I am not a complete designer, I concentrate more on SEO perspective in terms of design, content, keyword placement in the website that come to me. THat is how I was trained and I have only looked at a website from SEO perspective than design or new trends in the design. Other than removing the unnecessary code of html, css, javascript and php to decrease the load time and optimizing the code for KEYWORDS, I havent done anything else. But with the new trends in terms of design, is it good to become a good designer and programmer to actually write programs and design to withstand all the changes that keeps happening in the web? This question is only there because of the present design trends, What does Succesful SEO stand for - THe one who understand SEO first then design or the ones who design first. http://www.meclabs.com/resources/PageB.gif http://www.meclabs.com/resources/PageC.gif http://www.meclabs.com/resources/PageA.gif In the above three versions Version A is used to get 244 sales, version B which is cluttered got 282 sales and version C got a drastic fall of 58% to 114 from Version A.
In my opinion of course the best is has skill in both ways, but sometime the time is short to do all.
I agree its to always good to have both skills but ideally you would want to master the most you can. If you can code, design, SEO and program you only have more benefits than someone who can only do one of those things. With that said if you trying to master too many skills you will probably very mediocre in them and never really become "great" at any.
If your really focused in SEO,, it is also required to know basic knowledge in some other skills in Web Development... but be sure to pick what your focus is...
I think if SEO study web designing he will be the perfect designer with SEO strategies added... Excellent... 'coz he know what is good and not good when designing a website and making the site SE friendly....
I do both, i started programming on the Commodore 64 using Basic then Assembly language in the Mid 80's then migrated to the PC in the 286 days. Started exploring SEO around 99/00 so doing both comes naturally, and i believe learning both from scratch at once isn't hard to do. Both skills complement each other, and i couldn't imagine doing one without the other now.
If you earn more money by making graphic design stuff than being a SEO "expert" than the answer is pretty much clear
I think a designer/programmer who also understands SEO would be more successful cause SEO is part of the design and not the opposite!
there is as such no connention between the two. It totally dpeends on individual preferneces and choice. next time you might also would want to know whether content writers and SEOs or Website developers and SEOs can merge toagther. The answer for all will be it depends upon indivudual preferneces and thats all.
I believe a good SEO should also be looking closely at conversion rates and conversion funnels as well as rankings etc
when I reach on top of the serps , I pay (will pay) a web designer to tidy up my sites.Seo is more mathematical but for designing you need some art talents and I am very poor at that