To clarify...strong coding as in JS menu systems etc.

I am not disagreeing about the ethics of business... what I am "complaining" (and I am, I like a good whinge every now and then! LOL), is the fact that sites get little rating based on design, flair, layout etc...... if you generate something bland and basic, you actually have a better chance at the top 10.... where as having a well structured site with nice little extras gets you no where else, or worse, lower in the rankings because the SE doesn't like JS menu's, flash etc.

Why aren't these things supported by the SEO, considering there so common place... maybe not mainstream, but enough sites utilise this stuff, yet suffer for it?

Try me... go on! Build a content for a web site consisting of around 20 pages... have 3 pages set 3 deep, 2 pages set 4 deep, the rest can all be on level 1.
Then you build two sites... one bland, stuck the txt in the html, stick a couple of HD tags in, txt link the pages... done! The other, use a js menu, add grapics and layout... make the content defined and attention grabbing with visual aids... possible add media etc.
The first site will come out on top!

IMO, this is the unfair part. I also believe it to be unethical due to the SE's keeping this way.... in a way, it makes the design process a little backwards... whats the use of making a site with the extras?

Then again... what would the alternative be? A program can't validate the appropriateness of media file attachments, not the quality of images or animation, or even conceptualise design flair... .the only way to produce a more appreciable SE system would be to have human viewers perform all the ranking scores... which would take for ever!

So, what makes using an outdated language like JS strong. Let me introduce you to some things called WEB STANDARDS AND ACCESSABILITY.

Good websites are comprised of two major parts. The content, which is your XHTML document which has all your markup. (I use div tags, but tables would work just as well) Then you have the design, which should all be located in a CSS document. All the pretty stuff goes in there.

By not seperating the two you fall into a large category of designers who only care that things work now, as opposed to working 5 years from now. But what hapeens when browsers completely phase out JS?? What happens to your strong coding then??

WEB STANDARDS not only include XHTML and CSS, but there is this thing called DOM that from what I hear works similarly to JS, but is STANDARDS COMPLIANT...

Now, ACCESSABILITY (not sure I spelled that right...), our strong JS menus mean nothing to someone who is blind, or deaf. They can not be read by screen readers of anykind.

When you utilize WEB STANDARDS AND ACCESSABILITY... it is easy to optimize the site using ETHICAL SEO methods like "title" attributes in the <a> tags (so blind people can hear your link), and like "alt" attributes in the <img> tags (so blind people can see your images).

WEB STANDARDS - look into them.... I think it is UNETHICAL that people still create websites that are not STANDARDS COMPLIANT or ACCESSIBLE to all. your stong JS navigation menus are NOT COMPLIANT OR ACCESSIBLE.

See, I think that search engines are trying to get web designers to move forward. And by doing so, I think they're really pushing CSS, which I don't necessarily see as a bad thing. You can do SO SO much with CSS nowadays. Basically, what it does is separate the content from the design, so the search engines get their content and the web surfers get their design. Could there be a more perfect medium?

It's all about how you use it.
Sites that include meta tags (or hidden text within the page itself) with hundreds or thousands of target words just to get rated in a lot of categories are clearly unethical.

Just making a good design is fine, in fact it's crucial for the user experience as well.
Personally if a site uses a lot of flash I don't come back, and neither will most spiders.
Same with easy URLs and shallow site architecture. Those help not just spiders but (and that's far more important) they help humans as well.

If you need to resort to explicitly do things that have no benefit to human users in order to get those users to appear at all (so, getting your site spidered into places it shouldn't be) you'd better rethink your site (and maybe should just take it down).

hmmm....

...cjgraphix...
1) web standards...... aren't adhered to by the most common (or less common) browsers fully. If they were, everyones life would be easier!

2) css isn't even fully supported by browsers... version 1 still needs full implementation in some modern browsers, and as for css2 + 3.... LOL... yet another 2 years away minimum. As for using tables instead of Divs... aparently thats bad form for layout! Thats what CSS is for.... tables should be for displaying statistics and other such data displays (unfortunately!)

