This is just some research I am conducting and am just wondering what you guys feel.

I said absolute essential but it would also need to depend on what the purpose of the site is.

If you have no desire to be found by potential new clients and just have a web presence so that your clients can come to your site to look for your phone number then SEO and ranking is not vital.

However, if you have a dynamic site that is updated often with news and your revenue stream is advertising and gaining new readers then SEO and ranking is absolutely essential, no questions asked.

The problem in South Africa is that people do not value the importance of SEO at all.

The company I work for runs one of the largest newspapers in the country and own and control porbably about 20 websites, half of which are high traffic sites, yet they have no idea of SEO and I'm the poepol that's teaching them.

They do not understand the benefits.

But when you own a website then find out that The New York times made $350 000 000 last year FROM THEIR SITE ALONE, then you had better catch a wake up and get with it.

Dear Google

Rate my site high

k tnx bye

lol, its not as easy as that

Lies

+1 =)

Enlighten a noob... What is SEO? Site rankings i assume?

I agree with Paul, SEO (Search Engine Optimization for millenia) is a must, but only if you require your site to pull new users/clients.

If all the users of your site allready know about it and you don't require the site to make you money, then I'd say it's not worth the hassle.

Heh tks Fatboy but i figured it out as soon as i looked at the topic after posting

Well cool, thanks guys,

I'm doing the whole freelancing web dev & design thing, hoping in time to spin it off into a decent company. My main theme is offering optimised sites and seo services and was just curious what you guys felt on the relevance of seo.

best of luck dude, just bear in mind that in South Africa, SEO is still not seen as a viable investment unless you manage to interest corporates who already have a half decent web presence.

True Paul, but I must admit I have had a few requests from clients for this, I'm not all that clued up on how to go about SEO, but I think that people are starting to realise they need it.

I think a lot of companies are realising they need it. I've worked for two web dev companies recently. One only did flash sites and wasn't really concerned about ranking, usually because their clients were household names. Possibly misguided, but hey. For the other company, they had a huge amount of clients, who were very insistent in getting their sites ranking well. The clients want it and I don't think many companies know too much about how to do it these days.

The other bonus of being able to get sites up there is that you can make your own sites, rank em well and get money from them as well to keep you going.

bah, Fatboy or Paul need to change their avatars.

The Bullets was mine first!!

different tournament.

they too close.

It depends which school of optimization you follow. Natural content and design optimization benefits search engines and users. For example, one of the first things people tell you is don't have bad code - validate it all. Thats good for your users as well, and even better for disability browsers.

On the whole, the "good" practices of SEO are a good thing.

I've recently written an article (with good practices) for WordPress SEO - http://raven.za.net/search-and-seo/guide-s...o-for-wordpress

Yeah, it's the whole white hat vs black hat seo argument, which equates to an argument between doing what works and doing what will get a site banned.