55 replies to this topic

[nethy]

Who gets the biggest paycheck?
The website techie who is good at SEO can singlehandedly get leads whether or not he knows anything about marketing or the product. Can the marketing guy do this?
So, if you could hire only one person to get you going on the Internet, would it be the marketing guy or the website/seo guy?

This reminds me of an argument I recently had about salespeople salarires vs professionals. I argued that what you could do if the other guy died is irelevent because its not going to happen. If the marketing guy quits you get another one, you don't give the techie his job.

It hasn't been the case historically maleman, but I think you should expect the marketing guy to make a pretty strong comeback in the years ahead.

I Agree. I don't think techies will hold this niche for much longer (or bigger). Already the big guns are moving in (though I think most will fail and fall when IM overtakes their areas) but already I think many of the best IMs are direct marketing revivalists.

[maleman]

This reminds me of an argument I recently had about salespeople salarires vs professionals. I argued that what you could do if the other guy died is irelevent because its not going to happen. If the marketing guy quits you get another one, you don't give the techie his job.

I appreciate your response to my post, nethy. But the question asked is this:

So, if you could hire only one person to get you going on the Internet, would it be the marketing guy or the website/seo guy?

I'm not promoting IT over Marketing or vice versa. It's just that many businesses don't have the cash or don't want to put out the cash to hire marketing types but they do want to get Internet exposure. Small businesses not on the web, IME, are ready to shell out the cash to get a website.

Some want to be on the Internet just because they see their competition there. They find out later that new business is generated from the Internet and so then they're willing to invest more cash to generate even more business. That's when marketing steps up.

Edited by maleman, 30 September 2007 - 09:09 PM.

[Jill]

SEO is marketing. It has to be.

[nethy]

SEO is marketing. It has to be.

Agreed, seo is a marketing activity.

I think the issueis more along the lines of "if you start including IM in your stategies, who should handle it" or "who is more imortant"

So, if you could hire only one person to get you going on the Internet, would it be the marketing guy or the website/seo guy?

What I was trying to say is that it is not a relevent question. That is not a desicion faced by anyone in normal circumstances. I wouldn't hire either a coder or a marketer that has never touched on IM for an IM role.
As for outsourcing:
You won't often get a marketing guy that cannot produce a website (he can always buy/contract one) offering and IM solution. But you often get website/seo guys offering a marketing solution that they cannot deliver.

[maleman]

SEO is marketing. It has to be.

Which brings us back to the jack-of-all-trades!
design/seo/marketing

If the shoe fits the only choice is to wear it...LOL!

Didn't this thread start out about something else? Who hijacked it?

[LadynRed]

I'm a little late to this discussion, but I thought I'd chime in anyway. Like 1dmf here, I'm also in a position in my company where I am the designer, the coder, SEO and all around webmaster (including the servers).

While clients should outline their goals for a site, in my experience, most business owners haven't a clue, they just know they 'want a web site'. Granted, they should do some research, but most don't. I am a web standards advocate, I'm very picky about clean code and css-based layouts, as well as accessibility. While I'll never say I'm an SEO 'expert', I do a lot of reading to educate myself, as a designer and coder, on SEO, I have to, and I"m of the mind that a good designer who's getting paid to build sites should at least have some knowledge of best practices in coding with SEO in mind - as far as that goes.

I'm appalled at what I see being produced by so many web design firms, firms that are charging major bucks to build sites for businesses and especially small businesses who usually have tight budgets and can't afford to sink 10s of thousands of dollars into a web site, and that includes SEO.

Not too long ago, someone came to us (we build websites for physicians) and said they'd paid an outside firm to build them a website and wanted to know if our dept would re-design their site for them. When we looked at the site they had, it was like stepping into a time warp - masses of nested tables, a 1997 look and feel, no interactivity.. well.. you get the picture.. bad, bad, bad. It's a fairly large practice, and a moderate-sized site (most of ours are small, less than 12 pages) -- but they actually paid $30,000 for this web site !!!! IMO, they got robbed. No surprise they had no SE visibility to speak of, but the designers took time to stuff about 300 keywords onto every page ! Not a heading anywhere, a semantic nightmare.... just awful.

I really do believe SEO, at least to a degree, should be an extra skill. If the client really needs SEO commandos, then at least the client has a good framework to start with.

[Gids]

The question every responsible designer should ask a client is: Do you need/want/expect people to find your website through search engines?
If the answer is yes - the designer should be open about their seo abilities and if they are not 100% sure of them suggest the client contacts an seo expert.
It's arguable that given a stipulation that a website be built with a degree of on-site optimisation that a non-seo-savvy web designer could deliver a website that was fit for purpose.
Maybe, the question is not whether designers should have the knowledge or not; it's whether designers should tell the client about seo so they can make an informed decision. The answer to that is yes.

[SearchRank]

I voted no, however, a designer should have enough sense to know that an "all Flash" site is not going to be friendly to search visibility and if the client indicated that they wanted the site to be "search engine friendly," the designer should have been able to accommodate that request by using "Flash inserts" or by developing an html equivalent to the "all Flash" site.

In all reality, it takes a team of skilled professionals to develop a web site. There is the planning stage, the storyboard process, designing the graphical interface, turning the graphical interface into a functioning web site (programming), ensuring essential SEO elements are in place, PR for the new site, ongoing marketing (i.e link building, PPC, traditional advertising, etc.) and then managing the web site itself (i.e. keeping content fresh, e-commerce, etc.).

So we have web strategists, graphic/web designers, web programmers, SEO specialists, PR people, link builders, paid search marketers, and the list goes on.

So back to the original question, should a web designer know basic SEO? Not necessarily but they should be able to either work with a team of professionals or understand enough of the big picture to know what will accommodate the wishes of the web site owner.

[mcanerin]

I still don't think you can call yourself a website designer without knowing what the ramifications of your designs will be on the site you are designing.

I don't expect a website designer to know about links, etc. But they should know about the problems that directly affect their own craft. And IMO that includes search friendly design techniques and the issues related to them.

The word's "That's not my Job/Problem" just don't cut it when the issue IS directly related to the job or problem.

Ian

[maleman]

mcanerin's right! And other folks are also right.

I don't see how any person who calls himself/herself a web designer could not (at the very least) know basic fundamentals of building an SEO-friendly page. If a person has built at least one public site, that should be enough to get that person interested in SEO.

I got interested the day I published my first web page.

What good is a public website gonna do if nobody ever finds it in a generic keyword search?

I've been working on private stuff lately and don't have to worry about SEO there which is cool because it takes out a lot of work.

Jill said "SEO is marketing" so I'm saying "web design is SEO". If it's a public site, you SEO it to be #1. If it's a private site, you SEO it to be invisible.

[nethy]

So we have web strategists, graphic/web designers, web programmers, SEO specialists, PR people, link builders, paid search marketers, and the list goes on.

Expectation problems in the industry. It's 'our' own bloody fault. They got used to hearing about how cheply they can penetrate the net. Web-marketing is cost effective in many, many cases. Its not 1-2k will change a compny's marketing success overnight cost effective though. All these 'specialists' they cost money. BTW I don't think that any of them are so specialised as to require a team of experts in most cases. A small team, or even one person (who knows what he's doing) can manage IM. But it takes time. & time is money. If acompany is paying 10s of 1000s for a site, it and they get a site that is virtually useless from an IM perspective they got jipped. but in most cases, they paid 1-2k maybe 5-6, not enough to expect all that, realistically. You pay 1-2k for a site. Thats what you get, a site. Noone took the time to get to know your business needs and to formulate an IM strategy, or they would have had to charge more.