Sacrificing design features for SEO features?

Do you guys think it's worth sacrificing design features for SEO?

Things like doing text links instead of graphical ones, adding keyword-links under the site's header for a more efficient inner-site link structure and so on.

I'm confused.

 

You don't have to give up anything if you design in the right way and use good CSS

 

well if its really can help your site.. why not... whats the status of your site in terms of SEO..?

 

If your site doesn't look good then no amount of SEO is going to make it a success.

 

I agree that the site has to be good or people won't come back. SEO techniques work only for search engines; they are not what people like or think.

SEO is good for getting you traffic, but your site must be good enough to keep it.

 

umm, why get rid of design? I take it you mean image Vs. text....

You Don't, you Optimize images by reducing file size & adding BOTH the Title & Alt Attributes for the engines to read.

Always design for the Consumer FIRST & the engines 2nd

 

Yes, this really is the best, if only approach. The engines really don't care how your site looks, so you just have to optimise for both the engines and the real live visitors you want to keep.

 

You don't have to sacrifice your design for the search engines - you may have to sacrifice the design (or at least a pixel-perfect design) for your users though - afterall, who are you buildilng your Web site for? A search engine spider, or people?

Fortunately this is one of those areas where if you know what you're doing you can have your cake and eat it too. You need to know how to properly apply semantic markup and CSS though (including separation of structure from appearance and enhanced functionality via external CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript files) - if you don't know how to do this, you'll have to learn.

 

The best SEO strategy is a functional and valuable site...

Design a site your visitors will like, theyll love you for it and link to you and the rest will take care of itself.

Although in direct relation to your post.. Generally text links work better but with CSS you can doll it up to look nice anyway

 

Can you recommend a guide for what you just said?

Thanks.

 

It's not something you can pick up overnight. But I can provide you with some resources to get started. Eventually though they'll be collected into a single volume on one of my Web sites, "Minimal Markup" (once I get around to finishing it that is).