abbeyvet - 1:06 pm on Dec 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

The op seems to make assumptions based on I know not what - that "SEO specialists" do a great job and designers/developers are really just artists or code monkeys who have no knowledge outside their core tasks.

Both may sometimes be true, but neither are generally true.

As a sort of jack-of-all-trades independent it is my business to know enough about every aspect of making a website work - which includes design, programming and, yes, seo. You don't need to have any special or arcane knowledge or skills not available to the ordinary mortal to take care of the very simple and basic aspects of SEO mentioned in the post.

I often do redesigns of sites, and have without question spent more time and effort undoing the work of "SEO specialists" who have made a complete pigs dinner of a site than I have spent altering anything else.

Yes, there are good SEO specialists out there, but there are many who are frankly incompetent, out of date and lazy. Ditto for programmers/designers.

The trick for an independent like me is to know your limitations - take on only work which you know you can complete to a high standard and know when to outsource and, more importantly, who to outsource to.

For the poor mug who knows nothing about search engines or seo or web design and just wants a decent website that does the job for them it's a minefield. But quite frankly I think the worst thing that could possibly happen to them is that they fall early into the clutches of a poor "SEO specialist".