Shaddows - 9:32 am on Jan 28, 2009 (gmt 0)

Ye, but I've long suspected that Granny (or Grandma if you prefer) gets treated differently from non-savvy SMB, who in turn gets treated differently from SEO'd sites- at least by Google. This is just one area where my theorectical "partitions" and how they fold into SERPs proves illuminating in thought experiments. Anyway...

So Granny has good content but zero skills. No problem, have page 3-5.

Non-savvy can rank wherever, but TYPICALLY not page 1 above the fold.

SEO done badly seems worse than no SEO at all (and I'm not talking black hat, more keyword stuffing or poor alts). And SEO sites seem to need better content to break page 1. I haven't actually recorded results, but I have been checking lots of SERPs in alot of sectors recently. Thin sites on page 1 almost invariably have no onpage SEO.

Anyway, my point is that using excellent markup seperates you from your SEO peers, pushing you up a little. And it might aid referal-relevancy (searcher intent, thus conversions) if SEs understand the MEANING of your site. Its an additional tool that can help, why NOT use it?

[edited by: Shaddows at 9:34 am (utc) on Jan. 28, 2009]