Some Thought Provoking Comments from Chris Ridings

[Go60Guy]

A webmaster should create pages and sites for users not search engines. Ask yourselves, "if search engines didn't exist, would I be doing this?"

It sounds silly to say, but time spent writing information is often a lot more effectively spent than time spent asking for links.

...in terms of effectiveness, one well written page can draw in a lot of links.

These come from a long interview at:

[searchengineblog.com...]

While the comment about creating pages and sites for users expresses an ideal, many of us know that it can also be a recipe for oblivion. In any event, there's a lot of food for thought.

[IanTurner]

It really depends on the focus of your site.

For information and hobby sites this is more probably the case on the other hand for commercial sites you need to go out and hunt down links because for the most part people don't link to commercial sites without reason

[Go60Guy]

Ian - You've got that right.

[Marcia]

Good concept. Some comments from past threads here might add some to the discussion:

JamesR, in a discussion about linking

For two years I have been making sites based on the premise "whatever is best for users, the search engines will favor", especially Google, an engine that knows its success is tied to the satisfaction of its users.

So ask yourself, what kind of site does a user want?

[webmasterworld.com...]

From Dante_Maure, also about linking

As your links directory grows, just break it down into an easy to navigate topical directory that will serve both your users and the search engines.

[webmasterworld.com...]

It comes up a lot in linking discussions because that's such a critical issue now for ranking. The growing consensus has been for a while that it's both.

Where it can get rough is when it comes to design, when the regular marketing person and seo have slightly different ideas - like about total file size for the page and load time.

[JayC]

Some comments from past threads here might add some to the discussion:

There are lots of them. I bet a day doesn't go by without someone posting at webmasterworld something along the lines of "A webmaster should create pages and sites for users not search engines." No need to go off to some other forum to find those "thought provoking comments!" :)