3) phasing out is almost guarenteed..... then again... so is html! depreciation will ruin alot of sites... apart from the very bland and basic whgich look the same on all browsers, and probably will for the next 7 years until a new language is thought up!

4) Dom is a good thing.... yet suprisingly, isn't fully supported either!

5) accessability.... good point.... yet the web is primarily a a "visual" medium. No offence. I think it is a wonderful thing that we can now enable this medium to be accessed by those previously excluded from it... yet that should be a secondary sight, after ensuring a sight works. the percentage of blind or visually impaired net users isn't significant enough to warrant a strong point in design perspective.... it should be, yet thats business ethics for you!

6) as a final boost.... maybe it isn't the designers that are at fault.... maybe the browser providers should be enabling the support of visually impaired people! Maybe those that design the screen reading software should find away to read full content, rather than the singular file content of html/xml document!
I DO NOT DISAGREE with you on the accessability score.... merely pointing out that the blame is for most of society and mankind in general, not just web designers who don't bother to include such things into the base design.


...cscgal...
I agree... (now, though still a little peeved with)....css is good. Shame that it isn't fully implemented in most browsers as yet.
I disagree with the SE doing anything helpful for web designers apart from being restrictive, yet that is merely my opinion.


...jwenting...
what you say is true... yet no help to those sites which have a fair degree of content and design, yet get shoddy ratings due to alternative design styles.


In all, I think the SE do little in the way of things to help designers get sites rated. They have provided a loosely graded system of labelling your sites content.... so long as it adheres to a strictive markup...anything that doesn't meet the base requirements is considerd poorly and gets a low ranking.

Instead, sites should be checked for validation, and provided with code to place into the html doc.... from there, the spiders could refrence the code, check the contents match, then rate it from there. That way, thoise sites that validate and conform to standards get the ratings they desrve... those that don't get listed as such.
Further, by such uimplementation, you would enable SE and browsers to identify pages for those of differing needs or impairment, and provide strong alternatives.

Yet, because they have nothing to gain from such, this doesn't happen.

Shame.

'white hat' SEO is no more unethical than hiring an advertising writer A that writes better copy than advertising write B. Is it unethical to understand the psychology of human decision making? Why then is it unethical to try to understand the algorithm of a search engine? Makes no sense to me why you would consider it so.....

I think SEO is perfectly ethical, unless you intend on manupulating a search engine to produce poor quality irrelevant results for a query. I encourage site owners to include lots of free quality text based content in adjuct to a product or service being sold. This is SEO, and is beneficial to everyone - particullarly the search engine.

I think most forms of SEO are fine... sol ong as links and txt are related to the pages/site, then not aproblem.
It's the SE themselves that cause alot of problems for designers.

Maybe a system to report bad links or shoddy sites?
a method to rate impressive sites?
a way to index them by browser compatability?
Provide code level ratings?

These are the things that cause issues, as well as poor meta tags or purposeful lies.

I see where your coming from, your almost saying that SEO is cheating right? Well SEO is used as part of any sites marketing strategy - and cost effective marleting such as 'guerilla marketing' can also be seen as encouraging people into seeing their brand without them actually looking for it. In the same way SEO is encouraging the search engines to spifer your site.
If your gonna go there, then you need to think about the way that business works, much of it could be viewed as unethical, but really it's just agressive, competitve etc etc....

At the end of the day, if you understand the rules why not use them to your sites advantage? Besides if you really are unethical then the search engines nowadays are smart enough to see what your doing and you'll get black-balled

seo has been pushing the limits like all other industries. What happens is that too many people catch on to the "secrets" and overuse them without activating their common senses. Old time search engine optimizers are usually aware of the danger that seo tunnel vision can bring along. When you build a site, do it naturally but with the search engines in the back of your mind. Seo to me is more like a "what not to do list" where I can direct the web designers to start things off right. I have been in the business for over 5 years and have seen a lot of hot shots come and go, but the good ones are still in business and will be for a long time.
I think the face of seo is changing more towards consulting rather than on site work.

Btw has anyone seen the new Google Site Map yet?

Mike