site making some of the nicest pages I get to see online. He grew up in a very artistic environment, learning to play multiple musical instruments at an early age, and becoming a painter later in his life. He could create on canvas the most beautiful landscape, but when we argue on politics and I give him the middle finger as I walk away, I can almost see him trying to count. So what does this mean? Who is a better person to employ with your website? Should you fire the designer that didn’t do a good job on getting your site seen? My answer is this. If you are number 1 on Google under a specified search term, but your site looks like a 3 year old drew it with a crayon and scanned it into the computer, how well do you think your sales will be? And if have you the best looking site on the Internet, but nobody even sees it, what then? You need to have a touch of both. There are designers out there that do have a mind for SEO, and vice versa for SEO Specialists, but in order to get the best out of your online investment, you will really need to implement the workings of both. In a perfect world, you cold get both in the same step, and some companies offer this, but can get a little costly. Usually you already have a site and need someone to optimize it, working with your current designer. The nice thing about our industry (that of creating an online presence) is that there is usually a mutual respect, and to work with a designer is usually not a difficult task. There are some that feel threatened one a client introduces someone into an already established relationship, but that usually fades once it is made clear on what you are hired to do.

So to all you out there that have a site designed, and a designer on call, and call me wanting to know why your site is not doing well in respect to traffic and should you fire your designer, realize what you hired that designer for in the first place.

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